Performing minority populism : the Solidariteit Beweging in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This dissertation advances a qualitative single-case study of minority populism, selecting the SB as its case, and develops and operationalises a post-Laclauian theoretical framework to address two research questions: How does the SB perform populism? and What type of populism does the SB express? The main purpose of the dissertation is to determine how minority populism emerges out of the actions and utterances of SB leaders as they ‘do’ or perform populism and to then interpretively discuss and thickly describe the sort of populism they espouse in comparative terminology from existing populism studies literature.