Racial And Ethnic Identity In South Africa Essay

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1 Introduction
National identity declares that a nation must have a common language, mentality, symbols, traditions, history, culture and political development, including a constitution or an ideology that will enforce governance so that there should be a division of power. South Africa seems to possess almost all of these traits, but a country with a complex history will often have a complex national identity. Identity has been a very fragile topic since apartheid and it still continues to be a problem even after South Africa has been declared as a democratic country. With the history of South Africa, a non-racial society is something that would not happen overnight because for 300 years blacks have suffered from colonialism and other forms
The negative impact that the apartheid policies has had and continue to affect the black population is through economic discrimination. National identity within the country has not been able to be translated into domestic tolerance and peace.
South Africa is considered to be a very multiracial and multiethnic society that is joined by a lot of foreign nationals ever since it was declared a democratic country. During the apartheid regime the government would only put in place policy documents that would strive to ensure the separation on racial development which also used their homelands policy in order to divide and conquer the many ethnic and tribal groups that live in the country. The homelands (also known as Bantustans) were legally closed down during 1994, when they still existed many citizens were never identified with nor visit their undesirable homelands. Black South African more especially those that are from rural area still remain in many ways tribal when coming to social relations and political behavior, where ethnic and tribe group carry on to be their main source of primary
Individuals in such are unable to avoid carrying several layers of mental programming and categorizing themselves through similar purposes with different groups which they belong to that is at a cultural or other traits distinctive enough to distinguish from others within the same culture or society. For instance, an individual can be pursued by a national culture which is either of one country or several countries for those people who move to different countries during their lifetime. Furthermore, the influence can be encouraged by the regional, ethnic, religious or linguistic association, because most nations are made up of culturally different divisions of groups; generation characteristics; social class, which is in relation with education, profession; an organizational or corporate culture, for those who are employed, and personal

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