ABSTRACT
Discourses on diversity have been used to administer ‘otherness’, and, in so doing, have opened up the possibility for the development and implementation of differentiated forms of power relations. What has changed over time is the perception, description, and practice of diversity in and by societies – and the way in which it is dealt with and employed by governments. That is, the phenomenon has been around for a long time, but its framing and application have been transformed. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, all European empires employed the ‘rule of colonial difference’. This often encompassed an essentializing of identity markers such as race, caste, religion, and gender, ascribing to them static characteristics of ‘otherness’. This chapter opens a window into how ‘diversity’ was practised, understood, framed, and conceptualized across imperial, apartheid, and post-apartheid phases in South Africa. This chapter argues that diversity was seen, employed, and implemented in quite distinct ways in these phases, and that throughout the past century, diversity, that is (dis)similarities of communities and how these were/are negotiated, differed significantly over space and time. To illustrate this argument, this chapter looks at the developments in the educational sector in South Africa with a particular focus on what these meant for Indian communities.
