Microsoft Word - PhD Thesis Final.pdf - University of Limpopo ...

division which was encouraged and imposed by apartheid authorities for
their political aims. It is rather a kind of identity in which different people
express and assert themselves culturally in a more positive and constructive
way, rather than undermining and competing with others.
Race is another identity marker which is sometimes closely related to
politics. D. Posel singles out race as a significant identity marker with a
model referred to as “race as a common sense” 613 . At the macro level,
South Africa had always had problems related to race, and it is not within
the scope of this study to go into details of South Africa’s race problems
over the years. It will only suffice to say that even before the arrival of
European colonialists in South Africa, different people perceived themselves
as different from others with regard to their origins, languages and
phenotypical features.
The tendency to distinguish between “us” and “them”, which is a very
important part of the process of identity formation, has long been there
among Black communities even before the arrival of Europeans. People are
constantly faced with the necessity of locating themselves in relation to
others. This process of location in the role system may be described as the
formulation of answers to the recurrent question, “who am I?” The answers
to this question mean nothing without explicit or implicit answers to the
613 D. Posel, “Race as a Common Sense: Racial Classification in the Twentieth Century South
Africa”. African Studies Review, 44 (2), p. 50.
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