ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 examines the crucial issue of the youth’s role in nation-building. This chapter examines the brief history of the country’s nation-building agenda during the administrations of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki and the stalling of the process after the Mbeki administration. Two main measures of nation-building—the desire for a united South African nation and the acceptance of diversity—were employed among contemporary youth. Overall, the acceptance of diversity by the youth was lower than the youth’s desire for a united South African nation, a situation which suggests the persistence of the problem of ethnic-racial tensions in the country going into the future.
