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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Identity, Democracy and Political Rights: South Africa in a Comparative Perspective
Author:Greenstein, RanISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa
Issue:26
Pages:1-30
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:nationalism
Blacks
national liberation movements
Law, Human Rights and Violence
Politics and Government
Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:https://d.lib.msu.edu/tran/253/OBJ/download
Abstract:Assuming that there are no necessary relations between demographic-historical realities (pitting an indigenous majority against a settler minority), on the one hand, and their expressions in the form of a programme based on notions of democracy and majority rule, on the other, this article explores the formation in the first half of the 20th century of indigenous political identities associated with varying conceptualizations of rights, citizenship and democratic rule in a settler-colonial context, i.e. South Africa. The focus of African political organization shifted over the period from initial attempts to gain limited and indirect access to white-dominated structures, towards attempts at direct incorporation on equal terms in the 1930s, and the genesis of African nationalism at the end of the period. A comparison with the responses to colonial challenges by Palestinian-Arabs in Palestine/Israel during the same period shows that indigenous Palestinian-Arabs from their earliest encounters with the settler political project, asserted as their historical birthright their right to the country as a whole. The conclusion is, therefore, that demographic majorities do not necessarily lead to similar conceptualizations of rights and advocacy of majority rule. Bibliogr.
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