ABSTRACT

In the house next door to mine in a suburb of Johannesburg, my Afrikaner neighbor makes it a duty every weekend and on public holidays to hoist on his flag pole the blue, white, and orange colors of the old South African nation. Like all symbols of nationalistic identification, this flag raises extreme emotions—either of mortification or nostalgia. It has become rare to find a South African of any race who is not either a staunch supporter of the African National Congress or an anti-apartheid activist, and my new neighbors have made it very clear on which side of the ideological plane their allegiances lie. It seems nothing has changed for these people and thousands of others like them, who still persistently dream of the return of the old nation. Nostalgia, cleansed of poisonous memories, endures, and is thus justified in its almost fatalistic clinging to a relic of racism. In many ways, this defiant use of an old nationalist symbol, with its undisguised, terrifying history, is nothing new or unique. It has companions in the recent Fascist revivalism that has engulfed Europe in the aftermath of the Cold War, with the return of swastika and Nazi symbolism, and in the more enduring history of the Confederacy flag in the southern United States.