ABSTRACT
The term is not used in South African policy-making circles (McAllister 1996). Where it is generally used and debated is in a set of predominantly anglophone countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, and more recently, in Great Britain. Though South Africa shares, as its dominant cultural ethos, this international anglophone (and largely urban-based) culture, it is neither majoritarian anglophone nor strictly the product of successful European settlement. The five societies above in fact, as a consequence of British imperialism and its democratic aftermath, continue to receive large streams of immigrants who tend, once they settle in these societies, to be classified as minorities. In the aftermath of failed policy initiatives - the ‘melting pot’ in the US and cultural dualism in Canada as examples - multicultural policy is one way the governments of these societies seek to address this challenge (Kallen 1982). Underlying this policy is the ideal that personal dignity or honour - a fundamental value in a democracy - is closely bound up with the collective dignity of a person’s ethnic or cultural community (Taylor 1994). National and ethnic identities ought to complement one another.
