ABSTRACT
The dominant analytical model for explaining South African social “reality” is to see it as a racially divided society where the categories of “black” and “white” constitute the society’s central dynamic. “Race” is understood to be a basic independent determinant of social identity and ‘conflict is seen as the inevitable outcome of given racial…differences’ (Boonzaier 1989: 175-6). This approach, articulating with key tenets of cultural pluralism and a liberal politics that linked apartheid to the force of racial prejudice, held firm ascendancy up until the 1970s (van den Berghe 1965, Wright 1977). Then, the rise of Marxism and class analysis came to pose a radical challenge by positing economic relationships as constituting the basic social structure. Consequently, to this school of thought, “race” is not an independent factor but the manifestation of those underlying material conditions and class forces that made apartheid functional to the needs of capitalism (Johnstone 1982).
