Why did Apartheid's supporters capitulate? ‘Whiteness’, class and consumption in urban South Africa, 1985–1995

Abstract

Abstract This paper poses the question of why South African whites eventually acquiesced in the democratic transition of the 1990s. Whilst domestic and international political pressure was clearly the crucial factor in bringing about change, the question of why whites did not go along with right wing advocacy of continued defence of the status quo remains. The argument of the paper is that the subjectivities of whites changed between the 1970s and the 1990s in a way which made them much less available for mobilization in defence of apartheid. They moved from strong identification with the modernist, statist project of apartheid, to far more individualized and consumerist self-identities. This was the outcome of an interaction between the changing internal class structure and the global socio-cultural changes associated with late modernity.