A history riddled with racial and gender oppression, economic inequality, and ethnic disputes, contemporary South Africa is facing mounting and legitimate pressures to resolve profound social challenges. Multiple organizations and political groups have joined the quest to tackle racism, patriarchy, poverty, and inequality. What unites these groups is the desire to be a voice for the historically disadvantaged, and to construct an African nationalism.

How to build such a nationalism, in the context of South Africa, has historically been called the “National Question,” the question of who belongs in South Africa. Currently, equality, and equity are merely aspirations as the country is one of the most unequal societies in the world. In addition, socio-economic and institutional discrimination continues to undermine the full development of the black majority. South African political groups are rightfully aligned in their pursuit for complete socio-economic and political liberation for the historically disadvantaged, however, the way some of these groups have chosen to respond to these challenges is problematic. They mostly dwell on racial and ethnic mobilization centered on fear and intolerance for different ethnicities, religions, and racial groups.

Nativism and nationalism can be found to be problematic in contemporary South African politics. Fairchance Ncube, a columnist with News24, asserts that there is a propensity among some nationalists and Afro-radicals—which in this instance would be the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Black First Land First (BLF) among others—“to appeal to narratives of nativism and indigeneity as the indispensable basis for certain entitlements (particularly the land and its natural resources).” Considering the exclusionary and oppressive history of colonization and apartheid, some of the claims lodged by these groups are justified, particularly considering the inherited inequalities from those governments and the present-day challenge to eradicate them.

However, to pain this perspective in a different light, Achille Mbembe uses the analogy of Nongqwase, the 16 year-old Xhosa girl who in 1854 prophesied to the Xhosa people, via her uncle, to kill all their cattle en masse to combat the deprivation suffered under British colonialism. The prophecy was that the Xhosa ancestral spirit would subsequently resurrect and sweep away the white colonizers to the sea. None of this happened and:

…by May 1857, 400,000 cattle had been slaughtered and 40,000 Xhosa had died of starvation. At least another 40,000 had left their homes in search of food … the whole land was surrounded by the smell of death, Xhosa independence and self-rule had effectively ended.

According to Mbembe, “Nongqawuse syndrome is a populist rhetoric and a millenarian form of politics which advocates, uses and legitimizes self-destruction or national suicide, as a means of salvation.”

It is evident from contemporary politics that some political groups have dragged progressive nationalism into irredeemable disrepute for their own self-enrichment. Such discourses replicate colonial and apartheid logics based on simplistic conceptions of who belongs and who does not. These discourses do not reflect the reality of a diverse South Africa. They thus pose a threat to the realization of a non-racial, inclusive, and democratic society. This is particularly problematic for political parties which aspire to one day rule the country—such as the EFF—as “their limited conception of the nation will, therefore, yield action and policy that does not account for the complexities and nuances inherent to a culturally and racially heterogeneous society.”

In addition to black nationalism and nativism in post-apartheid South Africa, the chauvinist, narrow, white nationalist Afriforum has emerged as a conservative Afrikaner group. Afriforum is concerned with protecting the interest of white Afrikaners. Afriforum has constantly opposed the redistribution of land among all South Africans and this shows that their narrow nationalism emerged to protect white minority interests at the expense of the majority of South Africans.