Since the fall of apartheid and the emergence of a wholly democratic South Africa in 1994,
little research has been done on the topic of white identity in this rapidly transforming
multicultural society. Indeed, apart from an array of popular books on the subject, there
has been virtually no academic interest in the question of how white South Africans have
reconstructed their individual and collective identities since the fall of apartheid, and the
resulting erosion of the ready answers previously provided to them regarding questions of
belonging and identification. This study set out to remedy this situation through exploring the
identities that white South Africans, and white Afrikaans speakers in particular, have constructed
out of the wreckage of the 20th century.
Embracing a qualitative approach, this study focused on exploring stories of contemporary white
Afrikaans speaking identity as told in the participantsâ own words. Six individuals, ranging from
students in their late teens to a grandson of Hendrik Verwoerd, shared their stories, which were
reflexively engaged through an interpretive sociological approach that incorporated elements of
phenomenology, existentialism and reflexive sociology. The dissertation starts off with an
introduction to the epistemological and ontological foundation upon which the investigative
process was built, before investigating the concept identity as conceptualised during the research
process, namely as constituting a relatively stable but malleable set of understandings regarding
the self and its place within society in general and specific racial, religious and cultural
collectivities in particular. A history of white Afrikaans speaking identity is then presented,
which makes clear the prior existence of at least three historical white Afrikaans speaking
collectivities, namely the Burghers of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Boers of the 1800âs, and the
Afrikaners of the 20th century. The stage is then set for the examination of the new collectivities
that have developed since the demise of a coherent Afrikaner identity in the late 20th century.
The data, collected by means of reflexive individual and group interviews, and analysed using
âDialogical Narrative Analysisâ (DNA), a process that focuses on the contents and circulation of
individual and collectively shared stories, or ânarrative repertoiresâ, indicate the existence of at
least three relatively coherent contemporary white Afrikaans speaking collectivities. These are
the âPseudo-Boersâ, the âAfrikanersâ, and the âAfrikaansesâ. These three collectivities,
developing simultaneously and largely parallel to each other out of the once coherent Afrikaner
collectivity of the previous century, exhibit significant variance regarding the content, structure
and circulation of their narrative repertoires. This means that Afrikaners, Pseudo-Boers and
Afrikaanses, on both the individual and collective levels, differ from each other in terms of the
stories they tell and dynamics pertaining to the circulation of these stories, as well as the genres,
plots and character types prevalent in them. These shared stories in turn represent, according to
this study, the matrix out of which identity is constructed, be it individual or collective. The
uncovered data are further represented in a manner borrowing from certain techniques used in
the fields of semi-fiction writing and journalism, with the aim to aid understanding through
presenting the data themselves in a storied form. This choice was made in line with the
hypothesis, developed throughout this dissertation, that the uniquely human phenomenon of storytelling in fact underlies much of the social construction of reality, and serves to inform
individual and collectively shared meaning frameworks and understandings regarding the world
of everyday life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-07172013-160710 |
| Date | 17 July 2013 |
| Creators | Kotze, Paul Conrad |
| Contributors | Dr F Elliker, Prof JK Coetzee |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-07172013-160710/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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