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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Fiercely Non-Racial? Discourses and Politics of Race in the Non-European Unity Movement, 1943-70
Author:Adhikari, MohamedISNI
Year:2005
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:31
Issue:2
Period:June
Pages:403-418
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:Unity Movement of South Africa
political philosophy
race relations
History and Exploration
Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070500109631
Abstract:The Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), founded in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in December 1943 as an organization for national liberation by activists within the 'Trotskyist' tradition of the South African left, has built up a formidable reputation for its uncompromising stand on non-racism. The current literature accepts this non-racism as given and typically describes the NEUM as always having been 'fiercely non-racial' or having had an 'abiding commitment to non-racialism'. By contrast, this article argues that non-racism had not always been a central tenet of the organization but that it became much more self-conscious and politically correct about its discourse around issues of race only from the early 1960s onwards. Generalized assertions that the NEUM was non-racist reflect neither the intricacies of its ideology and political strategy nor changes in its priorities. They ignore the considerable concessions the organization made to various forms of racial thinking and racial identities within its constituency and disregard its own lapses into racial thinking in unguarded moments. By scrutinizing the ideological and political, as well as the day-to-day, discourses within the NEUM and tracing its elevation of non-racism to a matter of high principle, this article demonstrates that attitudes toward race within the organization, especially towards Coloured identity, were far more complex and pragmatic than hitherto suggested by commentators. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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