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 antagoni ...

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 mor ...

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 di ...

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 coun ...

after April 1994, and it is enshrined in

Chapter One of the Constitution of South Africa Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa, titled Founding Provisions and containing six sections, enshrines in the constitution key national principles, defines the country's flag and national anthem, and specifies the official languages an ...

. 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 i ...

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 anti-apartheid activist who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the ...

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-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election install ...

; 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, and which seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black nationalist activism revolves aro ...

movement, even among the party itself.

References

Politics and race Liberalism Politics of South Africa {{SouthAfrica-poli-stub