Developing an inclusive national identity in South Africa through an examination of belonging using WW Gqoba and SEK Mqhayi

Abstract

Examining national identity, belonging and a national culture, this study argues for the theorisation of the political reality in South Africa by analysing the literary landscape of the country. By combining a set of interrelated disciplines, i.e., political theory, history and historiography, philosophy and literature, the study makes the case for a reading and theorising of national culture using the works of historical Black/Indigenous intellectuals whose work was developed using one of the indigenous languages of the country, isiXhosa. Fashioning a national identity, culture and a sense of belonging, it is argued, is possible through a systematic engagement with William Wellington Gqoba and Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi. Such a process of theory development facilitates a postliberal conception of democracy that works to hold two competing identities—Black/Indigenous and white settler colonial descendent identities—in tandem. This study demonstrates the possibilities of articulating contextually situated democratic articulations and contributes to the advancement of the discipline of political theory. This comes as democracy has received a series of critiques from leading intellectuals in the country, on the basis that it undermines the project of mass liberation intended in the promise of democracy. The study concludes by making a case for the systematic engagement of marginal ontologies insofar as we are invested in fashioning a national identity in post-colonial societies. The proposition is that such an engagement can better position political theory intervention, that attempts to understand the conditions that define the political realities of post-colonies and decolonial efforts.