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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Ethnic and Minority Groups, and Constitutional Change in South Africa |
Authors: | Du Toit, Pierre Theron, Francois |
Year: | 1988 |
Periodical: | Journal of Contemporary African Studies |
Volume: | 7 |
Issue: | 1-2 |
Period: | April-October |
Pages: | 133-147 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | ethnicity apartheid constitutions 1983 Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations Law, Human Rights and Violence |
Abstract: | The debate on the multi-ethnic character of the South African population acquired a new dimension in 1983 when a revamped Constitution for South Africa was enacted by Parliament. Opponents of the new constitutional framework maintain that it merely elaborates existing apartheid principles. The claim that apartheid can be said to come to grips with the realities of ethnic conflict in South African society depends in the first instance upon the question of whether the population categories defined by this policy do, in fact, correspond to the ethnic phenomena found in society. Therefore, this paper examines what precisely is meant by membership of an ethnic group. It investigates the objective definition of ethnicity, as provided by the Population and Registration Act and other Acts, and the subjective definition of ethnicity, which places more emphasis on the meaning that any individual attaches to certain 'objective' ethnic criteria than on the criteria themselves. It is clear that the Constitution of 1983, introducing a complex tricameral, semi-parliamentary, and semi-presidential system, not only maintains the enforced minority group status of coloureds and Indians but entrenches it in a fundamental way. Notes, ref. |