A content analysis of the 'land language' articulated by the political elites concerning South Africa's land question after 2013 : an ideational exploration of an imagined pluralistic security community

Abstract

South Africa’s unresolved land question has material and ideational dimensions. While undeniably crucial to resolving the land question, the material dimension has created tension and conflict. Therefore, this thesis considers the necessary but insufficient material approach to South Africa’s land question after 2013 and, as a supplementary response, introduces social constructionism and the inherent ideational context as an extension to the material. Social constructionism emphasises the social origins of knowledge and the articulation of language for the construction of multiple realities by actors with different identities who use structures and agency to construct distinctive social communities and networks.

Drawing on primary data sources such as the Hansard, television interviews, speeches and personally authored documents explicitly involving party leaders Julius Sello Malema (EFF) and Petrus Johannes Groenewald (FF+) as political elites, the methodology entails a qualitative content analysis of their ‘land language’ from 2013 to 2019. In this regard, Malema and Groenewald have articulated conflictual, diversifying and unifying ‘land language’ to construct social networks and communities that emerge from their differing realities leading to hostility, fear and confrontation. It shows that despite the hostility, fear and confrontation over the land question there is also, to a degree, ‘land language’ contributing to an imagined pluralistic security community with dependable expectations of peaceful change. As an ideational response, a security community integrates social communities and networks to engender an over-arching sense of we-ness. We-ness is achievable by advancing societal interest, promoting human dignity and inculcating compassion as a virtue to introduce dependable expectations of peaceful change when considering South Africa’s post-2013 land question.