Twenty Years of Social Cohesion and Nation-Building in South Africa

Social cohesion is seen to be an urgent pursuit in post-apartheid South Africa, and is often invoked as a means to achieve a just and equal society, to quell xenophobic sentiment or violence, and to encourage support for a united nation. Even though, at its crux, the pursuit of a socially cohesive society is fundamentally about a compact between the government and the governed, the content of social cohesion is very much articulated by government as its ‘template’ for nation-building, directed at the populace for enacting such a vision. This article considers the changing nature of the social cohesion discourse in South Africa over the first two decades after democracy. It shows how the notion has evolved over time to contextualise social policy concepts emergent elsewhere, but ultimately has become inextricably connected to nation-building. The article argues that this formulation is deeply political. The social cohesion project, being so intimately connected with nation-building, essentially instantiates a version of nation that is based on and produces a narrative that seeks to solidify the African National Congress’s hegemony.