ABSTRACT
The historic release of Nelson Mandela and the first ever democratic elections in 1994 have heralded significant changes in South Africa during the past decade. Since then, efforts have been made to dismantle the divide and rule policy of the apartheid regime and construct a new policy. The justification for the apartheid policy in South Africa was based upon notions of difference, specifically in terms of ‘race’ and ‘culture’ and this is why, during the reconstruction period, there has been a foregrounding of unity, equality and universality. This has been in direct contrast to feminist postmodernist ideas in the North in the same period, which have emphasised the notion of difference in the place of equality. In the apartheid era, the notion of difference has had lethal consequences for the majority of the South African population, who were construed as different and in need of ‘separate development’ (apartheid). In this context, difference as a concept has therefore had a contaminated past. Is it possible, as Rosi Braidotti (1997) has suggested, to ‘cleanse’ the notion of
difference so that it could be made useful in our situation? In this chapter, I make an attempt to answer this question by looking at the problems and possibilities that feminist postmodernism offers in the South African context. I conclude that although difference in the apartheid context has been used to justify disqualifying, objectifying and marginalising the majority of the population, and therefore as tainted, the concept can be ‘cleansed’ and that a feminist postmodern lens would be valuable for analysis of past and present social work policy and practice in South Africa.
