Defining difference, defining moments: Competing moral discourses, constitutional options, and 'Indian' ethnic identities during the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa, 1990--1994

This study analyzes competing moral discourses and constitutional options during the period of political transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa from 1990 to 1994 and, specifically, contested visions of the future just society and the place of Indian South Africans and other 'races' in such a society. Focusing on those people formerly classified by law in South Africa as 'Indian'---the descendants of migrants from South Asia---and their structurally mediating and politically ambivalent position in the wider South African society, the study explores the complex relationship between socio-legal 'race' classification and self-ascribed ethnic identity at a time of dramatic political, legal, and constitutional change. It examines the ways in which the apartheid state attempted to structure individual and group identity through 'multiracial' legal categories (Indian, African, White, Coloured) and 'moral' discourse, as well as how the imposition of a state-defined identity generated both accommodation and resistance, as manifested in competing classificatory discourses (nonracialism, multiracialism, Black Consciousness, Africanism) and contested identities. National events, processes, and discourses associated with the four-year political transition from apartheid to democracy provide the context within which the dissertation explores public (community) debate and private (domestic) discussion among Indian South Africans concerning their identity and future 'place' in an officially 'nonracial' yet fundamentally multicultural society. This public debate and private discussion, about issues of identity and the position of 'Indians' in a future democratic South Africa, demonstrated a strong sense of belonging to a transnational Indian diaspora. For Indian South Africans, once victims of apartheid and racial oppression as 'blacks' under white minority rule, yet at the same time acutely aware of the plight of diasporic 'Indians' elsewhere in Africa under black majority rule, such conjecture about the future was characterized by a complex mixture of hope and apprehension. The political ambivalence and structural ambiguity characterizing the identity and position of Indian South Africans during the transition from apartheid to democracy is articulated in the dissertation in terms of an understanding of socio-legal race classification and self-ascribed ethnic identity as theoretical issues.