ABSTRACT
South Africa, one could argue, has been global from its first entanglements with Dutch and then British imperial efforts. 1 The narrative of European colonization begins with Van Riebeeck’s establishment of a fueling station at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, a change of hands three times in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (British, Dutch, British), followed by successive permutations from Colony to Republic, both in and outside the British Commonwealth. The establishment of a democratic South Africa in 1994 marks a milestone in the history of South Africa. Changes in the landscape of South African affairs of state and public dialogue will undoubtedly continue, however, even as South Africa today appears to be on the brink of decolonization. From the first moment of contact with Europeans, South Africa was constituted by many locals: many different ethnicities with different histories, different languages and creoles, different notions of culture, and different nationalisms. 2 This pluralism and fragmentation shattered the notion of any whole; heterogeneity spawned a multiplicity of identities marked by difference.
