South Africa's social transformation policies: raciolinguistic ideologies and neoliberal rhetoric

Title
South Africa's social transformation policies: raciolinguistic ideologies and neoliberal rhetoric
Publication Date
2019
Author(s)
Ndhlovu, Finex
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9263-0725
Email: fndhlovu@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:fndhlovu
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1080/17447143.2019.1592177
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/29868
Abstract
South Africa has a politically and emotionally charged debate on unresolved race-based imbalances in patterns of land ownership and access to socio-economic opportunities. The main pillars of South Africa’s post-apartheid efforts to address these inherent inequalities have come to be underpinned by invocation of a predominantly neoliberal yet narrow and inward-looking approach that overlooks the discourse of previously marginalised black people. This reified and reductionist view on social transformation is evident in the framing of Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE), land reform programme and associated elements of the transformation agenda. This article seeks to uncover those neoliberal imperatives of South Africa’s social transformation agenda and how they do not sit well within the aspirations and desires of the wider South African population. The specific focus is on what the linguistic and discursive elements of land reform and B-BBEE policies hide and reveal about social transformation. I conclude by suggesting that the discourse and praxis of social transformation in South Africa needs to be conducted in a language that takes into account marginalised voices that speak from non-institutional spaces.
Link
Citation
Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 14(2), p. 131-151
ISSN
1747-6615
1744-7143
Start page
131
End page
151

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