ABSTRACT
Stuart Hall (1980) framed his important analysis of South Africa under apartheid as ‘limit case’ theoretically and a ‘test case’ politically, calling it a society ‘structured in dominance’. Here I explore the structuring of white dominance and on-going normalisation of ‘white’ as dominant in one elite, independent girls’ school South Africa. Three themes are threaded through the paper: articulations of race and class, examined by Hall, which have structured South African politics and society since early colonisation, through apartheid, to the post-apartheid era; the biocultural constructedness of race (Gilroy 2000, 22), with its particular manifestations and on-going effects in South Africa; and what Terreblanche (2003, 2012) described as the ‘white dividend’ – the accumulated benefits, both economic and sociocultural, that have accrued to white people since their earliest settlement there. Similarly, in the context of the USA, Roediger (1994, 1998) addresses the history of white labour, how
certain immigrant groups ‘became white’ and the on-going impact of white domination (notwithstanding the deconstruction of race). In South Africa both these processes have been visible over the years. These themes are related to global and local narratives of whiteness (Steyn 2001; Steyn and Foster 2008), emanating from early forms of globalisation through colonialism and finding expression in South Africa’s ‘limit case’ political structures and history.
