Dissecting sameness: South Africa and the politics of nonracialism

Abstract

A claim to a basic human sameness underwrote a powerful political argument, that of nonracialism, for emancipation from Apartheid. This argument asserted that difference was inseparable from inequality, and thus that advancing human sameness helped undo the work of the Apartheid state and of racial capitalism. But does sameness continue to hold as an emancipatory orientation in post-Apartheid South Africa? Does silencing race by ending racial categorisation end up being unable to deal with racial differences no longer produced by the state? This paper argues that it is necessary to think beyond sameness—and nonracialism—if we are to address racism in contemporary South Africa.