Shifting Chinese South African identities in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

The focus of this PhD thesis is the shifting identities of the approximately 12,000-strong community of South African-born Chinese South Africans during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. This thesis begins with the assumption that social identities are constructed. It also assumes that identities are contested amongst the various social actors; that identities shift over time and across individual life spans; and that individuals have multiple, often overlapping identities. The three strands of identity that form the core of this thesis are racial, ethnic, and national identities; at any given time, due to specific historic circumstances, one or another of these identities has been more or less salient. This thesis used a combination of methodologies the address the key research questions. The primary research method was qualitative. In-depth interviews were supplemented by a survey, archival research, and participant observation. The principal social actors dominating the construction of Chinese South African identities were the Chinese South Africans, themselves, and the South African and Chinese states. Chinese history, myths about China, and Chinese culture were the primary building materials used in the construction of Chinese South African identities; however, these ‘materials’ could only be utilised within the constraints established by the apartheid system. From the 1960s, Chinese South Africans were singled from amongst the ‘non-whites’ to receive concessions and privileges; over time they came to occupy the nebulous, interstitial spaces of apartheid as unofficial ‘honorary whites’. South African state attempts to legally redefine the Chinese as ‘white’ failed because the Chinese South Africans were unwilling to give up their unique ethnic identity. Concessions and greater interaction with white South Africans had led many Chinese to conclude that their Chineseness had been ‘diminished’ and ‘lost’. What we witnessed, rather, was the selective incorporation of chosen aspects of Chinese culture and values into new Chinese South African identities. Because of the diminishing impact of apartheid legislation on Chinese South Africans, we were able to identify three distinct identity cohorts during the apartheid era: the shopkeepers, the fence-sitters, and the bananas. In the post-apartheid era, affirmative action policies, new immigration from China and Taiwan, and globalisation have influenced more recent constructions of Chinese South African identities. Keywords: Chinese, Chineseness, South African, apartheid, post-apartheid, identity, construction, ethnicity, ‘honorary white’, race.