| Chapter : | Introduction |
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for fear of an unsecure future for Indians under black rule.17 Edward Ramsamy's chapter explores how South Africa's Indian minority has negotiated their place through different periods in the history of South Africa and the consequences of their specific notions of community. Drawing upon and expanding the insights of the “middleman minority thesis,” Ramsamy argues that Indians currently perceive themselves to be “sandwiched” between an affluent white minority and a politically powerful African majority. This perception has contributed to the persistence of group identity within the Indian community during the last ten years. This does not mean, however, that the Indian community should be viewed as a homogenous group; rather Ramsamy noted the significance of class position, on one hand, and perceptions of political and material vulnerability, on the other hand, in identity politics within the Indian community. Indeed, the place of the Indian minority in the transition to democratic rule and the question of social and political integration in the emerging South African society has further exposed the ambivalent position they occupy as they attempt to reconcile the tension between the long-standing tradition of Indian identification with non-racial political discourse and the rising tide of defensive ethno-nationalistic sentiment within the community. The persistence of class and new forms of inequality calls for a critical assessment of the concept of a “rainbow nation” and the position of different forms of minorities in the new South Africa. On a broader level, the paper raises important questions about a minority and survival of ethnic identity in an era already largely accepted as forging toward multiculturalism.
Similarities of the failure of transformative politics to create ethnic homogeneity exist throughout Africa. Such failures often force minority groups to devise other means of self-protection. Jacob Mundy's chapter in this volume examines the failure of transformative minority politics in Algeria. For almost thirty years, Amazigh (Berber) activists in North Africa have increasingly challenged what they see as “Arab” socio-cultural, political, and economic hegemony. Mundy traces the broad discursive construction of the Amazigh Cultural Movement(s) and varied responses to the movement in Moroccan and Algerian regimes