Non-racialism, aracialism or antiracialism is a South African ideology rejecting
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
and
racialism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies can be more ...
while affirming
liberal democratic
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into diff ...
ideals.
History
Non-racialism became the official state policy of
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...
after April 1994,
and it is enshrined in
Chapter One of the Constitution of South Africa. The term has been criticized as vague, and carrying different meanings even among people sharing the same ideological tradition.
The earliest use of the term was by
Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Károly ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964),''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist and politician, best known ...
in the 1930s.
Neville Alexander
Neville Edward Alexander (22 October 1936 – 27 August 2012) was a proponent of a multilingual South Africa and a former revolutionary who spent ten years on Robben Island as a fellow-prisoner of Nelson Mandela.
Early life
Alexander was born ...
follows
Robert Sobukwe
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe (5 December 1924 – 27 February 1978) was a prominent South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), serving as the first president of the organization.
Sobukwe w ...
in defining non-racialism as the acknowledgement of the nonexistence of race as a scientific fact.
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (; ; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of the ...
professed a belief in non-racialism in the early 1960s, but later rejected the concept and harshly criticized
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...
for his embrace of the ideology.
Non-racialism is a stated core policy of the
African National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) is a Social democracy, social-democratic political party in Republic of South Africa, South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when ...
; however, the adoption of multiracialist policy in the Freedom Charter instead of
Afrocentric non-racialism is what resulted in the breakaway
Pan Africanist Congress
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (known as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)) is a South African national liberation Pan-Africanist movement that is now a political party. It was founded by an Africanist group, led by Robert Sobukwe, that ...
in 1959.
Some have mistaken this for a
black nationalist
Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race (human categorization), race, and which seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black natio ...
movement, even among the party itself.
References
Politics and race
Liberalism
Politics of South Africa
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