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The collapse of the apartheid state and the ushering in of democratic rule in 1994 represented a new beginning for the new South Africa and the Southern African region. There were widespread expectations and hopes that the elaboration of democratic institutions would also inaugurate policies that would progressively alleviate poverty and inequality.
Fourteen years into the momentous events that saw Nelson Mandela become the president of South Africa, critical questions are being asked about the country’s transition, especially about its performance in meeting the targets laid down in its own macro-economic programmes in terms of poverty and inequality, and the consequences of the fact that the expectations of South Africans have not been met.

At a general level the euphoria of 1994 has come up against deepening inequality, rising unemployment, the HIV pandemic and bourgeoning violent crime. The latter has led one writer to conclude that South Africa is ‘a country at war with itself’ (Altbeker 2007).
South Africans have trusted democracy with the hard task to deliver jobs, wealth, healthcare, better housing and services to the people. But now that all of this is slow in arriving, there is growing disquiet and increased community protests that have sought to challenge the government on the pace of service delivery.
It is the level of what we have labelled a crisis of expectation that this paper speaks to. It looks at what under lies this crisis of expectation and what are the potential consequences.

The crisis of expectation and the political context
Whilst it can be said that under Mbeki’s leadership, efforts were made to develop and adopt some forward thinking policies and that his major contribution was his policy on modernizing the state, it can also be said that under his leadership several state institutions were set up to ensure good governance, the effectiveness of which is being contested at the moment. The relevance and the efficacy of these initiatives of the Mbeki government have taken precedence in the debate on the declining human development index in South Africa and in the run up to the ‘changing of the guard of the ruling party’.
Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the ANC has dominated the South African political scene and has shaped the way this country is today. The first term of ANC government was largely characterized by legislative developments with the purpose of creating a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic country. The government provided democratic policies and practices in order to ensure a checks-and-balances system of powers. This basically meant the independence of the judiciary, the promotion and protection of media freedom and the accountability of political institutions.
At the same time, during this decade of democracy, the ANC political leadership earned international recognition, and the reputation of being a good reconciler, mediator and peace-maker in relation to the political turmoil afflicting some African governments (DRC, Burundi and Zimbabwe). South Africa has taken the lead of African pan-unionism.The significance of its political leadership in the continent has been underlined by granting South Africa the chairpersonship of the African Union Commission on the occasion of the inauguration of the first session of the Pan-African Parliament, on 18 March 2004.
However, while the institutions of democracy have been elaborated and South Africa’s role in the continent enhanced, the challenge of economic upliftment of the poorest South Africans remains fundamental to the success of the transition.

This side of the mandate with which voters have trusted the ANC for three consecutive terms cannot be disputed. Since 1994, the ANC government has passed a significant amount of social legislation that claims to help address the inequities of the past. Starting from 1992-1993, spending on social services has grown from 44.4% of general government expenditure to 56.7% in 2002-2003. The government has facilitated the construction of 1.6 million new houses, supplied water to nine million households and sanitation to 6.4 million, and created two million net new jobs. Government also embarked on policies and programmes geared toward ensuring economic development.
The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the Growth Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR) sought to address the issue of economic development and sustainable growth. The efficacy of these programmes remains debatable. While on one hand the recent sound performance of South Africa’s macro-economy is attributed to the implementation of the fundamentals underlying GEAR, on the other hand GEAR has had negative consequences for the poor in South Africa.
This combination of social policies in some areas and of a conservative macroeconomic programme in others led to a sort of de-racialisation of the apex of the class structure but left the largest part of the population exactly where it was: marginalised, poor and overwhelmingly black.
Miceli ( 2007) is of the opinion that the fundamental challenge facing South Africa is the need to find sustainable means to overcome the apartheid legacy of racial division, poverty, and inequality; to reverse decades of distortionary political, social, and economic policies that disfavoured, rather than promoted, development. Seekings in 2000 argued in the same vein when he said that the end of apartheid may not have seen extensive racial desegregation, but it has seen the emergence of a clear class division in South African populace including the African populations. More importantly, the authors argue that if people have sufficient stake in their country, they will not destroy it and their fellow citizens.

The crisis of expectation and crime
Crime and violence have dominated South Africa’s transformation over the past two decades. High crime rates cause widespread feelings of insecurity and fear which undermine popular confidence in the democratisation process. Considering both trends and public perceptions, this paper explores changing crime levels over the past decade, elaborating on the problems associated with crime statistics in South Africa, and the salience of the transition for current crime levels. Data is drawn from official police statistics and from victimisation and other surveys. Crime has been increasing gradually in South Africa since 1980. It is, however, since 1990 – and not more recently, as popular belief has it – that levels have risen sharply. An examination of the statistics shows that despite general increases, not all crimes have been committed with equal frequency and not all areas of the country are similarly affected. These trends are a product of the political transition and are associated with the effects of apartheid and political violence, the breakdown in the criminal justice system and more recently, the growth in organised crime. High crime levels are taking their toll on South Africans. Surveys show that crime rather than socio-economic issues now dominates people’s concerns, and that fear of crime is increasing. Currently, fewer people feel safe and believe the government has the situation under control than in previous years. Faced with widespread unemployment on the one hand, and the prospects of development on the other, the levels of property crimes will probably continue to increase. While violent crime levels should decline over the medium term, improved relations with the police and a culture of reporting crimes like rape and assault may result in more crime being recorded.

The crisis of expectation and the declining human development trajectory
There is no doubt that the policies and RDP agenda of Government over the past 14 years have attempted to address the legacy of apartheid, but its implementation and the resultant outcomes were not ‘in sinc’ with these intentions. The declining Human development index is indicative of this reality.

According to Ul Haq, the objective of development is ‘to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives’.[i] In this regard, South Africa’s stated commitment in its constitution to the attainment of ‘a better life for all’, not just a better life for small pockets of this once-divided nation, should drive whatever we do to promote sustainable development. Mbeki in responding to the Human Development Report 2006 agreed that
… development and security complement mutually reinforce each other. It is clear that one simply cannot be achieved without the other, and neither is sustainable without respect for human rights, which empowers individuals and communities with the freedom to make better choices.
Yet, the statistics reflect otherwise.

In June 2006, the Presidency released its A nation in the making: A discussion document on macro-social trends in South Africa. The study found that between 1995 and 2000, the rural share of income poverty declined by approximately 5%, while it increased by 5% in the urban areas. In 1995, 28% of households lived below the estimated poverty datum line of R322 per month, while the figure for 2000 was just under 33%.
In terms of inequality, data shows that in 2000, the poorest 20% of households accounted for 2,8%. In contrast, the wealthiest 20% of households accounted for 64,5% of all expenditure. The income and expenditure Gini coefficients point to a rising inequality amongst Africans.
In terms of unemployment, the 2001 Labour Force Survey shows that that the distribution of those aged 15-65 by labour market status is as follows: 35,9% of Africans, 21,8% of Coloureds; 18,4% of Indians, and 6% of whites were unemployed. In September 2005, the figures were as follows: the unemployment rate amongst Blacks was 31,5%, 22,4% amongst Coloureds, and 5,1% amongst whites.

A further racial imbalance is that 50% of Africans live in households of four or more people, compared with 30% of whites. Yet, in terms of number of rooms available to households, 73% of Africans have four rooms or less to live in, including kitchens and toilets, while 86% of white households have four or more rooms in the household.
In terms of electricity, 40% of Africans use it as the energy source for cooking, while for whites this percentage is 96,6%. Of all the top management positions in the country, white males constitute 77,3%, compared to 5% Black males, 2% Coloured males, and 3.3% Indian males. For females, the percentages are 10,2% white females, 1,2% Blacks, 0,7% Coloureds, and 0,5% Indians.
Research shows that 51% of Black matriculates are still looking for employment, compared to 14% of Whites; 30% of Coloureds, and 28% of Indians. The less skilled are also caught in a poverty trap. As the Macro-social Report puts it: ‘The lack of knowledge is linked to social status’. In terms of gender, some 52,2% of the country’s population is female, but the male gender dominates political, economic and social life in the country.

Moving now to causes of death and social demographics, research shows that young Blacks and Coloureds are more likely to die of unnatural causes of death – mainly violence and car accidents – than other sections of the population. The macro-social report states that AIDS-related causes of death increased from about 15% of all deaths in 1997 to about 25% in 2001. It also states that ‘central in determining social behaviour is the system of ownership and distribution of resources, Coloured – in the South African setting – by race’.

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The crisis of expectation and poverty
Poverty is inseparable from politics in South Africa, whether looking at origins and causes, its current form, or solutions. Since the turn of the century, a growing literature has sprung up attempting to answer the burning question of whether the South African income distribution has improved in terms of a reduction in poverty and inequality since political transition. In per capita terms South Africa is an upper-middle-income country, but notwithstanding this relative wealth, the experience of most South African households is one of absolute poverty or of continuing vulnerability to being poor. In addition, the distribution of income and wealth in South Africa is among the most unequal in the world, and many households still have unsatisfactory access to education, health care, energy and clean water. This triggered the famous quote in the 1998 parlia­mentary debate on reconciliation and nation-building, when then deputy president Thabo Mbeki (Mbeki 1998) famously argued that
Material conditions … have divided our country into two nations, the one black, and the other white. … [the latter] is relatively prosperous and has ready access to a developed economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastruct­ure … The second, and larger, nation of South Africa is black and poor, with the worst affected being women in the rural areas, the black rural population in general and the disabled. 
This nation lives under conditions of a grossly underdeveloped economic, physical, educational, communication and other infrastructure. It has virtually no possibility to exercise what in reality amounts to a theoretical right to equal opportunity.

­Measuring poverty is not a straightforward matter, as it depends on a critical assumption: what level of income constitutes the poverty line? Despite being considered an upper-middle income country, South Africa is a country of stark contrasts. The extreme inequality evident in South Africa means that one sees destitution, hunger and overcrowding side-by-side with affluence.

Poverty in South Africa has racial, gender and spatial dimensions, a direct result of the policies of the successive colonial, segregationist and apartheid regimes. Poverty is distributed unequally among the nine provinces. Provincial poverty rates are highest for the Eastern Cape (71%), Free State (63%), North-West (62%), Northern Province (59%) and Mpumalanga (57%), and lowest for Gauteng (17%) and the Western Cape (28%). Three children in five live in poor households, and many children are exposed to public and domestic violence, malnutrition, and inconsistent parenting and schooling. Redistri­bution of income in South Africa in order to address disparities is not a story of only the post-apartheid era. From the late 1970s, expenditure on Africans began to rise, first in response to increasing political instability from 1976, which led to rising education spending. Between 1990 and 1993, expenditure on Africans accelerated sharply as the apartheid government desperately tried to buy black support during the constitutional negotiations for the forthcoming universal franchise election (Gelb 2003: 11). In the post-apartheid era robust measures ranging from slowing down population growth in the black community to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) have been initiated to address issues of poverty and inequality.

By the beginning of the new century the South African government had increased the social grants, which form the safety net for the poor, to 22 Billion Rand (Berg et al. 2006: 23). May (1998) points out that by early 1996 it had become clear that without new macroeconomic initiatives by the government, economic growth rates could not be attained that were both sustainable and high enough for effective poverty alleviation, income redistribution, employment creation and financing of essential social services. The government then formulated the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy. GEAR reiterated govern­ment’s commitment to the existing economic policy framework, identified many of the structural weaknesses inhibiting economic growth and employment, and focused attention on market-based policies to address them. This helped to address employment creation, public works programmes, equity and discrimination, labour standards and job security, minimum wages and training for skilled labour. In order to address inequality in the health sector, the government also introduced universal access to primary health care in South Africa. In the Education sector the government gives leniency to Black South Africans’ access to tertiary education, allowing them to be enrolled despite having low academic grades.

Last but not least, the South African government needs to keep an eye on corruption which seems to be working against some of the initiatives like Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). Instead of tackling inequality, BEE has created a clique of very rich Black South Africans, thus causing more intra-racial inequalities.

The crisis of expectation and a de-racialised democracy
The radicalised and class-divided spaces created by the apartheid state did not automatically disappear after democratisation but have in fact become even further entrenched. The social structure of post-apartheid cities remains a neglected subject and in order to address some of the inequalities equitable allocation of housing should be made a priority. Government policies and the strategies of organised social actors with which these policies interact are fundamental, for they provide a framework through which change is enabled. It is the grinding together of different South Africans at grassroots levels, the white residents in the edges of the mountains in Cape Town, the black proletariat in the shacks in Khayelitsha and those eking a living at the edges, which will shape their common future (Dickinson 2002: 11). Some critics argue that this has become further entrenched by the very economic and developmental policies that were to prevent this from happening. Others still argue that these poverty-ravaged spaces have become fertile ground for crime and to some extent, pre-determine criminal behaviour amongst its residents. Government in its planning did not envisage the impact of the chain reaction that the instability in neighbouring states and the resultant migration of refugees would have on development in South Africa. The influx of refugees and migrants seeking a better life in South Africa resulted in heaping poverty on poverty, which has created a self-reinforcing cycle in which levels of crime within certain regions of the country have fostered a climate that favoured the current xenophobic behaviour of people within these areas.

The year 2009 is likely to see president Mbeki’s successor being confronted with the same harsh human development realities which confronted his predecessors Mandela and Mbeki. South Africa during the last ten years has dropped 35 places to being 120th on the UN’s global Human Development Index (HDI), mostly due to the AIDS pandemic.[ii] The main opposition however holds the government responsible for increasing ‘the gulf between the rich and poor’ to levels far higher than during apartheid through failed economic policies [iii].

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Social policies and expenditure on people
Since 1994, there has been a qualitative shift in how government addresses the problems of poverty. In aid-dependent countries like Mozambique and Malawi, the governments enjoy little policy autonomy to set their countries’ development agendas. Post-settlement South Africa found itself in the fortunate position that it enjoyed almost total control of its agenda, and the development path it would pursue.

Anybody who would like to understand post-apartheid South Africa’s social policy landscape would be well-advised to consult a range of policy instruments and strategic documents which capture the country’s approach to social and development policy. Government’s goals are spelt out in the Constitution; the White Paper on the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP); Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR); State of the Nation Addresses of the President; the Annual Budget of the Minister of Finance; the Strategies of national departments; the Ten-Year Review; the Medium Term Expenditure Framework; the Medium Term Strategic Framework; Integrated Development Plans (IDPs); and the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA)[iv].
Whereas the apartheid state and government were committed to guarantee the security and the prosperity of the white population first and foremost, the post-apartheid government took its leave firstly from the 1996 Constitution, which calls for a ‘progressive realization of rights’, therefore calling for the incremental redress of poverty and inequality. Specifically the Constitution places an onus of responsibility on the state. In the words of the Constitution, ‘The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right’. The Constitution is thus clear in that the state must act reasonably and decisively in the sphere of addressing socio-economic inequalities, namely redressing inequalities, and unequal access to housing, electricity, water, health, and other sectors [v].

From a policy perspective, government adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) in 1994, a development vision cutting across all spheres of societal development. The RDP was accepted as the de facto policy framework of the new government, functioning as a ‘blueprint’ for social and political transformation in South Africa.[vi] The RDP was institutionalized in the form of the RDP Ministry and the RDP Fund. The erstwhile RDP office formed a focal point of donor support from 1994 to early 1996. The RDP sought to facilitate cross-cutting policy approaches and encouraged new approaches to public sector management and budgeting to meet government’s overall reconstruction objectives.

Critiques of the RDP’s institutional arrangements and operational mechanisms broadly centred on the increasing understanding within the state that the RDP was not a full strategy for governance and development and was open to wide interpretation.

Government subsequently developed what it said was a more comprehensive macro-economic policy, Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR); there was recognition that RDP priorities would only take place in the context of economic growth.[vii] Thus GEAR is predicated on the need for economic growth and provides a strategic framework within which decisions on monetary, fiscal and labour market policy have been taken since 1996. It involves, inter alia, liberalization of the economy, privatization of government assets and a reduction of state spending. GEAR is a key driver of the government’s trade strategy and has been recognized by the private sector both locally and internationally as a sound economic framework.
But outside these constituencies, GEAR has been consistently criticized by among others, the labour movement and the South African Communist Party (SACP). The view held by these parties is that, even if GEAR does facilitate growth, it will do so in such a way that income redistribution will remain unaffected, resulting in a widening of the gap between rich and poor. These critics argue that poverty is on the increase and the country lacks a comprehensive framework on poverty alleviation.

One response from the state to articulate a comprehensive poverty alleviation framework has been the introduction in 1998 of a three-year budget cycle, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).[viii]
The MTEF’s priorities are as follows:
– Meeting basic needs – principally in education, health, water and sanitation, social services, welfare, land reform and housing;
– Accelerating infrastructure development – ensuring investment in infrastructure, upgrading of roads, undertaking of spatial development initiatives (Spatial Development Initiatives), and addressing urban renewal – principally via private-public partnerships;
– Economic growth, development and job creation – the stimulated building of the economy to achieve sustainable, accelerated growth with correspondent redistribution in opportunities and income;
– Human resource development – the education and training of citizens in pre-primary, formative, tertiary, technical institutions and lifelong education and training for adults, the unemployed and out-of-school youth;
– Safety and security – the transformation of the criminal justice, police and prisons administration and the improvement in national defence and disaster management;
– Transformation of government – the strengthening of administration and good governance and the implementation of a code of conduct (Batho Pele – People First) for service delivery by the public sector.

In terms of funding its national development programmes, South Africa raises the bulk of its resources itself. Donor funding constitutes less than 0,5% of the national consolidated revenue of the country. From around 1998, the social security safety net expanded with the introduction of the Child Support Grant for children between the ages 0 and 7.[ix] In 2003, this increased to cover children 7 to 8 years old. From 2005/06, all children up to the age of 14 would qualify for grants.[x]

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The extension of the post-apartheid social security net is one of the greatest successes of post-apartheid South Africa.[xi] The number of beneficiaries increased from 2,5 million in 1997 to 5,6 million in 2003. By 2004, the social grants system delivered about 7,4 million grants; spending on social grants increased to over R40 billion in 2004.[xii] By 2005, there was a further increase in the numbers, with an estimated 9,2 million beneficiaries of the system.[xiii]
In 2003, Cabinet approved the Operational Plan for Comprehensive HIV and AIDS Care, Management and Treatment for South Africa.[xiv] This combined a progressive anti-retroviral roll-out.

More recently, government adopted the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGI-SA), a broad framework of steps that need to be taken to raise growth to much higher levels.[xv] ASGISA grew out of the 2003 Growth and Development Summit and the Micro-economic Reform Strategy (MERS).
The main focus of ASGI-SA is to deal with a set of binding constraints that inhibit faster growth. These constraints are currency volatility and macro-economic stability; cost and efficiency of the national logistics system; skills shortages; high levels of inequality; barriers to compete in the sector; the regulatory environment for small and medium sized enterprises; and deficiencies in the capacities of government and parastatals.[xvi] A key proposal is to increase infrastructure spending to over R370 billion over the medium term expenditure period, fast track skills development, reducing the regulatory burden on small enterprises and improving capacity at the local and international level.[xvii]

As a development strategy, ASGI-SA does have specific sections on poverty eradication, equity, and distributional issues. First, there is a key Poverty Reduction dimension; this includes budget reform and reprioritisation, increasing access to income and employment opportunities for the poor, including the Extended Public Works Programme, ensuring food security and providing nutrition, meeting the demand of housing, providing comprehensive free primary health care, building and upgrading clinics, and revitalising hospitals and expanding the immunisation programme.[xviii]
Expenditure on HIV and AIDS programmes has increased incrementally over the cause of the past decade. Expenditure across national departments has increased from about R30 million in 1994 to R342 million in 2001/02. Expenditure is set to increase to R3,6 billion in 2006/07, and focuses on prevention, care and treatment.[xix]

In the areas of TB, malaria control, medicine supply, and human resources are priorities. At a broader level, broadening access to, and improving the quality of education, land reform, water and sanitation, universal access to electricity and improving transport are all chief priorities.[xx]
Over the past twelve years, education and health gradually emerged as the two sectors getting most of the budget allocation. This is very important if South Africa is to become a developmental state. Such a state typically prioritises social sectors such as health and education.

It is important to point out here that since the 1997/98 budget, government started to provide for special poverty relief programmes. In 1998/99 these allocations were broadened to include a focus on temporary poverty relief, and extended in 1999/00 to include commitment at the Presidential Job Summit. Programmes funded through this source complemented other key poverty alleviation interventions such as social security grants, and the delivery of basic services to communities like education, health, welfare, housing, water and sanitation, electricity, waste removal and municipal roads.
The 2006 national budget was a balance between addressing the needs and wants of various economic actors. That year’s budget represented an increase in social grants and spending. 60% of the budget went towards social spending.[xxi] In 2008/09, social spending declined to 49,5%, from 51,7% in the previous year’s budget.[xxii] This was mainly because of massive expenditure in energy and infrastructural development.

Institutional arrangements to South Africa’s HDI
In South Africa, several institutional actors play roles in crafting development and social policy in the country. These range from Cabinet, National Ministers and their various Departments, Provincial Premiers, Members of the Executive Councils in provinces, Mayors and local councils, Working Groups, and others.[xxiii] But the Department of Social Development is the pivotal player in the area of social policy, social protection, social security and social affairs. The aim of the Department of Social Development is to ensure the provision of comprehensive social protection services against vulnerability and poverty within the constitutional and legislative framework, and create an enabling environment for sustainable development.[xxiv] The Department further aims to deliver integrated, sustainable and quality services in partnership with all those committed to creating a caring society.[xxv] The Department is responsible for policy and oversight in the critical areas of social assistance and social welfare assistance. Social assistance refers to means-tested cash benefits to vulnerable groups in South Africa, whereas social welfare services refer to probation and adoption services, child and family counselling and support services, and secure centres.[xxvi]

The Department runs approximately nine (9) programmes.
Programme 1 is Administration, and its goal is to provide for policy formulation by the ministry and top management, and for overall management and support services.
Programme 2 is Social Security Policy and Planning. The purpose of this programme is to develop, coordinate and facilitate the implementation of policies and strategies, and facilitate financial planning for social security in line with the national macro-economic goals and development objectives.
Programme 3 is Grant systems and service delivery assurance. This programme designs operational systems to ensure that services are provided to social assistance and disaster relief beneficiaries; it also monitors and evaluates service delivery and compliance to minimize fraud and assess the impact of policies.
Programme 4 is that of Social Assistance. This programme makes funds available to provinces to administer and pay social assistance in terms of the Social Assistance Act (1992), and fund and manage the establishment and development of the South African Social Security Agency.
Programme 5 is Welfare Services Transformation, a programme with the purpose of facilitating the transformation of development-oriented social welfare services to vulnerable individuals, households and communities.
Programme 6 is Children, Families and Youth Development. This programme seeks to ensure the protection and empowerment of vulnerable children, youth and families.
Programme 7 is Development Implementation Support. Its purpose is to develop, implement and monitor strategies to promote the delivery of integrated and well-co-ordinated and well-structured poverty alleviation and community development services to vulnerable groups, households and individuals.
Programme 8 is HIV and AIDS, with the express purpose of developing policies, strategies and programmes aimed at mitigating the social impact of HIV and AIDS. It also seeks to develop and implement strategies for children and families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, and facilitate the rollout of home community-based care and support programmes.

So, judging from the above, the Department of Social Development is a key, if not the most pivotal player in the area of social development in South Africa. But we have to appreciate that South Africa takes the question of cooperative and integrated governance seriously; thus Social Development was also part of a Cluster System in South Africa. The Social Cluster, which includes the Departments of Social Develop¬ment, Education, Labour, Health, Housing, Arts and Culture, and Sports and Recreation, also plays a crucial role in terms of social policy in the country.

Thus, the question of overseeing the impact of policy-making on poverty, ensuring that the different sectors from transport to health serve the needs of the majority of citizens, involves a number of actors. So, while the Ministry of Social Development is the lead agent in dealing with social affairs, policy and governance in South Africa has become a shared responsibility.
Turning now to the important question of partnerships that exist between public–private sector or civil society organizations, it is important to point out that it has a key responsibility in working with a key civil society partner, and overseeing it, the National Development Agency (NDA). The Department is also busy setting up South African Social Security Agency, a schedule 3 Agency or public entity that will be responsible for administering social assistance grants, and relating to provinces.

Why is South Africa’s HDI so poor?
It is very easy and very tempting to do what many analysts do and blame South Africa’s poor human development record just on policies, and to lay the blame especially on ‘policies as pursued by the Mbeki administration’. It has indeed become fashionable to go for such single factor explanations. We are however going to break with what is clearly becoming a trend out there; instead of this quixotic rationale we are instead going to opt for a multi-causal set of explanations and variables that could help to shed light on South Africa’s human development conundrum. This is not to shrug off the centrality of policies adopted by government, and their impact on the human development in the country. It is conceivable that the growth trajectory embedded in South Africa’s policy positions played a key role. It has been said that South Africa has pursued something of a neo-classical, modernisationist economic model during the course of the past decade. Timothy Murithi reminds us that ‘neo-liberal economics’ represent a ‘type of laissez faire capitalism’ which ‘undermines social welfare programmes and creates a fictional perception of a free-market system’ [xxvii]. One of Africa’s most respected development thinkers, Adebayo Adedeji said about South Africa’s GEAR strategy:
Just as the rest of black Africa has failed to deconstruct its inherited colonial political economy, so post-apartheid South Africa, in deference to a compromise based on sufficient consensus, has not chosen the path of fundamental socio-economic transformation.[xxviii]

But the problem was not just policy per se, the problem was also how policy was arrived at, or the policy style, to use a different phrase. In spite of its stated commitment to bring about a Developmental State, government has consistently struggled to mobilise social partners behind an all-encompassing interest – a Social Compact. Government dominated policy-making and social partners, and even those close to the ruling ANC like COSATU, the SACP, and SANCO felt excluded and marginalised from policy processes. Many of them held the view that the Presidency, especially the Policy and Advisory Services (PCAS) unit, dominated policy-making and coordination efforts. Government has to understand that it cannot tackle the country’s vast socio-economic challenges on its own. It needs the efforts of social partners and should therefore democratise the policy, development and governance processes.
The third explanation we have to advance here is that of the enduring legacies of apartheid. It is easily forgotten that the apartheid state left a trail of human misery in its wake, and it will take decades, maybe even centuries to overcome these legacies.

Conclusion: Way forward
South Africa is going through some important changes at a political level. The recall of President Thabo Mbeki, talk of a breakaway party and the increased influence of COSATU and SACP within the ANC are some indicators of these changes. These changes have also brought in their wake an increased sense that there has to be a renewed debate about the way in which the state is challenging and confronting poverty and inequality.
One of the central lessons to be learnt from the last decade is that changes cannot be a top-down process while civil society has to develop strategies to engage with the state. Civil society actors should appreciate their pivotal role in engaging providers of services at local, provincial and national levels, and their place in creating opportunities and space for communities to influence policy and development processes. So, the participatory opportunities for communities to get more directly involved in policy, planning and governance should be broadened.
A partnership and participatory approach presupposes that the skills levels of local government and municipal levels would become more strategic. Skills at this level have been poorly developed and many of them have reached a state of crisis over the course of the last decade.

The capacity of local and provincial government to integrate HDI issues such as gender, HIV/AIDS, the rural question, and other key aspects, into policy needs to be enhanced.
It is absolutely critical that that the service delivery capacity of the state in general, and of local and provincial government in particular be bolstered. At a minimum, the interface between national, provincial and local government spheres must become tighter and better coordinated so as to have maximum impact on the delivery of services.
While the quest to create a more equal society in South Africa has come up against numerous problems and is now faced with a crisis of expectation, there exists an opportunity to put right past mistakes and accelerate the delivery of basic services.

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Notes
i. Discourse is defined as ‘a set of meanings embodied in metaphors, representations, images, narratives and statements that advance a particular version of ‘the truth’ about objects, persons, events and the relation between them’ (Long 2002: 52). Institutions and actors may have ‘their own’ discourse and way of thinking about development, which may conflict with the discourse owned by others.
ii. See United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2007-08, UNDP, New York, 2008.
iii. AFROLNews, ‘Human Development Report Shocks South Africa’, 7 April 2008.
iv. African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), Country Self-Assessment: Government’s Submission, Third Draft, March 2006.
v. Ibid.
vi. For an assessment of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, see Tobie Schmitz and Claude Kabemba, Enhancing policy implementation: Lessons from the Reconstruction and Development Programme, Research report no 89, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, September 2001.
vii.See Zondie Masiza and Xolela Mangcu, Understanding policy implementation: An exploration of research areas surrounding growth, employment and redistribution (GEAR) strategy, Centre for Policy Studies, Research Report no. 78, Johannesburg May 2001.
viii.This information is borrowed from government’s 10-year review process in which this author is a participant.
ix.Republic of South Africa, National Treasury, Intergovernmental Fiscal Review 2003, April 2003, p. 95.
x. Ibid.
xi. Ibid.
xii. Republic of South Africa, National Treasury, Budget Review 2004, 18 February 2004, p. 121.
xiii.Republic Of South Africa, National Treasury, Estimates of National Expenditure 2005, February 2005, p. 403.
xiv.Republic of South Africa, National Treasury, Budget Review 2004, op. cit, p. 122.
xv. See Government’s perspective on issues raised in the APRM Country Self-Assessment Questionnaire, January 2006.
xvi. Ibid.
xvii. Ibid.
xviii. Ibid.
xix. Ibid.
xx. Ibid.
xxi. See Global Insight Perspective, 18 February 2006.
xxii. See Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), The 2008/09 National Budget, Weather the Storm, Invest for Growth, IDC, Sandton, 21 February 2008.
xxiii. African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), Country Self-Assessment: Government’s Submission, Third Draft, March 2006.
xxiv. Republic Of South Africa, National Treasury, Estimates of National Expenditure 2005, op. cit., p. 403.
xxv. Ibid.
xxvi. Ibid.
xxvii. Timothy Murithi, The African Union, Pan-Africanism, peace-building and development, Ashgate Publishing, 2005, p. 145.
xxviii. Adebayo Adedeji, ‘South Africa and Africa’s political economy: Looking inside from the outside’, in Adekeye Adebajo, Adebayo Adedeji and Chris Landsberg (eds.), South Africa in Africa: The post-apartheid era, University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, 2006, p. 55.

References
Adebajo, A., Adedeji, A. and Landsberg, C. (eds.) (2006), South Africa in Africa: The Post-apartheid era, Pietermaritzburg: University of Kwazulu-Natal Press, p. 55.
African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), Country Self-Assessment: Government’s Submission, Third Draft, March 2006
AFROL News, ‘Human Development Report Shocks South Africa’, 7 April 2008.
Altbeker, A. (2007). A country at war with itself: South Africa’s crisis of crime,
South Africa: Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Berg, S., Burger, R., Burger, R., Louw, M. and Yu, D. (2006). Trends in poverty and inequality since the political transition, Development Policy Research Unit, Stellenbosch University: Working Paper 06/104, pp. 1-24.
Dickinson, D. (2002) Confronting reality: Change and transformation in the new South Africa, The Political Quarterly Publishing, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers: pp. 1-11.
Gelb, S. (2003) Inequality in South Africa: Nature, causes and responses, The EDGE Institute, Johannesburg, Accessed at: www.tips.org.za/events/forum2004/ Papers/Gelb_Inequality_in_ SouthAfrica.pdf, last viewed on 10 April 2006, pp. 1-21.
Hoogeveen J.G. and Özler, B. (2005). Not separate, not equal: Poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa, William Davidson Institute Working Paper, pp. 739.
Miceli, V. (2004) Ten years of freedom in the rainbow nation, Crossroads, 4(2): 24-43.
Murithi, T. (2005) The African Union, pan-Africanism, peace-building and development, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 145.
Seekings, J. (2000) Introduction: Urban studies in South Africa after apartheid, International Journal of Urban and Research, 24(4), Blackwell Publishers: Oxford
Statistics South Africa (2003) South African Statistics 2002, in S. Gelb (ed.) Inequality in South Africa: Nature, causes and responses, The EDGE Institute, Johannesburg, accessed at: www.tips.org.za/events/forum2004/ Papers/Gelb_Inequality_in_SouthAfrica.pdf, last viewed on 10 April 2006.
Statistics South Africa (2003) Census in Brief, in S. Gelb (ed.), Inequality in South Africa: Nature, causes and responses, The EDGE Institute, Johannesburg, accessed at: www.tips.org.za/events/forum2004/ Papers/Gelb_Inequality_in_SouthAfrica.pdf, last viewed on 10 April 2006.
United Nations Development Programme (2008) Human Development Report 2007-08, New York: UNDP.

About the Authors
Anshu Padayachee is currently the Programme director of South Africa Netherlands Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD) South Africa. She was elected to this post after having been the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at M L Sultan Technikon from 1998-2002, as well as Acting Vice-Chancellor and Special Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor at Durban University of Technology. She is the co- founder of a pioneering Womens’ NGO in South Africa and continues to be involved as an activist in the area of women’s rights and related issues. She has been involved in management, teaching and research at universities locally and internationally for thirty years. She obtained her Bachelors, Hons and Masters degree in Criminology at UDW and LSE and her D.Phil in Criminology in 1990. She is widely published and continues to write despite having left academia for management.

Ashwin Desai, the holder of a Masters degree from Rhodes University and a doctorate from Michigan State University, is currently affiliated to the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and lectures part time in Journalism at the Durban Institute of Technology and The Workers College. Ashwin Desai is one of South Africa’s foremost social commentators and an unusually prolific and wide ranging writer whose work has been published in academic and popular books and periodicals around the world.

Photo: explorepahistory.com

“Stel je voor dat je wordt geboren in een sociaal achtergesteld gezin. Het opleidingsniveau van je ouders is laag en hun inkomen evenzeer. Daarbij zijn alcoholmisbruik, drugsgebruik en werkeloosheid bekende problemen in jouw familie. Door deze omstandigheden zijn je ouders niet instaat om voldoende te investeren in jouw toekomst. Al sinds de basisschool heb je het gevoel dat je achterloopt. Huiswerk kost veel moeite en je cijfers zijn laag. Op de middelbare school verandert er niet veel. Je cijfers blijven laag en je wordt vaak de les uitgestuurd. 

Buiten school gaat het ook niet echt goed. Naar mate je pubertijd vordert maak je steeds meer ruzie met je ouders en hang je voornamelijk rond op straat. Op gegeven moment ga je te ver en word je gearresteerd door de politie. Geen probleem denk je in eerste instantie. Veel van je vrienden zijn ook een keer gearresteerd en je hebt niet het idee dat dit grote gevolgen zal hebben. In de maanden die volgen word je nog een paar keer gearresteerd en uiteindelijk besluit de kinderrechter dat je naar een besloten jeugdinstelling moet. Hier aangekomen tref je andere jongeren aan die vergelijkbare problemen hebben. Tijdens je verblijf in de jeugdinstelling worden je gedragsproblemen behandeld en krijg je laaggeschoold onderwijs. Rond je 17de levensjaar loopt je verblijf in de instelling teneinde en loop je de poort uit naar een volwassen leven.”

Introductie
De situatie die hierboven wordt geschetst is karakteristiek voor een kleine groep jongeren in Nederland die al vanaf jonge leeftijd grote problemen kennen op verschillende domeinen. Het doel van dit artikel is om de bevindingen van het proefschrift Disentangling Criminal Careers for Disadvantaged Youths op een toegankelijke manier te beschrijven zonder afbreuk te doen aan de gecompliceerdheid van de conclusies. Het doel van het onderzoek was om een conceptueel en empirisch raamwerk te ontwikkelen om de effecten vast te stellen van een aantal verschillende facetten, voor jongeren met een “achtergestelde jeugd”, op uitkomsten gedurende het volwassen leven. We onderzochten of de cognitieve en sociale vaardigheden, het opleidingsniveau en contact met justitie de volwassen sociaal-economische uitkomsten beïnvloedden. Tegelijkertijd erkenden we dat transities gedurende volwassenheid, zoals transities van en naar werk en intieme relaties, de daaropvolgende volwassen uitkomsten kunnen beïnvloeden. De focus van het proefschrift ligt op het verklaren van de uitkomst “criminaliteit” voor adolescenten en volwassenen, maar verschillende andere sociaal-economische uitkomsten worden ook onderzocht. In het bijzonder onderzoeken we ook arbeidsmarktuitkomsten, uitkeringen, drugsgebruik en intieme relaties.
In totaal worden er ongeveer 4.000 jongeren jaarlijks geïnstitutionaliseerd in een straf- of jeugdzorg instelling in Nederland (CBS, 2013). Op basis van hun vroege contacten met justitie en/of hun gedragsproblemen, kunnen deze jongeren worden beschouwd als behorende tot een kansarme subgroep van jongeren die een hoog risico hebben voor het plegen van criminaliteit, het vaak lastig hebben op de arbeidsmarkt en relatief vaak de ontvangers zijn van sociale uitkeringen (van der Geest, 2011; Mesters, van der Geest en Bijleveld, 2014; Verbruggen, 2014). Tijdens hun verblijf in de instelling worden ze behandeld voor hun gedragsproblemen en krijgen ze laaggeschoold onderwijs aangeboden. In hun late tienerjaren verlaten deze jongeren vertrekken meestal de instelling en en begint hun “volwassen” leven. Gezien hun moeilijke jeugd hebben ze vaak moeite met deze transitie naar volwassenheid (Osgood, Foster, Flanagan en Ruth, 2005). Ons doel is om aan te geven op wat voor soort kenmerken van deze jongeren interventies het beste kunnen aangrijpen om de volwassen sociaal-economische uitkomsten van deze jongeren te verbeteren.
De ontwikkeling van een raamwerk dat in staat is om de sociaal-economische uitkomsten voor volwassenen te verklaren in termen van vroeggemeten factoren en andere uitkomsten gedurende het volwassen leven is een uitdagende taak. In dit proefschrift proberen we deze puzzel stap voor stap te benaderen. Het raamwerk is gebaseerd op inzichten uit de criminologie, sociologie, economie en psychologie. De theorieën die uit deze disciplines naar voren komen vormen het conceptuele raamwerk dat wordt vertaald naar een empirisch model in wiskundige formulering. Deze vertaling maakt het mogelijk om het conceptuele raamwerk te testen met behulp van observationele gegevens en econometrische methoden.

Economische methoden
Het is instructief om eerst uit te leggen waarom econometrische methoden nodig zijn om de oorzaken van criminaliteit te achterhalen. In de ideale situatie zouden we in de wetenschap altijd experimenten willen gebruiken om hypotheses en vragen te onderzoeken. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan exacte wetenschappen zoals natuurkunde of scheikunde waar proeven worden gedaan om de natuurwetten te achterhalen. Deze proeven leveren, mits goed en onder exact dezelfde omstandigheden uitgevoerd, altijd dezelfde resultaten op. Doordat ze op deze manier herhaalbaar of reproduceerbaar zijn nemen we de uitkomsten van deze proeven aan als waarheden.
In principe zijn experimenten ook mogelijk in de sociale wetenschappen. Om bijvoorbeeld de effecten vast te stellen van sociale vaardigheden zouden we de helft van de populatie intensieve sociale vaardigheden training kunnen geven en de andere helft niet. Hierna zouden we de uitkomsten in termen van criminaliteit en de arbeidsmarkt van de twee groepen met elkaar kunnen vergelijken. Als de twee populaties groot genoeg zijn kunnen we op deze manier een ideaal experiment benaderen en het causale effect van sociale vaardigheden op criminaliteit vast stellen. Dit soort experimenten halen weliswaar niet de standaard van de exacte wetenschappen maar komen dicht in de buurt.
Echter, in de praktijk zijn dit soort sociale experimenten praktisch niet haalbaar en dikwijls moreel verwerpelijk, want waarom zou de ene helft van de bevolking wel geholpen worden en de andere niet? Dit soort complicaties vormen de reden waarom veel onderzoek in de sociale wetenschappen afhankelijk is van observationele data. Er zijn uitzonderingen en we verwijzen naar Heckman en Kautz (2013) voor een overzicht van relevante sociale experimenten, veelal uit de jaren ’70 en uitgevoerd in de Verenigde Staten.

Observationele data wordt veelal verzameld enerzijds door officiële instanties, zoals justitie en het ministerie van sociale zaken (beiden onder andere voor criminologisch onderzoek), en anderzijds door middel van interviews met respondenten (zowel plegers van criminaliteit als slachtoffers). In dit soort data zien we dus alleen de uitkomsten en kennen we niet het proces, of mechanisme, dat tot deze uitkomsten heeft geleid. Om dit soort data goed te analyseren en het proces erachter te achterhalen zijn econometrische en statistische methoden noodzakelijk. In het bijzonder, om effecten van verschillende factoren op criminaliteit vast te stellen moet gecontroleerd worden voor effecten van andere factoren.
Om een voorbeeld te geven, stel dat de verzamelde data aangeeft dat het plegen van criminaliteit en het hebben van werk negatief met elkaar gecorreleerd zijn. Dan zou een conclusie kunnen zijn dat werk leid tot minder criminaliteit. Maar het zou ook kunnen dat mensen die meer sociale vaardigheden hebben vaker werk hebben en minder vaak criminaliteit plegen. In dit laatste geval zijn het dus de sociale vaardigheden die de negatieve correlatie veroorzaken. Op deze manier is het mogelijk om allerlei factoren te bedenken die van invloed zijn op zowel het hebben van werk als het plegen van criminaliteit.
Methoden die het scheiden van verschillende verklaringen mogelijk maken zijn noodzakelijk om correcte conclusies te trekken uit observationele data. Deze methoden, veelal afkomstig uit de statistiek en de econometrie, zijn vaak moeilijker te begrijpen dan experimenten, maar ze zijn noodzakelijk als men relaties tussen verschillende variabelen wilt blootleggen. Om maatschappelijke problemen zoals criminaliteit aan te pakken is het noodzakelijk dat men de oorzaken van criminaliteit kent en niet alleen de factoren die correleren met criminaliteit.

Observationele data
In het proefschrift bestudeerden we observationele gegevens van een een groep “achtergestelde” jongeren met behulp van verschillende econometrische methoden. De gegevens hebben betrekking op een populatie van achtergestelde jongeren die geïnstitutionaliseerd waren in een behandelingsinstelling in Nederland in de jaren ‘90. We maken gebruik van twee verschillende populaties: een populatie van mannen (N = 270) en een populatie vrouwen (N = 270). De gegevens van deze jongeren zijn volledig geanonimiseerd en ook de behandelingsinstelling blijft anoniem. De populaties beslaan een segment van de Nederlandse samenleving dat oververtegenwoordigd is in de criminaliteitsstatistieken (Boendermaker, 1999). We verwijzen naar de jongeren als achtergesteld, terwijl we erkennen dat andere karakteriseringen als kwetsbare jongeren of hoog risico-jongeren evenzeer toepasselijk zijn.
We combineerden verschillende bronnen om een compleet beeld te krijgen van het leven van deze jongeren. Ten eerste maken we gebruik van strafbladen. Deze vertellen ons wanneer welke delicten zijn gepleegd door de jongeren. Tevens bieden de strafbladen informatie betreffende de straf die was opgelegd door de rechter. De tweede bron van informatie betreft officiële arbeidsmarktgegevens die aangeven wanneer personen werk en of een uitkering hadden. Deze twee bronnen van officiële informatie worden aangevuld met behulp van interviewgegevens waar een grote hoeveelheid informatie betreffende verschillende levensdomeinen worden uitgevraagd.
De interviews met de respondenten uit de jaren ’90-steekproef zijn uitgevoerd tussen 2010 en 2013. De respondenten waren gemiddeld rond de 35 jaar tijdens het interview. We vroegen veel van deze mensen. Hun hele leven werd uitgevraagd vanaf hun jeugd tot nu. Zonder de welwillendheid van de respondenten was dit onderzoek niet mogelijk geweest. Een belangrijk instrument dat we gebruikten om de respondenten te helpen hun leven te reconstrueren was de levensloopkalender. Deze kalender beschrijft het leven van de respondenten op verschillende domeinen en door middel van associaties worden perioden met elkaar verbonden.

Effecten cognitieve en sociale vaardigheden
In de eerste stap in het proefschrift ontwikkelden we een econometrisch model waarin vaardigheden die zijn opgedaan gedurende de jeugd verklarende factoren vormen voor criminaliteit gedurende het volwassen leven. De vaardigheden uit de jeugd omvatten cognitieve vaardigheden en een breed scala aan sociale vaardigheden, die gemeten worden aan de hand van persoonlijkheidskenmerken. Hoewel de rol van cognitieve vaardigheden van oudsher van groot belang is in de sociale wetenschappen, heeft de rol van de sociale vaardigheden minder aandacht gekregen in het verklaren van crimineel gedrag (Hill, Roberts, Grogger, Guryan en Sixkiller, 2011). Het model dat we ontwikkelen onderschrijft de intuïtief aansprekende stellingen dat meerdere vaardigheden belangrijk zijn voor het verklaren van criminaliteit en dat verschillende vaardigheden belangrijk kunnen zijn in de verschillende stadia in het leven (Cunha en Heckman, 2007).
Deze eerste stap leerde ons dat de vaardigheden die waren opgedaan tijdens de kindertijd en adolescentie blijvende effecten hadden op criminaliteit gedurende het volwassen leven. Dit houdt in dat individuele verschillen in crimineel gedrag gedurende de volwassenheid tot op zekere hoogte kunnen worden verklaard door verschillen in vaardigheden die zijn opgedaan tijdens de kindertijd en adolescentie. Belangrijker was de bevinding dat de effecten van deze vaardigheden niet stabiel waren over de levensloop. In het bijzonder bleek dat de grootte van effecten – van zowel de cognitieve als de sociale vaardigheden – veranderden tijdens de adolescentie en volwassenheid. Dit houdt in dat verschillende vaardigheden belangrijk zijn om mee te nemen voor het verklaren van criminaliteit voor verschillende levensfasen.

Cognitieve vaardigheden, gemeten door intelligentie, bleken belangrijke voorspellers voor criminaliteit van mannen na de adolescentie. Tijdens de adolescentie waren de cognitieve vaardigheden minder belangrijk, maar in deze periode waren verschillen in sociale vaardigheden in staat om de piek in delinquent gedrag van adolescenten te verklaren. Voor vrouwen bleken sociale vaardigheden in het algemeen belangrijker dan cognitieve vaardigheden. De belangrijkste persoon(lijkheid)skenmerken die werden gebruikt werden om de sociale vaardigheden te meten, waren neuroticisme, extraversie en spanningsbehoefte. Deze eigenschappen zijn vooral belangrijk voor het verklaren van criminaliteit tijdens de adolescentie voor zowel mannen als vrouwen.

Interacties tussen werk, uitkeringen en criminaliteit
In de tweede stap ontwikkelende we een model dat expliciteert dat verschillende uitkomsten gedurende volwassenheid elkaar dynamisch beïnvloeden. In het bijzonder onderzoeken we in hoeverre crimineel gedrag, werk en uitkeringen elkaar beïnvloeden gedurende het volwassen leven. Crimineel gedrag kan de kans op werk verminderen en werk kan op zijn beurt crimineel gedrag reduceren (Lageson en Uggen, 2013). Dergelijke bi-directionele relaties moeten worden ontward om de zogeheten relatieve opbrengsten te kunnen beoordelen van investeringen in het volwassen leven. Meer specifiek: als de interventie arbeid faciliteert dan kan dit een reducerend effect hebben op criminaliteit en uitkeringen, maar daarna kan deze reductie in criminaliteit weer leiden tot betere arbeidsmarktmogelijkheden.

De Nederlandse welvaartsstaat biedt mensen de mogelijkheid om, onder voorwaarden, een uitkering te krijgen. Door het gelijktijdig onderzoeken van criminaliteit, werk en uitkeringen, kunnen we de samenhang tussen deze keuzes onderzoeken. Dit maakt het mogelijk om twee zaken te onderzoeken. Ten eerste kunnen we dieper ingaan op de motivatie voor criminaliteit. Dit kan als volgt gezien worden. Gegeven dat uitkeringen alleen financiële middelen bieden en niet leiden tot meer sociale banden met de maatschappij, kan gesteld worden dat als werk en uitkeringen hetzelfde reducerende effect hebben op criminaliteit, dat dan geld een belangrijke motivatie is voor criminaliteit. Ten tweede, als uitkeringen criminaliteit verlagen, dan is dit een extra factor waarmee rekening moet worden gehouden als de kosten van uitkeringen worden bepaald.
We vonden dat een aanzienlijk deel van de relatie tussen werk en criminaliteit verklaard kon worden door derde variabelen. De statistische controlevariabelen voor werk en criminaliteit bleken negatief gecorreleerd wat erop wijst dat individuen die gemiddeld een hogere neiging tot crimineel gedrag toonden ook minder vaak werk hadden. We deden geen pogingen om dit spurieuze deel van de relatie te interpreteren, maar zoals we hieronder uitleggen kan een deel van deze spurieuze relatie worden verklaard door verschillen in cognitieve en sociale vaardigheden.
In plaats van het interpreteren van de spurieuze relatie tussen criminaliteit en werk, lag de nadruk in deze stap op het duiden van de structurele relaties tussen criminaliteit, werk en uitkeringen. We vonden significante bi-directionele negatieve dynamische structurele effecten tussen werk en criminaliteit. Dit impliceert dat werk toekomstige criminaliteit vermindert en dat criminaliteit de kans op werk vermindert. Enkele verfijningen van het model toonden aan dat slechts “reguliere” arbeid en niet uitzendwerk in staat was om vermogenscriminaliteit te verminderen, terwijl zowel gewelds- als vermogenscriminaliteit grote negatieve gevolgen bleken te hebben voor de toekomstige kansen op werk.
De relatie tussen uitkeringen en criminaliteit was gecompliceerder. Alleen bijstandsuitkeringen verminderden de kans op vermogenscriminaliteit. Het effect van bijstandsuitkeringen op vermogenscriminaliteit was net zo groot als het effect van werk op criminaliteit. Dit benadrukt de belangrijke rol van geld, en economische theorieën, voor het verklaren van het structurele deel van de relatie tussen werk en vermogensdelicten voor achtergestelde jongeren. Ook impliceert dit dat bijstandsuitkeringen een belangrijke rol spelen in het voorkomen van criminaliteit. Dus als de “kosten” van bijstandsuitkeringen worden berekend is het belangrijk dat deze neveneffecten ook worden meegenomen.

Een “compleet” levensloopmodel
In de derde stap combineren we de inzichten van de eerste twee stappen en stellen we dat als we de effecten van een achtergestelde jeugd op volwassen uitkomsten willen kwantificeren, dat dan de transities die zich gedurende het volwassen leven voordoen zelf ook moeten worden meegenomen. Overgangen tijdens het volwassen leven kunnen in deze zin fungeren als “multipliers” die de effecten van investeringen in jongeren verhogen of verlagen. Stel dat vroegtijdige interventies gericht op het verbeteren van sociale vaardigheden in staat zijn crimineel gedrag te verminderen tijdens de adolescentie, dan kan deze vermindering van criminaliteit de kans op werk gedurende het volwassen leven vergroten bovenop het marginale effect van de investering in sociale vaardigheden op de kans op werk. De ontwikkeling van dit dynamische conceptuele raamwerk, de vertaling hiervan naar een empirisch model en het testen van het empirische model vormen de belangrijkste bijdragen van het proefschrift voor het verklaren van criminaliteit en andere sociaal-economische uitkomsten voor achtergestelde jongeren.

Het schema hiernaast geeft een gesimplificeerde weergave van het complete conceptuele model dat we gebruikten. In de jeugdperiode worden cognitieve en sociale vaardigheden ontwikkeld. Tevens worden tijdens de jeugd signalen gevormd. De signalen bevatten gegevens over het opleidingsniveau en de zwaarte van het jeugdstrafblad. De signalen worden onder andere bepaald door de vaardigheden. Na de jeugd volgen twee perioden van volwassenheid (in het proefschrift zijn dit er veel meer maar twee perioden zijn voldoende om de ideeen uiteen te zetten). In de eerste periode worden de volwassene uitkomsten van criminaliteit, werk, uitkeringen, drugs gebruik en intieme relaties verklaard door de vaardigheden en de signalen uit de jeugd. De uitkomsten in de tweede periode worden verklaard door de vaardigheden en de signalen uit de jeugd en ook door de uitkomsten van de eerste periode. Door zowel de jeugd factoren als de interacties gedurende het volwassene leven te modelleren kunnen we schatten wanneer interventies het beste plaats kunnen vinden.

De resultaten suggereren dat cognitieve en sociale vaardigheden blijvende effecten hebben op de volwassen uitkomsten bij mannen voor criminaliteit en werk. Bij vrouwen hebben alleen sociale vaardigheden langdurige gevolgen voor criminaliteit en werk. Voor criminaliteit komen deze bevindingen overeen met de resultaten uit de eerste stap. Hier vonden we ook dat deze vaardigheden blijvende effecten hebben op criminaliteit. Voor vrouwen vonden we tevens dat sociale vaardigheden de kans op drugsgebruik en intieme relaties gedurende de adolescentie verminderen. Het signaal van het opleidingsniveau is belangrijk voor het verminderen van uitkeringen tijdens de adolescentie en het vergroten van de kans op werk tijdens volwassenheid. Het strafblad signaal verhoogt gedurende de adolescentie en volwassenheid de kans op criminaliteit en drugsgebruik.

Naast deze aanhoudende gevolgen van jeugdige vaardigheden en signalen vonden we vele structurele dynamische interacties tussen de volwassen uitkomstvariabelen. De belangrijkste bevindingen met betrekking tot de structurele relaties tussen criminaliteit, werk en uitkeringen, die in de tweede stap werden gevonden, worden hier bevestigd. Daarbovenop vonden we dat de kans op criminaliteit werd verminderd door intieme relaties, terwijl drugsgebruik de kans hierop verhoogde. Voor vrouwen bleken intieme relaties meer verklarende kracht te hebben dan voor mannen. Voor vrouwen voorspellen intieme relaties verminderingen in uitkeringen gedurende de adolescentie en ze zijn negatief verbonden met drugsgebruik.
Om te analyseren wat al deze bevindingen gezamenlijk impliceren maken we gebruik van simulatiemethoden. Deze methoden simuleren het volgende hypothetische experiment: stel dat we voor iedere respondent zijn sociale vaardigheden konden verhogen met ongeveer 4% op het 16de levensjaar (4% op een schaal van 1 tot 4). Wat zouden dan de gevolgen zijn voor de kans op criminaliteit en de kans op werk. De resultaten voor de mannelijke respondenten van dit pseudo-experiment worden gegeven in de hiernaast staande twee figuren. De eerste figuur laat zien dat de kans op crimineel gedrag wordt verlaagd door de verhoging van sociale vaardigheden. Deze verlaging is significant voor vrijwel de gehele volwassen periode die we bestuderen. De tweede figuur laat de kans op werk zien voor en na verhoging van de sociale vaardigheden. We vinden dat de kans op werk vanaf het 22ste levensjaar significant verhoogd wordt door de verhoging van sociale vaardigheden. We kunnen concluderen dat een redelijk kleine verhoging van sociale vaardigheden zowel criminaliteit kan reduceren als de kans op werk kan verhogen. Een belangrijk punt voor toekomstig onderzoek is om te gaan kijken of het verhogen van sociale vaardigheden op een kosten efficiente manier kan geschieden.

Het proefschrift van Geert Mesters is hier te vinden: Disentangling Criminal Careers for Disadvantaged Youths

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Lageson, S., en Uggen, C. (2013). How Work Affects Crime – And Crime Affects Work – Over The Life Course. In C. L. Gibson & M. D. Krohn (Eds.), Handbook of Life-Course Criminology: Emerging Trends and Directions for Future Research. New York: Springer.
Mesters, G., van der Geest, V., en Bijleveld, C. (2014). Crime, Employment and Social Welfare: an individual-level study on disadvantaged males. (unpublished: see www.geertmesters.nl for paper)
Osgood, W. D., Foster, M. E., Flanagan, C., en Ruth, G. R. (2005). On Your Own without a Net: The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Populations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
van der Geest, V. (2011). Working their way into adulthood. delinquency and employment in high-risk boys to age 32 (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and law Enforcement.
Verbruggen, J. (2014). Previously institutionalized youths on the road to adulthood (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and law Enforcement.

Over de auteur:
Geert Mesters, Assistant Professor Economics, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona GSE and The Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR)

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Lacan’s Three Registers of Human Reality

Abstract.
This paper, the first of two focussed on the topic of libidinal attachments between white children and black domestic workers in narratives contributed to the Apartheid Archive Project (AAP), offers a series of methodological insights derived from a Lacanian type of psychoanalytic reading practice. A Lacanian reading practice is one which emphasizes the importance of symbolic juxtaposition, of recombining different facets of texts, and of attempting to locate what I term the “absent mediator” implied by tacit conjunctions and associations within texts. In this paper I focus particularly on a puzzling aspect shared by a series of contributions to the AAP, namely the role of animals in the narratives of white participants, which appear to emerge precisely when the question of a loving relation for a black person is posed. I argue that this narrative device is an attempt to make sense of a prospective relationship, particularly when such a relationship is effectively prohibited by the prevailing rules of interaction. In response to pressing questions of inter-racial loss and love, and in respect of an ambiguous inter-racial relationship, recourse to an animal provides a fantasmatic “solution”, a model of how to manage a relationship that otherwise difficult to understand.

Keywords: Absent mediators, Apartheid Archive, Lacan, psychoanalysis, racism

Introduction
One of the unintended consequences of apartheid’s massive injustices of social division and inequality was – paradoxically – the production of relations of racial proximity. This pinpoints one of apartheid’s internal contradictions: as its white beneficiaries came increasingly to rely on the domestic labour provided by an oppressed black population, so a series of intimate white spheres – the site of the home, and more particularly, the care of children – were effectively opened up to “inter-racial” contact. It is for this reason that, psychoanalytically, the literature discussing the relationship of white children and black – childminders (“nannies”) (Cock, 1980 & 2011; Motsei, 1990; Ally, 2009) is so crucial to an understanding of the libidinal economy of apartheid. This literature speaks to the presence of intimacy within structures of power, to the factor of affective attachments, sexual and familial alike, occurring across seemingly impassable divisions of race.

Mbembe (2008) uses the phrase “disjunctive inclusions” in his description of those figures that were, as we might put it, “included out” of the structured inequality of apartheid. His interest are close to my own, certainly inasmuch as he uses this term to refer to the ambiguous inclusions of black subjects in apartheid’s cities, such as, precisely, “black nannies” who were permitted, to live on white properties. This poses the general question of racial intimacies in apartheid, and it directs us to childhood reminiscences produced by contributors to the Apartheid Archive Project (AAP), a collaborative research undertaking that has collected and analysed a corpus of narratives on the experience of apartheid racism see: http://www.apartheidarchive.org/site/.
The AAP aims not only to record such narratives, itself an important aim in remembering history, but also to engage thoughtfully and theoretically with the narratives. As such the AAP encourages both acommitment to personal remembering and a joint intellectual commitment to interrogating narratives rather than taking them at face value (Hook & Long, 2011).

The first of the key topics of this paper can thus be specified by means of a question: how were such “disjunctive inclusions” managed, psychologically, by children, and, more precisely, by white children in particular[i]? A second key objective follows on from the first, as its pragmatic methodological consequence: how we might contribute to aform of psychoanalytic discourse analysis suitable to the task of analysing narrative texts of apartheid. It is in reference to the emerging area of Lacanian discourse analysis (see Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003; Parker, 2005; Pavón Cuéllar, 2010; Neill, 2013) that I hope to make a contribution. Before moving on to the first of the narratives that I want to consider, it helps to provide a little more detail on the scope of the narratives, and how they were collected. The AAP is comprised of a group of some 25 local and international researchers from a variety of backgrounds. All of the researchers have themselves submitted narratives to the project.

Narratives have also been solicited from other academics, students and members of the South African public. The AAP offers an unusual richness, both in terms of who has contributed to the corpus of narratives and in view of the heterogeneity of the researchers writing about the archive. All working from the same bank of narratives, the researchers have “offered a range of analyses aimed at understanding apartheid history and its sometimes enacted, sometimes denied resonance in the present” (Hook & Long, 2011:3). Let us turn then to one of the texts prepared for inclusion in the AAP, a text of particular relevance given our current concerns:
A man named Dyson worked for my parents. He was affectionate and good-willed man, generous, and he was loved by the family. I remember him always at work in the kitchen. He was considered a good man, trustworthy. In the racist codes of the time he was a “good African” by which was meant that he was faithful, self-sacrificing and big -hearted. He was no doubt, in colonial parlance, a “kitchen boy”. I guess that for significant periods in my first years I was under his care. Perhaps there were carefree times before an awareness of race came into play and I was genuinely effusive and natural with him. I can only hope so. I don’t know how and when a change occurred – even for sure that one did– but I do remember at a certain point becoming excessively formal with him, avoidant, distanced, as if a type of enacted superiority and distance had become necessary.

Try as I might I cannot think of touching him, of any loving physical contact, although I am sure that there must have been. This still puzzles me: at what point was it that I became rigid, aware of the need to keep myself apart, to be aloof. These were the appropriate behavioural codes, the implicit rules of contact that I had assimilated. I was aware that Dyson, despite his smiling and forgiving nature had registered the change in my behaviour and was, I think, saddened by it, yet nonetheless respectful of the stance I had taken.

The time came when the decision was made to leave Zimbabwe. It was a difficult parting; new homes had to be found for the dogs – a particular focus of tears and disbelief for me on the eve of our departure – and a reliable family needed to take over the mortgage of the house that couldn’t be sold under such short notice. The most awful moment in all of this for me, the most poignant and irreversible, was to see Dyson crying, distraught, seemingly inconsolable, on the day we left. Worse yet than this heartbreaking feeling for me was the sense that I could not now break the façade and run up to him and hug him goodbye. I needed now to maintain the self-conscious role of distance and coolness that I had imposed.

Part of what shames me about this episode is that I went beyond the explicit prescriptions governing racial interaction; I enacted a more extreme type of coldness and detachment than was required. The distance I affected could not have been derived from my mother, who always seemed far more at ease, natural in her interactions with Africans. My lack of demonstrativeness may simply have been a case of not knowing how. Not just a willed aloofness, but perhaps also a sense of simply not being able – certainly not within the codes of white racist masculinity – to express love for Dyson. That is what continues to disturb: the fact that I was responsible for this. I had not merely mimed a “white man’s bearing”, that is, a deportment of racial superiority, I had taken it upon myself to exaggerate it, to exceed what may have been expected of me by my parents and grand-parents. The words “I loved Dyson” seem both historically true and yet not subjectively real; factual, and yet difficult to personalize. What is far easier to imagine is that my parents had loved Dyson. This poses the question: where in my childhood unconscious did I place Dyson? Did I ever question his role – as surely I must have – as a member of my family …? An uncle …? Was Dyson my “other daddy” (conceivable perhaps as the good, ever-present daddy relative to the strict white daddy who seemed at times less approachable)?

Was there ever a time that I addressed him as such? How would I have been corrected? What other faux pas might I and other white children in such racially – charged situations have made on the way to assimilating the rules of racialized existence? More significant perhaps was the fact that such mistakes – so I would guess – were very infrequently made. Perhaps if and when they did happen, they were so vigorously repressed that they were never repeated. Perhaps this was the missing antecedent to my reserve and distance in respect of Dyson – a faux pas of the heart? Why is it, however, that I feel so sure that I never made any such mistake with him?

It is worthwhile offering a few brief analytical comments on the above text. There is an echo of a key signifier in the first few lines; the word “good” is repeatedly attached to the figure of Dyson (this is even more apparent in the longer version of the text from which the extract is drawn). Psychoanalytically we may pose that there is a form of idealization occurring here which functions both perhaps as a defence (against knowing Dyson, against a more fully – rounded, non – stereotypical view of him …?) and as an element in the racist logic of “one good native”, that is the praise of the rare trustworthy black man who is the exception that proves the rule.

More immediately evident perhaps is the indecision exemplified in the text, the vacillation between direct assertions and equivocation. The author claims not to have known how and when a change occurred, even if one did, despite going on to discuss, in definitive terms, the change itself (“I do remember …”). The framing of key postulates in terms of questioning, doubt, even negation is, psychoanalytically, a potential indication of repressed material. There are many such examples in the text: “perhaps there were carefree times …”; “I cannot think of touching him”, “I never made any such mistake with him”, and so on. The tacitcont radictions in the text – which, like much of white post – apartheid writing adopts the genre of a confessional (Nuttall, 2010) – are instructive. Take for example the repeated argument that the author may not have known how, or was simply unable, to express affection for Dyson, despite the suggestion that at an earlier time this had indeed been possible. Such evasions are then followed by an admission of responsibility for “racist deportment”. One of course needs to allow the author the latitude to develop and (re)consider a position within the course of a narrative. That being said, the movement of the text between these subject – positions – as determined by, or agent of racism – suggests that a “get – out clause” has been retained, that the issue at hand (a confessed responsibility) has not as of yet been fully resolved.

Notable too are the apparent absences on display, particularly apropos the subject’s apparent love for Dyson, qualified as not real but true, factual but not personalized, and seemingly delegated to his parents, all of these are potential markers of repression. Here the gaps, the missing pieces in the text, speak powerfully. As in the case of negative hallucination, there is a strong declaration that something is not there, yet this apparently non – existent object nonetheless needs to be carefully avoided, denied. Such conspicuous evasions point to the prospect of a latent belief. In the same vein, we might ask whether the question: “did I ever call him [daddy] …?” reveals something of fantasy, which is not of course to assert that the child ever said anything of the sort, but merely to aver that such a relation had been the topic of fantasy. That is to say, this relationship begged a response, a degree of imaginative speculation. It posed the question of how the subject might understand himself relative to the opaque social relationship he is presented with. Such a relationship in which both familial bond and racialized “master” and “subordinate” roles are invoked, is difficult to comprehend, it begs a type of formalization which fantasy might provide.

A further point of interest concerns something of only peripheral importance at first glance, the author’s brief mention of the dogs that will be left behind. This is clearly a narrative laden with affect, shot through with questions of emotional expression and reserve; nonetheless this is the single moment in the text where the narrator gives his emotions free reign (“a particular focus of tears”). We might risk the interpretation that what cannot be openly shown toward Dyson is expressed elsewhere, in the form of a substitute object. An additional line of questioning is sparked here, one which points to a puzzling aspect shared by a number of the narratives contributed by white South Africans. What is the role of the animals that are so frequently introduced into these texts; what is their narrative function; at what precise point do they appear within the narrative?

Bridging disjuncture
In earlier discussions of psychoanalytic discourse analysis (Hook, 2011), I have tried to emphasize how it may be necessary to employ a matrix of latent meanings to make guesses at what is “repressed” within a given utterance. There are of course many ways in which we may go about doing this; many of the suggestions I made in respect of the above narrative aim to develop just such an array of latent meanings. One of the richest possible sources of methodological inspiration for such an undertaking is, of course, Freud’s (1900) approach to dream analysis. While a detailed mining of the various “methodological” principles offered in The interpretation of dreams for the particular purposes of Lacanian discourse analysis has not yet, unfortunately, been undertaken, Lapping’s (2011) elaboration of guidelines for psychoanalytic social research has yielded a series of important methodological suggestions. Discussing how Freud’s idea of the overdetermination of images, symbols and signifiers in dreams may be applied to discourse analysis, Lapping (2011: 68) notes that “details that appear as insignificant or as having little psychic intensity may in fact be covering over the most intense psychical … forces”. She (ibid: 71) stresses the need to identify associative tugs against dominant narratives, and emphasizes the importance of “attending to elements that connote symbolic relations outside the linear narratives of a dominant discourse”. Crucially, she also remarks: [A]pparently cohesive accounts cover over a set of more complicated relations, and they pose questions that invert the obviousness of what they are seeing … [D]ominant discourse is unsettled by the construction of a symbolic juxtaposition (ibid:72).

How might we expand upon this methodological speculation? More precisely, how might we utilize a strategy of symbolic juxtaposition to trace the unconscious of a text?
One answer: by staggering two or more seemingly discontinuous elements within a given narrative. The idea of overlaying apparently disconnected scenes as an interpretative tactic is something familiar to students of psychoanalysis. A personal example suffices. I started a session (as an analysand) complaining about a work colleague who had, I thought, unfairly snubbed me. I discussed some other banal events of the previous day, and then suddenly recalled an incident in a prison where I used to work as an honorary psychotherapist. A prisoner had recently told me how he never lost his temper. Should someone do him an injustice he would bide his time, wait till the person was totally at ease, and then, when he l east expected it, stab him in the back. No great analytical nous is needed to pose an interpretative hypothesis here: I, presumably, wanted to do just this to the work colleague: to stab him violently in the back.

This is of course a crude example, and the tentative reading I have suggested remains open to different interpretations. One might speculate that the desire in question was far more paradoxical or masochistic in nature, that, for example, I may have wished to be stabbed in the back. There certainly is room to go further here, particularly if we take seriously the idea that a successful interpretation should surprise the analysand. The assumption here of course is that a successful interpretation touches precisely on repressed material, on ideas that a subject disavows, that they cannot “own” as pertaining to them (hence the surprise factor). The above interpretation might be seen as less than surprising – although it did in fact produce a mild shock in me – as in need of further, more developed interpretation.

Here it is worth noting that, from a Lacanian perspective attentive to the role of the signifier, the verbal formula “stab him in the back” is an idiom with various metaphoric extensions. This formula – an effective shorthand for betrayal – could be the persistent signifier underlying the generation of a dream image or, as in this case, the seemingly spontaneous recollection of a memory. It is worth emphasizing the poly-vocal, overdetermined and, indeed, re-interpretable, quality of the signifier in question so as to avoid the pattern of formulaic interpretations that the worst of psychoanalysis is infamous for. I am thinking of course of the endless regurgitation of a finite series of conceptual motifs – castration anxiety and penis envy would be two classic and not unproblematic Freudian examples – and superimposition of a series of caricatured themes as explanatory scripts for virtually any situation[ii]. The Lacanian emphasis on signifiers rather than merely symbols would help then move us away from any one single reductive sexual reading of the formula in question (the sexual connotation of “to be stabbed” is clear), without of course definitively ruling it out.

What the stabbing example brings home – if for the moment we credit the first interpretation as valid (“I want to stab my colleague in the back”) – is the need to attend to the form of what is being said. Unconscious desire, that is to say, is never simply stated, afforded first-person propositional form. It appears instead as the result of the combination of elements, as an implicit but not obvious relation between them. Leader (2003: 44) puts this as follows: “when a wish cannot be expressed in a proposition (‘I want to kill daddy’), it will take the form of a relation, a relation in which the ‘I’ is missing” . This is one way of understanding Lacan’s (1992: 126) insistence that “half -saying is the internal law of any kind of enunciation of the truth”, namely that we need to ask what hypothetical idea emerges “in between” two apparently unrelated narrative fragments once juxtaposed.

We might offer this as a methodological maxim for psychoanalytically – informed types of discourse analysis: treat the effect of intercalation – that is, the posited insertion of an implicit connection, a posed relation between two disconnected narrative elements – as a modality of unconscious expression. Freud’s description of dream – pairs proves a helpful means of expanding upon this idea. If a dream – wish has as its content some forbidden behaviour towards an individual, says Freud, “ then that person may appear in the first dream undisguised, while the behaviour is only faintly disguised” (1932: 27). In the second dream however we would expect that “[t]he behaviour will be openly shown … but the person made unrecognizable… [or] some indifferent person substituted for him” (ibid:27). Commenting on this passage, Leader (2003) points out that Lacan’s thesis, following the influence of Lévi-Strauss, advances upon Freud’s.
It is not simply then the case that a forbidden thought would be disguised, hidden via means of substitutions of subject, object or indeed act itself – although presumably one would want to keep such a possibility open – it is rather that the forbidden thought “only exists … as a slippage between the one and the other” (Leader, 2003: 44).
Leader (ibid: 44) continues: “A man has two dreams … In one, he loses a blood-soaked tooth and stares at it in absolute horror. In the other, his penis is being examined in a medical test and no problems are found. Neither of the dreams represents castration as such, but it is in the relation between the two that the reference is to castration is situated.”

Leader’s conclusion? “When something cannot be expressed as a meaningful proposition, it will take the form of a relation between two sets of elements” (2003: 47). There is a more direct way of making the same point, as applied to the task of discourse analysis. When confronted then by an instance of narrative disjuncture – or, clinically, by a sequence of ostensibly disconnected thoughts – we should ask: what implicit link between these elements has been “subtracted”? Or, put slightly differently: what is the absent mediator which would need to be reconstructed if the connection between scenes is to be understood? The factor of “what is not there” is hence vital, much as is the case in Freud’s famous (1919) discussion of beating fantasies, also discussed by Leader (2000), where the various permutations offered by the patient (“my father is beating a child”, “a child is being beaten”, “my mother is beating a child”) never includes the crucial formulation “I am being beaten by my father”, which of course, pinpoints the unconscious fantasy. Freud is only able to arrive at this missing element via a construction, that is, by positing what is the missing formula in a sequence might be, a formula which can be deduced from but is by no means contained within the variants which precede and follow it.

Let us now turn to a second Apartheid Archive narrative, one in which the effect of narrative disjunction is apparent:
It is a lazy Sunday afternoon … I am bored, and I need to ask Phyllis something. I burst into her room. The door was half shut I think, but I have no respect for her privacy, there are no boundaries between her space and mine. The scene on the bed is a surprise to me, I live in the sexually repressive days of apartheid. These scenes are “cut” from the movies that I watch at the cinema. The beautiful tall man enmeshed with Phyllis becomes the hero of my novel written into a lined exercise book in the long hours of the weekend and evenings before lights out.

Of course I am the heroine, but I am myself, not Phyllis, a bit older though as I want to be enveloped in his arms too. We are having a relationship across the “colour bar”; he is a young activist, organising… a stone – throw away from where I live. It is 1976, he is becoming increasingly politically active. He is a leader. I am in love with him, and of course I am against apartheid. He is murdered, like so many other young men of the time, at the brutal hands of those masquerading as public protectors. I survive, to join the struggle, to tell the tale. Phyllis also plays a role in the book, a small part. I am ashamed now for walking into her room.

Notions of “us” and “them”, difference and “otherness” are central to my early constructions of the world. But it is complicated. The community I grow up in is so tightly woven, based on notions of a shared history, religion, culture, we only know each other. I am at preschool with the same children that I matriculate with. I hardly ever meet or even speak with a member of an “other” community. Of course apartheid and other discriminatory practices are woven into the fabric of our day – to – day lives, but my primary sense of difference is about who is part of my community and who is not. There are always Black women living with us. Not a part of the family, but living on the premises of our home. They perform the submissive role of servant, yet I know they have power too. Since my mother is absent, all of us know where we can get our comfort, enfolded in the large warmth of our “nanny’s” arms.

In our house, in an area reserved then for white people only, there is a separate unit for domestic workers attached to the house. Two rooms with a bathroom between them. Phyllis lives in one of those rooms. Besides my sister, she is my favourite person in the world in those years – she is young, beautiful, full of fun. When she is angry with us, she knocks us on the head with her third finger, it is so painful we shriek, but it passes very quickly, unlike some other pains I know. She brought the chicken to our house, which became our pet as it raced around our garden clucking. When it disappeared one day, only to reappear on our dinner table, my long commitment to vegetarianism began!

Sometimes, as we rough and tumble, which I catch a hint of the sweet-sour scent of Phyllis’s addiction to alcohol. She also died young, just like my hero, ultimately a consequence of the same violence. I found this out much later. I never knew her story. I never asked her. Just wrote my own.

The narrator in the above extract bursts in on a sexual scene, a scene which prompts an imaginative foray into Phyllis’s world. The aspect of fantasy seems in this respect clear: the description has a noticeably cinematic aspect (“I am the heroine”), it is clearly indexed as fictitious (he becomes “the hero of my novel”), and it maintains a masturbatory quality. This projection of the author into an “other scene” appears however to stop short of identification. The author sees herself, a little older, as the beautiful tall man’s lover, and plainly states: “I am myself, not Phyllis”.

Crucial also is the element of appropriation; the beautiful man is now her lover and Phyllis is reduced to a minor character (“Phyllis also plays a role in the book, a small part”). That is to say, the predominant mode of identification here seems to be the hysterical identification with the place of another which is to be distinguished from identifications based on a loving bond that entails an internalization or replication of the other. To reiterate the elementary psychoanalytic qualification: hysterical identifications are essentially opportunistic; one can be wholly indifferent to the figure of identification, who proves merely the vessel of identification by means of which the identifying subject attains a desired object or position. Phyllis, in short, becomes the imaginative vehicle that enables the narrator to live out the romantic vision of a heroic woman against apartheid. It is via Phyllis and her lover that the narrator becomes able “to join the struggle, to tell the tale”.

The mid-section of the narrative provides some of the socio-historical context (a “tightly woven” white community in which “we only know each other”) explaining why difference becomes such a fantasmatic (and indeed sexual) preoccupation. What also becomes apparent here is the necessity of a mediator – an object of sorts – to manage a relationship between the narrator and the black domestic worker. This is a relationship which is both intimate (“all of us know where we can get our comfort”) and yet nonetheless contractual (“They perform the submissive role of servant”); it is simultaneously “familial” and yet decidedly not. I made this point at the outset of the paper, that the conditions of apartheid led to such contradictions, the prospect of loving attachments (“comfort, enfolded in the … warmth of our nanny’s arms”, “… she is my favourite person in the world”), indeed, even of erotic attraction, occurring within a oppressive, hierarchical, racially-structured social relations.

The problem that is constituted by the relationship with Phyllis is underscored by the narrator’s comment that her “primary sense of difference is about who is part of my community and who is not”. This is a puzzling relationship to make sense of. Phyllis, who is both a part and not a part of the narrator’s family (or, as she puts it, of the “premises of our home”) is difficult to place in the given set of symbolic familial roles. I should add here the obvious qualification that the nature of this relationship and Phyllis’s potentially ambiguous status within it were of course very well defined within the framework of apartheid itself which provided the discourse and associated social norms of “nannies”, “domestic workers”. As many of the Apartheid Archive narratives make abundantly clear, apartheid rationality was thoroughly ingrained within white South African children who understood their prerogatives all too well (as in the narrator’s admission: “I have no respect for her privacy”). Crucial to grasp however is that apartheid ideology nonetheless exhibited clear social contradictions that could not always be explained away, and that inevitably sparked a type of fantasy, which we can understand as an attempt to make sense of incongruous social roles and identities.

These considerations go some way perhaps to explaining what at first seems an anomalous element in the unfolding narrative: the chicken that becomes the family pet and that abruptly turns up on the dinner-table, igniting thus the narrator’s commitment to vegetarianism. Although this may appear a relatively arbitrary component of the narrative, there is, as Freud warns in respect of dream interpretation, much of significance in this seemingly trivial element. The chicken is a pet, a designation that places child and animal in appropriate domestic roles and that affords a familiar and thus stable familial “object-relation”. The chicken is owned and yet – so it would seem – loved. There is a proprietal relationship in place that has not precluded the development of ties of affection. The text implies that the narrator was saddened by the loss of the pet, although this loss nonetheless benefits her. The animal serves an important purpose even in its demise: it becomes the basis of the narrator’s ideological commitment to vegetarianism.

The link between Phyllis and the chicken is not only metonymic (the chicken is an extension of Phyllis who “brought [it]… to the house”). “Phyllis also died young” the text tells us, introducing an ambiguity: who might the “also” refer to (the young hero no doubt, but also, given its proximity in the text, the chicken?). There is a parallel between Phyll is and the pet here in view not only of their sudden deaths, but in terms of how each benefits the identity of the narrator; each is an object of appropriation. As noted above, Phyllis provides the materials of a story that the narrator crafts about herself, a story which would appear to be crucial to her formative political identity (as “against apartheid”). This, obviously enough, is a non-reciprocal and an unequal borrowing. Phyllis provides the imaginative basis for the narrator’s story about herself; she becomes essentially a device in the narrator’s own self-fashioning, her own perspective, her own “real” story never being involved (“I never as ked her. Just wrote my own”).

What does such an associative link tell us? Is this a case of the disguise – by – way – of – substitution that Freud discusses in dream pairs? Or are the narrative elements in a Lacanian manner as suggestive of an unconscious idea that exists only as a possible intercalation between components? The task then is to consider what the result would be of superimposing these narrative pieces. Such a conjunction, I think, provides one way of telling us something about the relationship to Phyllis that cannot otherwise be admitted. As is by now evident, Phyllis is “owned” by the family, the narrator has certain “rights of privilege” over her as a condition of such an unequal relationship. Phyllis cares for, gives happiness and love to these children, yet seems ultimately to be discarded by the white family (“she … died young … I found this out much later”) who appear to have known little about her life (“I never knew her story”).

This is not to cast doubt on the love felt by the narrator for Phyllis. The affective dimension of these relations should not be dismissed; there was no doubt a degree of quite genuine love, although, then again, one can love quite sincerely in a fashion that consolidates a relation of condescension, as one loves a child, or indeed, an animal. We might say then, extending this point and following the implication of overlaying of overlaying these narrative components, that Phyllis’s relation to the family is akin, in many ways, to that of a pet. Shefer’s (2012) discussion of black domestic service in white (post)apartheid households highlights many of these issues. Domestic service, she notes, was a prime site not only for racist ideology, but of black submissiveness (a point affirmed also by Cock, 1980; Motsei, 1990; Ally, 2009). Such domestic practices, in short, allow for the engendering of “normative white privilege and authority through the … control the white child is granted in relation to Black adults” (Shefer, 2012: 308). Echoing the point made above, Shefer (2012) observes that while in a fundamentally unequal sense the domestic worker is, nominally, a member of the family, she remains nonetheless, “owned” and controlle d by adults and children alike.

One might be tempted to draw a line under our analysis at this point, concluding that our investigations have led us to an “unconscious of the text” that is summarily racist inasmuch as it extends a longstanding colonial trope in which black person and animal are equated. It is true that the animal – human link is, even if only implicitly, apparent in both of the narratives cited here; both may be critiqued as extending a racist theme on exactly this basis. That being said, such an apparent finding does not exhaust all that can be said, psychoanalytically at least, about these texts.

It proves profitable to compare the two narratives featured here, both of which, like a number of the narratives contributed by white South Africans, share an initially puzzling feature: the sudden appearance of an animal in their discussions of racism. Although the animal in the first narrative appears only briefly, it has, arguably, a crucial role to play as a mediator, a means of linking the white and black characters in the narratives.
Interestingly, the animal in the two above texts, despite obvious contextual differences, occurs at a similar moment in the narrative. It appears when the question of a powerful affective and loving relation for a black person is posed for the white subject. More importantly perhaps – especially for a Lacanian approach that does not prioritize affects over symbolic considerations – an animal emerges when the difficulty, indeed, the impossibility, of a certain symbolic relationship becomes pressing. The problem is precisely that of symbolic positioning, of how to make sense of a prospective relationship – or find an analogue for it – particularly when such a relation ship is not socially viable, is indeed effectively prohibited by the prevailing rules of interaction.

What is so notable in the above narratives is not only that the libidinal relation in question appears to lack an obvious framework of comprehension, but that a material component is involved as a means of mediating the symbolic relation. There is an effective adjunct to the personal relationship, an “operator” of sorts which provides an effective frame of comprehension for the relation in question. The spontaneous recourse to an animal enables the narrators, however temporarily, to bridge an impasse. In response to pressing questions of inter-racial loss and love, and in respect of an ambiguous inter-racial relationship, which is as much that of familial tenderness as that of effective “ownership”, this operator provides an answer. This makes for an interesting experiment, to ask how the given “animal mediator” presents a solution of sorts for the problems evinced in each of the situations. The puzzle of the ambiguity inherent in the relation with a loved domestic worker results in a tacit equation: Phyllis – as – pet.
In the first narrative, we might venture that the loss of the dog provides the paradigm for how to deal with the loss of Dyson. What is intriguing about this hypothesis – perhaps as in the case of Winnicott’s notion of “healing dreams” – is that the unconscious labours to provide a solution.

I would like, before closing, to include a few further reflexive comments on the methodological undertaking attempted above. My aim in analysing the foregoing material is not to pin the charge of racism on the above authors. It pays here to refer to Silverman’s (2008: 124) comment that to judge someone’s unconscious fantasy ultimately misses the point, for such ideas would not have been repressed “if they were not as abhorrent to that person’s consciousness as they are to our own”. Furthermore, a discourse analysis is by definition focussed on the broader discursive currents animated within the language productions of the speaker, not on the singular speaker themselves. My objective is to show how the text might be said to speak beyond itself, to extract something that is implied but not explicitly said by the text. These methodological provisos in place, it is nonetheless necessary to stress again the problematic epistemological status of what I am asserting of the text (take for example, the extrapolation that, in respect of the third narrative, Phyllis’s relation to the family is akin to that of a pet). This idea is nowhere stated in the text; it cannot as such be ascribed to the author. The argument could just as well be made that this idea exists more in the mind of the interpreter than in the author of the text. As Pavón Cuéllar (2010) warns, this is often the lure of imaginary understanding in attempts at discourse analysis, that one’s “findings” are essentially a projection of the analyst’s own reading.

We may offer a slightly different perspective on the same issue, by stressing how interpretation itself often engenders an impasse. In Lacanian terms, we could say that interpretation is, in many instances, precisely what causes the unconscious to close.
This, more precisely, is a twofold problem concerning both the heavy-handed imposition of the discourse of psychoanalysis and the factor of the over – eager interpretations of the analyst which impedes the flow of material. This is a point well made by Lapping (2011) in her exploration of what Lacan (1991: 228) has in mind with his counter – intuitive notion that within psychoanalysis “there is only one resistance, the resistance of the analyst”. She (2011) crystallizes Lacan’s underlying point: resistance is the product of the analyst’s interpretation. Although of course the situation of text analysis is different, the same conclusion may be drawn: inertias of analysis, resistances in analysing, are typically the result of the analyst’s impositions. The clinical strategy here would be to align oneself with whatever opens the horizon of further interpretations, “to bring this desire into existence”, to encourage and facilitate its expression, in often differing and multiple forms, rather than close it down by virtue of the need of the analyst to impose authority, mastery, understanding.

To read for the “unconscious ” of a text is then perpetually to risk “wild analysis”. Textual interpretations of this (psychoanalytic) order are potentially ethically problematic, and not only for the reason that they very often are more a function of the reader than of the discourse of the text itself. Such interpretative attempts utilize a set of clinical strategies for material over which the reader has no clinical warrant. If such interpretations were to be utilized in the clinical context they should not – I would hope – take the form of definitive declarations on the part of the analyst. If such an interpretative association were to be eluded to, it would presumably be hinted at far more gently, enigmatically perhaps, in such a way that the analysand could take it up, respond to it. This then poses a series of ethical challenges for the prospective use of Lacanian discourse analysis, challenges that need be considered and responded to within the life of any given research project.

Desire without end
By way of conclusion, I would like to offer a comment on the second narrative cited above which responds to the earlier distinction between Freud’s theory of dream-pair substitutions and the Lévi-Strauss idea (1963) that one needs to look for a relation between elements . What emerges in the above text is not simply a case of substitution.
Yes, there are a series of telling parallels between Phyllis and the pet, and questioning what such a substitution might mean or imply would perhaps be a useful analytical exercise. As in “stabbing in the back” episode cited earlier, such an initial substitution (the prisoner’s actions as my own desired actions) opened things up, it enabled further questioning of what might be repressed. Other possible extrapolations of desire were made possible. To fix upon a single substitution as the key would, very possibly, have closed down additional interpretative possibilities; my own possible desire to be “stabbed in the back” would not have come to light in this way. A further interpretative leap was required here; the initial substitution was just the springboard for a hypothesis that required elements of both apparently disconnected narrative components, but that ultimately proved greater than the sum of their parts.

Levi-Strauss’s (1963) emphasis on the relation between elements within the study of myths proves so important to psychoanalysis because it suits an engagement with the over-determined nature of psychical material. Levi-Strauss famously asserted that there is no one totalizing version of the Oedipus myth; there are only variants, and the only regularity we can trace within the matrix of versions we might plot is that of certain types of relations between components. The link to the work of psychoanalysis seems clear: the prospects of re-interpretation of any over-determined psychical material means that there is never one singular, triumphant interpretation. This provides an important ethical guideline for Lacanian discourse analysis: we do an injustice to the complexity of the material in attempting to extract a single over-arching message.

NOTES
[i] My approach may be criticized for prioritizing a white a perspective. It is worthwhile stressing two issues here. Firstly, I took my lead from narrative material contained within the Apartheid Archive, where white childhood reminiscences of apartheid featured prominently. Secondly, given the circumstances of apartheid in which white children were frequently cared for by black domestic workers, and where many black children would have had only infrequent access to white adults, it is unsurprising that such white experiences should be disproportionately featured in the material.
[ii] It could be countered that what makes these motifs such effective interpretative tools is the resonance they have over so wide a variety of surface phenomena. In short, echoes of such concepts might be used not so much as interpretations, but as mechanisms to prompt the flow of further material.

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Hook, D (2011) A critical psychology of the postcolonial: The mind of apartheid. London & New York: Routledge.
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Shefer, T (2012) Fraught tenderness: Narratives on domestic workers in memories of apartheid. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 18 (3), 307-317.
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About the author:
Derek Hook, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, UK and Extraordinary Professor of Psychology, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Previously published in PINS – Psychology in Society:
Hook, D. (2012). Apartheid’s lost attachments (1): On psychoanalytic reading practice. In: Psychology in Society, 43, 40-53
See: www.pins.org.za

Abstract.
This paper, the second of two focussed on the libidinal attachments of white children to black domestic workers in narratives contributed to the Apartheid Archive Project (AAP), considers the applicability of the concept of social melancholia in the case of such “inter-racial” attachments. The paper questions both the psychoanalytic accuracy, and the psychic and political legitimacy of such an explanation (that is, the prospect of an “inter-racial” melancholic attachment of white subjects to black care-takers). By contrast to the political notion of ungrievable melancholic losses popularized by Judith Butler’s work, this paper develops a theory of compensatory symbolic identifications. Such a theory explains the apparent refusal of identification which white subjects exhibit towards black caretakers and it throws into perspective an important conceptual distinction regards loss. On the one hand there is the psychotic mechanism of melancholic attachment, which expresses absolute fidelity to a lost object, even to the point of self-destructive suffering. On the other, there is the neurotic mechanism of compensatory identification, in which the original object is jettisoned and a substitution found, such that a broader horizon of symbolic and ideological identification is enabled.

Introduction
The companion piece (see: Rozenberg Quarterly) to the current paper investigated a series of Apartheid Archive narratives via the means of psychoanalytic reading practice. That paper and this one share a similar aim: of shedding light on certain of apartheid’s “lost attachments”. The analytical undertaking of a mode of psychoanalytic discourse analysis is not, of course, a-theoretical, and at least one crucial facet of the texts considered – their ostensibly mournful as aspect – begs further conjecture. In supplementing the foregoing article then, I am shifting here from a focus on specific strategies of textual reading practice to a critical exploration of the usefulness of a key psychoanalytic concept in the illumination of these texts. The first of these two papers engaged with the “dathow one might psychoanalytically read the repression of libidinal attachments via certain absent mediators. The current paper comprises an extended theoretical development of psychoanalytically reading a political situation of loss and how this should be conceptualized.

The Apartheid Archive, a collaborative research project that collects and analyses narratives of early experiences of apartheid racism, features a significant number of white contributors speaking tentatively of bonds of “inter-racial” intimacy between white children and black child-minders. A number of these narratives are characterized by a melancholy tone, and I want to pose the question here as to whether such lost attachments might be understood via the notion of melancholic loss that has become so popular in the postcolonial literature (Eng & Han, 1996; Chen, 2000; Khanna, 2003; Gilroy, 2004). I want to question the usefulness of the notion of melancholia as a mode of social formation in the context of the Apartheid Archive texts.

The forerunner to this paper, the companion piece with which it is paired (see: Rozenberg Quarterly), contained two lengthy textual extracts from narratives contributed to the Apartheid Archive that I will again refer to here. In the first of narratives, reference was made to a man called Dyson, of whom the narrator recalls:
I don’t know how and when a change occurred – even for sure that one did – but I do remember at a certain point becoming excessively formal with him, avoidant, distanced, as if a type of enacted superiority and distance had become necessary … This still puzzles me: at what point was it that I became rigid, aware of the need to keep myself apart, to be aloof … The time came when the decision was made to leave Zimbabwe  … I could not now break the façade and run up to him and hug him goodbye. I needed now to maintain the self-conscious role of distance … My lack of demonstrativeness may simply have been a case of not knowing how … not being able – certainly not within the codes of white racist masculinity – to express love for Dyson … The words ‘I loved Dyson’ seem both historically true and yet not subjectively real; factual, and yet difficult to personalize … [W]here in my childhood unconscious did I place Dyson…. Was Dyson my “other daddy” (conceivable perhaps as the good, ever-present daddy relative to the strict white daddy who seemed at times less approachable)?

It is intriguing to note the similarity between certain of the words chosen here and Butler’s (1997) description in her now canonical account of melancholy gender. The relevant phrase in the extract, to recall, is: “The words ‘I loved Dyson’ seem both historically true and yet not subjectively real”. The relevant section of Butler’s account comes when she addresses the predicament of living in a culture which can mourn the loss of certain (homosexual, or, potentially “cross-racial”) attachment only with great difficulty. I have made several key substitutions in the following quotes, “cross-racial”[i] for “homosexual”, “racial” for “sexual”, etc, so as to further underscore the pertinence of her argument to the present case (the structure of Butler’s argument remains, of  course, unchanged):
“[I]s [a cross-racial attachment] regarded as a ‘true’ love, a ‘true’ loss, a love and loss worthy and capable of being grieved … of having been lived? Or is it a love and a loss haunted by the spectre of a certain unreality, a certain unthinkability, the double disavowal of the … ‘I never loved him, I never lost him’. Is this the ‘never-never’ that supports the naturalized surface of … [the life of racialized difference]? Is it the disavowal of loss by which [racial] formation … proceeds?” (Butler, 1997: 138, emphasis added).

It is the disavowing refrain, “I never loved him, I never lost him”, which most pertinently echoes the words in the Apartheid Archive narrative. In order to appreciate this resonance one needs to combine the content of the narrative, the words “I loved”, with the author’s apparent relationship to them, namely the apparent sense of non-reality. It is only in this way, juxtaposing, the content of the statement with the author’s position of enunciation, that one grasps the stuckness of these lines, the aspect of simultaneous affirmation and denial, the fact that there has been an actual loss, which has nonetheless, been held in suspension, not fully processed.

If one accepts then that a prohibition on cross-racial ties of love and identification operates within racist culture – I am paraphrasing and adapting Butler (1997) here – then the loss of cross-racial love would appear foreclosed from the start. Of course, one needs to bear in mind that what counts as the start would be retroactively constituted at a point following initial foreclosure. Butler (1997: 139) makes precisely this point, remarking that her use of the term “foreclosed” suggests “a pre-emptive loss, a mourning for unlived possibilities. If this love is from the start out of the question, then it cannot happen, and if it does, it certainly did not. If it does, it happens only under the official sign of its prohibition and disavowal.”

It is worth stressing the factor of an after-the-fact effacement, that is, the retroactive capacity of the foreclosure Butler alludes to. This is important not only in view of the above example – where clearly there was an initial experience of loss – but also so as to make the point that despite their seemingly “impossibility” within apartheid, such cross-racial ties and desires most certainly did exist, even if subsequent forms of psychic erasure ensure that, effectively, they did not.

Butler (1997: 139) specifies the location of the melancholia in question which exists always in tandem with societal proscription:
“When … [such] losses are compelled by a set of culturally prevalent prohibitions, we might expect a culturally prevalent form of melancholia, one which signals the internalization of the ungrieved and ungrievable [cross-racial] cathexis. And where there is no public recognition or discourse through which such a loss might be named and mourned, then melancholia takes on cultural dimensions.”

To think melancholia as cultural formation is to appreciate how psychical operations and social structure combine in ways which cannot be reduced to the singular level of the individual subject. Formations of cultural melancholia would thus appear – in this adaptation of Butler’s (1997: 140) argument – to go hand in hand with strident demarcations of racial difference:
“it is not simply a matter of a individual’s unwillingness to avow and hence to grieve [cross-racial] attachments. When the prohibition against [cross-racial attachments] is culturally pervasive, then the ‘loss’ of … [such] love is precipitated through a prohibition which is repeated and ritualized throughout the culture. What ensures is a culture of … melancholy in which … [categories of racial difference] emerge as the traces of an ungrieved and ungrievable love.”

Butler’s (adapted) formulations seem particularly apposite in (post)apartheid contexts within which white children have formed significant if subsequently foreclosed bonds of attachment with black child-minders. While one may have expected a lessening of racial difference by virtue of such proximities, it seems, more often than not, that exactly the opposite was and is the case (Ally, 2009, 2011; Shefer, 2012). What makes little intuitive sense – the fact that the development of loving ties does not necessarily minimize notions of difference, but somehow appears to consolidate them – is apparently given a dynamic explanation in Butler’s work.

An important amendment needs to be made before we progress. As is by now perhaps apparent, we cannot simply transfer Butler’s notion of melancholy gender to the domain of racial difference. In Butler’s model, crucially, the lost yet unconsciously retained object is itself the basis of a powerful identification. The melancholic object shines through; it propels identification: the more I cannot have a given (homosexual) object, the more I identify with, and become like them. For this reason “it comes as no surprise that the more hyperbolic and defensive a masculine identification, the more fierce the ungrieved homosexual cathexis” (Butler, 1997: 139). This, incidentally, is a thoroughly orthodox Freudian idea, as is the notion that the object of failed love relation can be retained and internalized as the basis for an enduring identification (this is what Freud (1921), in his Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, dubs “regressive identification”). This factor is shared in the prospective “melancholic” inscription of  heterosexuality and racial difference alike: the operation of a refused identification (be it with the opposite sex, or with a “different” race) is crucial in substantiating an exclusive identification (with the same sex or race). However, while in the case of foreclosed cross-racial ties, a prospective avenue of identification is likewise refused, the “ungrieved” object does not itself become the model of an identification but supports instead a compensatory identification of a different order. In other words, the idea of foreclosed cross-racial attachments involves not an unconscious identification with, but the very opposite, a refusal of identification with, the lost object.

The responses to loss are different in each case. In the first instance (the melancholic inscription of heterosexuality) what has been loved and lost is carried within the subject as a loss that blocks any further attachments of the same kind. The route to new attachments of a similar sort has been barred. The melancholic remains one with its lost object which by now has been folded into the ego, and that object, kept in place, effectively voids the possibility of particular loves. (It is this element of Freud’s account – the barring of further attachments on the basis of an unprocessed incorporation – that Butler’s conceptualization of cultural melancholia depends on). One appreciates thus the elegance of Butler’s argument: what could be a better way of ensuring subjective compliance to social prohibition than by securing such proscriptions on the basis of unmetabolized losses? What results from this operation is a series of libidinal embargos which effectively designate a field of ineligible objects. The intractability of  this interweaving of social prohibition and unconscious foreclosure provides us with a  profound instance of the psychic life of power. As a possible strategy of recovery, this response to loss cannot but be considered a failure, for the very obvious reason that it permits for no recovery at all: rather than loss being gradually assimilated into reality, reality itself is assimilated into loss.

I will return shortly to the distinction between two different modes of loss. Although I do borrow facets of Butler’s theorization in what follows, I will stress different psychical mechanisms underlying the “cross-racial” attachments and refused identifications being discussed. What I propose is not that we dismiss Butler’s account, but that we extract both what is most psychoanalytically defensible, and most helpful in respect of an analysis of the Apartheid Archive narratives in question.

Doubting Melancholia
The question of how reliably this conceptualization of melancholia may be applied in the present case is a tricky one. Before entering into such deliberations it is worthwhile stating a series of critical arguments that beg the question of whether such a notion of societal melancholia is in fact psychoanalytically viable. I want to follow a dual type of analysis here, simultaneously pursuing and questioning the line of analysis Butler offers in The psychic life of power. Indeed, as pertinent as Butler’s account is, it does, I think, suffer from a discharacterization, as does much of the work which takes up the Freudian topic of melancholia as a means of understanding socio-cultural conditions.

Bluntly put, in most cases what are taken to be societal instantiations of melancholia are, quite simply, not cases of melancholia at all, certainly insofar as we remain faithful to Freud’s (1917) initial clinical formulations. Freud’s account of melancholia cannot be reduced to a state of ungrieved loss; such a conflation appears frequently in Butler’s (1997) discussion. Melancholia is more than just the failure of mourning, more than a prolonged non-resolution of loss, states which, incidentally, can be easily romanticized. It is for this reason that Crociani-Windland and Hoggett (2012: 165) observe that “Sometimes writers in [the] post-colonial tradition appear to confuse melancholia with melancholy”. Whereas melancholy “is part of the sweet sadness of loss”, melancholia is by contrast “the bleak, visceral, agitated, desperate existence of a loss with no name” (ibid).

Freudian melancholia necessarily involves hostility towards a lost object that has been withdrawn into the ego. It entails the sufferer’s assault upon this lost object which, via the means of narcissistic regression, has been incorporated into the ego. These then are the conditions under which a relation to the lost object may be maintained, conditions which amount to a crippling state of internalized aggression. A constituent component of melancholia – far more difficult to romanticize than states of ungrieved loss – is the fact of a loathing, self-abjecting relation to one’s own ego that has been deemed worthless and opened up to the punitive fury of the super-ego (Freud, 1932). A form of suffering tantamount to being buried with the dead, melancholia cannot be summarily equated merely with blockages of identification, with states of unending remembrance (see for example how the concept is utilized in the political writings of  Moon, 1995; Muñoz, 1997; Novak, 1999). The phenomenology and clinical structure of melancholia present a completely different picture (Lander, 2006; Leader, 2008). As Verhaeghe’s (2004) brief gloss makes clear, the presiding features of melancholia – clamorous self-denunciation, convictions of inner worthlessness, the impetus to selfpunishment – seem to hold little of promise for increased political awareness or action.The melancholic subject, condemned to a type of nonexistence “takes the entire guilt of  the world onto its shoulders, and this is the sole reason for … [their] existence … [The condition is characterized by] all-encompassing guilt and its accompanying need for punishment invariably display[s] a delusional character … The subject disappears, is reduced to nothing (Verhaeghe, 2004: 455-456).

Of course, many of the authors who adapt Freud’s notion, transforming its destructive qualities into something productive, into the “militant preservation of the lost object” (Eng & Han, 2003: 363), do so intentionally. Muñoz (1997: 355-56) for example argues that “for blacks and queers … melancholia [is] not a pathology … a self-absorbed mood that inhibits activism, but …. a mechanism that helps us (re)construct identity and take our dead to the various battles we must wage in their names”. Frosh (2012a: 7) provides an adroit summary of such re-appropriations of the notion of melancholia:

“Melancholia – severe depression – feeds on itself, consuming the person until there is nothing left … Against this unpromising backdrop, melancholia has been resurfacing as a paradigm of subversion, an instance of how what is written out as a profound negative can be reinterpreted as a call to arms … The key element in this re-reading of the productive possibilities of melancholia is not the issue of self-hatred, but rather the [preservation of the object] … In melancholia …. there is no recognition of the lost object … it exists ‘in’ the unconscious as something which cannot be grieved because it is never acknowledged … [Melancholia] preserves the object precisely because the object is never grieved. That is, whereas mourning deals with object loss and integrates the object into the subject’s psychic life, dissolving it so that it becomes a part of the subject, melancholia can be read as an act of refusal on the part of the object to be taken up and destroyed in this way.”

What this means is that many of the constituent elements of the clinical picture of melancholia sketched above – particularly the relentless internalized self-violence – are screened out of postcolonial engagements with the topic. Such adaptations as a rule emphasize the non-digested incorporation of the lost object, and of course the facet of  ungrievable loss, but then sidestep the resultant reflexive dynamic – the broader libidinal economy – of radical self-hate which ensures that melancholia is always more than a facet of identification.

What becomes evident then is the importance of distinguishing between forms of identification which have a melancholic character and the pathological condition of melancholia in and of itself. Both such uses are of course apparent in Freud’s (1917, 1921, 1923) own work. Nonetheless, this distinction, so often lacking in the spiralling literature on postcolonial melancholia, nonetheless deserves reiteration. On the one hand we are concerned with melancholia as diagnostic structure, a pathological assumption of the place of the dead which consigns the melancholic to a state of purgatory. On the other we have in mind a mode of identification in which lost objects are retained as a way of building the ego. Although this may sound like a small qualification it is vital, separating as it does a psychotic condition from an everyday modality of identification present in each and every ego. This clinical distinction will have important ramifications, as we will go on to see, both in respect of how we understand the social application of melancholia and in terms of how we under the question of “cross-racial” attachments as addressed in this paper.

Forter’s (2003) essay “Against melancholia” isolates two reoccurring problems that characterize much of the literature that attempts a rehabilitation of the notion. The first pivots on a crucial misunderstanding, namely the idea that mourning entails a forgetting, relinquishing, indeed, the apparent erasure of the lost object which is thus consigned to the oblivion of non-memory. Once such a categorization is in place, melancholia can be pictured as the only method for the faithful preservation of the object. Brophy’s (2002: 267) assertion of melancholia “as mechanism of memory” able to resist the “recuperative pressures” of prevailing prescriptions of gender, race and class, is an apt case in point. What such a view (purposefully?) overlooks is the fact that what has been lost remains unconscious to the melancholic. The “melancholic’s unconscious incorporation … prevents the object from being remembered, in part because it confuses self and other”, a confusion which makes it near impossible “for the other to become an object of memory or consciousness” (Forter, 2003: 138). Mourning, in short, is not tantamount to forgetting. Insofar as it involves a systematic work of detachment from the lost object, mourning can in fact be viewed as a precondition for the memorialisation of this object. Mourning enables a gradual differentiation between ego and object, a state when the ego is no longer completely fused with the object; in this way it is the basis for remembrance.

The depathologizing of melancholia, furthermore, risks encouraging a misguided celebration, indeed, the collective cultivation of a state characterized by “numb disconnection and a self-loathing whose logical conclusion is suicide” (Forter, 2003: 139). What is in question here is not only a complete evasion of the affective reality of melancholia, but of theoretical conjecture completely over-riding the reality of lived experience in a way that encourages “a collective self-hatred whose progressive implications are far from clear” (ibid).

One may extend the above critique by posing a question to such celebratory treatments of melancholia: to what ends – ideological, self-justificatory – is this object, this proposed melancholic attachment, being used? If it has a pragmatic function, serving perhaps as a support of identity, as an argumentative warrant or some or other sort, then it would seem less than truly melancholic. This would be less a case of ethical fidelity to the object and more an instance of its instrumental use. If the latter is indeed the case, then we are most likely dealing with a fetishistic rather than melancholic object.

Frosh (2012b: 41) highlights a further drawback of such valorizing conceptualizations:
“[I]n imagining the existence of a lost object that can … be “recovered”, a mythology is created … a kind of romance of origin that can be called on to establish the distinctiveness … to which the group can return”. The danger is that “what is produced is something fantasmagoric and potentially reactionary, the lost object becoming [thus] … a call back to a neverland of imagined time” (ibid). Forter (2003: 163-64) adds to this the warning that “the hostile component of melancholic ambivalence is often displaced onto convenient scapegoats”. This is a pronounced risk inasmuch as the ego in and of itself can, as Butler (1997) intimates, never be a wholly satisfying substitute for the lost and now hated object. There are thus, for Forter (2003: 143), serious political risks in attempting to utilize melancholia for progressive ends, particularly given the possibility of “the channelling of melancholic rage toward the socially vulnerable”.

Contrived losses
Having developed this critique of how melancholia has often been applied, we may now return to a more focussed discussion of the Apartheid Archive narratives. We might follow Butler half of the way here, accepting her thoughts on barred love and identification, but stopping short of assuming the full machinery of the model of melancholia. In light of the above critique, we might suggest that Butler most helps us to see is less a type of melancholic cultural disposition, than patterns of refused identification. The key here is not so much the lost relationship that remains unmourned, internalized; this fact is of secondary importance relative to the identification it shores up. So, rather than a given formation of identification being the outcome of a more pervasive and general condition of melancholia, I will offer that refused identification is the primary phenomenon here, which may or may not have a melancholic quality to it.

Turning back then to the narrative material discussed above, we might now pose a series of more focussed questions. Firstly, are we dealing with a properly “ungrieved” or unconscious loss, or, a thoroughly conscious, declarable loss? In the narrative cited above we are surely dealing with conscious losses, conscious enough that they can be explored in a form of public writing (certainly, in texts destined for an archive). Of course, one can argue that in the Dyson text there is grief, even if held in abeyance and never fully declared given the apparent absence – at the time – of any “public recognition or discourse through which such a loss might be named and mourned” (Butler, 1997: 139). The spectre of unreality that Butler speaks of seems apparent here. We need to keep open the possibility that the remorse admitted prior to this point may not have been significantly registered, hence its return here in an unresolved form. That is to say, the difficulty of distinguishing between conscious and unconscious losses is not as simple as it may appear, especially given Freud’s (1917) memorable declaration that the melancholic knows full well whom they have lost, just not what they have lost in them. So, in the cases of Phyllis and Dyson, what appears to be a conscious loss may nonetheless be tied by an invisible thread to a lost quality that cannot be retrieved. This is part of what ties the melancholic so inextricably to the dead: the fact that they do not know and cannot represent exactly what has been lost. This loss, furthermore, is not delimited, differentiable in its relation to other libidinal objects, which is to say that it is effectively the loss of everything.

The counter-argument here is that what we are dealing with are contrived losses, experienced only after the fact, as a way of the narrator’s attempts to rehabilitate an image of themselves not wholly reducible to the racist social relations of the time. In this respect the double temporality of the extracts, written in a decidedly post-apartheid voice, of apartheid-era experiences, is undoubtedly a factor. Whereas, during apartheid, there was no adequate social framework or representational space to support this mourning – which, as such, was never fully processed, never supported by broad symbolic recognition – the discursive context of post-apartheid South Africa entails a very different set of imperatives. What we can safely assume is required of such white post-apartheid retellings is that the narrator invoke at least the possibility of a mourning, providing thus the “proof” of feelings of a humanity not wholly determined by racism. It seems after all true that in both cases there is a suspension of remorse an odd resignation – even, ultimately, disinterestedness – with reference to the lost libidinal attachment that, in the final analysis, appears dispensable. As such we might ask: is this attitude the result of foreclosed attachments that meant such losses did not count more significantly, or, more disturbingly, was this “foreclosure” simply due to a racist under-valuation of the person in question? More directly: is this more a case of mimed melancholia than a melancholia of an ostensibly “ethical” sort?

If there is a properly melancholic aspect to these reminiscences of Dyson and Phyllis, then it would be characterized, in clinical terms, by a blockage of retrieval that Freud (1917) described by means of his distinction between word- and thing- presentations. If there was a melancholic loss evidenced by the texts, it would not present in an obvious way, but would instead be only symptomatically apparent, being in and of itself effectively unrepresentable. What this means is that if there is a melancholic loss here it is probably not the loss specified (or implied) as such by the subject. Let us leave this intriguing possibility – of a hitherto undeclared loss shadowing the screen memory of a declarable loss – to one side so as to bring a series of further theoretical issues into focus.

Compensatory (Symbolic) Identifications
I want now to revisit the idea of the two responses to loss that I posed earlier on. The first of these was melancholic and it entailed an unprocessed loss blocking the making of further attachments. This delimiting of attachments would certainly pertain to sexual object-choice, the field of objects similar to the object lost would be effectively off-limits, but it would also foster an exclusive type of identification. The second response to loss, in which I stressed the factor of refused identification, involved the making of identifications of an altogether different order. Such identifications involve a point of reference beyond the domain of the original subject-object relation. It is worth emphasizing that in this second mode of response – – by contrast far more socially-adaptive, psychically-expedient than the first – what has been loved and lost propels a need for compensatory identifications precisely not with the lost object itself. The trajectory of identification is directed towards a symbolic locus beyond the delimited parameters of the relation between the grieving subject and the lost object. This symbolic identification – I will provide examples as we continue – helps disavow the painful significance of the loss and it enables the location of more suitable object-investments. The logic is not “what I loved and lost I now carry within me”. It is not, in other words, a form of fidelity to the lost object which is maintained even at the price of the self-ravaging subjectivity of the melancholic. It is rather the logic of rejection, of “what I have loved and lost I now leave behind”. Rather than a mechanism of blockage that prevents further libidinal ties, this is a relation – perhaps akin to abjection – of repulsion, a rejection of the object whose value is now drastically diminished and denied. It is a rejection, furthermore, that accordingly compels the search for replacement objects to assume the now vacant place of the lost object. In the first – that is, melancholic – response to loss, pain is extended indefinitely. The fidelity of the melancholic, we might venture, is not only to a lost object, but also to the pain inflicted by its loss.

In the second (non-melancholic) response there is, by notable contrast, amelioration; there is no fidelity to the object; the object is instead demeaned, de-valued in comparison to a series of narcissistically-bound, “closer to home” object-investments. We are dealing, in this latter case, more than anything else, with a defensive operation which deals with loss by replacement, by means of a narcissistic over-evaluation of the ego and its adjourning field of objects and symbolic values. It may well entail a mournful posture, but it is by no means melancholic.

A distinctive relation to the world of symbolic articulation is involved in each of these two cases. I have already stressed that the refused identification that I take to be the predominant factor in the above narratives – a type of “identification on the rebound” – involves a push towards symbolic identifications beyond the immediate subject-object relation. This amounts to an opening up of a broader socio-symbolic horizon. The unprocessed losses of melancholia, by contrast, are pathological losses that are denied social articulation and symbolic comprehension. Such losses are effectively shortcircuited, reflexively arcing back upon the ego which becomes the target of its own punishment. They cannot, furthermore, be adequately expressed given that the disjunction between object- and word-presentation affords no articulation of what has been lost. It is precisely in this respect that the precision of the existing Freudian (1917) clinical model of melancholia – too easily dismissed by more celebratory treatments of the notion – proves so vital. In the Dyson and Phyllis examples we are dealing with a thoroughly neurotic loss. This is not a seizing up of the ego, or an inability to make further investments (libidinal cathexes) in the external world. It represents instead a flourishing of symbolic identifications – such as that of a vegetarian anti-apartheid novelist in the Phyllis narrative – that reach beyond the confines of the ego-object dyad.

To be sure, I am not suggesting that no loss has occurred, or that it is negligible. I am stressing rather that this is a type of loss that has been managed via various repressions and substitutions, that it is a non-psychotic loss which thus can be dealt with within the terms of the prevailing symbolic and thus ideological order. However, to claim that we are dealing with a neurotic loss incurs a question. Is this not a contradictory response, especially given Butler’s (1997: 139) suggestive idea – accurate I think, in the context of our examples – that within the given socio-political condition, there is no adequate “public recognition or discourse through which such a loss might be named”. While no adequate discourse may have existed to express the lost “inter-racial” intimacy, what certainly did exist was the broader symbolic network of  possible identifications through which a relation to prevailing familial or community roles was still retained, indeed, affirmed. A case in point may be located in this paper’s companion piece, in that article’s discussion of animal mediators, of fantasy as a means of responding to discursive impasse. The resulting “answers” to the dilemma of how the white child is to locate themselves in such “inter-racial” relationships seemed precisely to affirm existing community roles and familial positions, neutralizing rather than radicalizing moments of social contradiction.

One further detail from the Phyllis extract proves, in retrospect, telling. Whereas a type of identification certainly does seem to be set in motion here, it is not of a melancholic sort – the prospective identification with Phyllis seems to have been thoroughly “metabolized” – but, as noted in the previous paper, of a hysterical sort, an identification with the place of the other. The narrator needs to be taken at face value when she declares: “I am not Phyllis”.  Phyllis as lost object is a stepping stone, a means to an end; she enables an altogether different identification (that of the novelwriting, anti-apartheid white heroine) and is discarded in the process. This, interestingly, gives us a different perspective on a facet of the narrative that has not as yet been emphasized, namely, the fact that the narrator apparently refuses to eat the chicken. What is important in this respect is not so much what actually happened, but the fact that it is included by the narrator in the text. It is difficult to avoid the Freudian symbolism here, in terms of which such “cannibalistic” incorporation is considered as a primal form of identification. The message that might thus be read out of the text is thus as direct as it is counter-intuitive: an introjection is refused, or, more to the point, there is a refusal of Phyllis as object of identification.

The importance of the distinction I am drawing – between what we might call ethical as opposed to mimed forms of melancholia – is by now apparent. The ethical quality of a properly melancholic attachment is qualified by two conditions, one of which is all too easily overlooked in celebratory affirmations of the notion. Firstly, by an absolute fidelity to what has been lost, that is, by the state of suspended, ungrieved loss so often reiterated in the literature. Secondly, by the fact – less frequently stressed – that this fidelity comes at a price. The melancholic tie is one of great pain, even of destruction. The unconscious persistence of a preserved libidinal attachment is not, in and of itself, an ethical matter.  (A great many attachments presumably persist in non-pathological forms; no libidinal tie is easily relinquished). When the preservation of such a tie puts one’s own existence at risk however, then an altogether different order of ethical commitment is in question. By contrast, the neurotic strategy of compensatory identifications and substitute objects is at best a type of “mimed melancholia” in which attachments to the object are jettisoned in the name of recovery. So, while in such a case we are confronted with a kind of betrayal, the second killing of the object – and here I am recasting terms used by Žižek (2000) in his critique of how the notion of melancholia is often applied – the melancholic subject, by contrast, remains faithful to it, refusing at all costs to renounce their attachment to it. The importance of Žižek’s (2000: 658-659) contribution is that he simultaneously underlines the unconditional ethical quality of the melancholic while castigating opportunistic recourse to the trope of the melancholic:

“[One should] denounce the objective cynicism that … a rehabilitation of melancholy enacts. The melancholic link to the lost ethnic Object allows us to claim that we remain faithful to our ethnic roots while fully participating in the global capitalist game … what is wrong with postcolonial nostalgia is not the dream of a world … [one] never had (such a utopia can be thoroughly liberating) but the way this dream is used to legitimize the actuality of its very opposite, of the full and unconstrained participation in global capitalism.”

Or, put in the terms of our current concerns: brandishing the badge of a “cross-racial” melancholic attachment allows one to mitigate to one’s self the ongoing racial divisions that one continues to live by.

Unexpected identifications
In retrospect one cannot but be struck by the struggle of identification that is writ large in the above narratives. These texts are, in many respects, far less about lost attachments than about white subjectivities locating a pole of identification amidst the complications posed by apartheid’s insistence on racial difference and in view of the post-apartheid declaration that such apparent differences do not matter. This observation allows us to return to an assertion made above with regard to a third point of identification, that is, to the topic of symbolic identification that occurs outside of the confines of the truncated ego-object relation obtaining in melancholia. Making such an analytical distinction is vital from a psychoanalytic perspective. It makes the point that identification resides not merely where we might like it to, with whom we might like to, or on the basis of an obvious affective tie; a symbolic identification may over-ride all of these relatively “psychologistic” considerations, and it may exist unconsciously, as an attachment to a symbolic frame itself.

This distinction can be illustrated with reference to the Phyllis narrative, in which, as noted in the foregoing paper, we see the interplay of various forms of identification. After an initial reading, one might treat the hysterical Phyllis-identification as primary. I would argue, by contrast, that the more substantive identification, for which the temporary and imaginary Phyllis identification is merely a conduit, is symbolic in nature, indeed, that it is an exemplary case of the opening up of a broader socio-symbolic horizon. I have in mind here of course the identification as anti-apartheid writer, which, like all symbolic identifications, is an identification beyond any one single person, and identification that maintains a strong historical trajectory, in the sense that it both extends into the future – providing thus a career, a vocation – and links back to a lineage. Such a symbolic identification is far more robust than the more transitory stuff of imaginary identifications; it provides the structuring component which underlies and delimits the ebb and flow of inter-subjective identifications. Symbolic identification plays the role of the anchor that grounds the subject to a longstanding series of traditional, communal and cultural values.

Two important implications follow on from this conceptualization of identification. Firstly, this identification – identification as anti-apartheid novelist – dilutes the radicalism of the apparent identification with Phyllis and the fanciful sexual fantasies associated with it. This is not only because the identification in question is thoroughly acceptable and socially admired – it is hard to think of a more bourgeois and less revolutionary preoccupation than that of a novelist. but also because such an identification recontextualizes the earlier Phyllis identification as precisely imaginary, as work of fiction. Furthermore, we might contend that such an identification is essentially an identification with the symbolic itself, certainly so inasmuch it would allow the subject to take on the position of one able to produce symbolic fictions. The discomforting although by no means necessary implication here is that such a subject would be one that contributes to, rather than dismantles, the socio-symbolic conditions of the apartheid social formation in question.

We might extend these speculations on symbolic identification by turning back to the Dyson narrative. In Truscott’s (2012) engagement with this text [ii], he argues that there is – perhaps contrary to the narrator’s wishes – no real identification with Dyson. The identification lies instead with the “strict white daddy who seemed at times less than approachable”. While there is little evidence that the narrator has made this connection, namely that it is a paternal identification rather than the loss of a “cross-racial” bond that predominates in this text, a crucial facet of such an identification is clearly evident: the conferral of a trait. It is precisely the father’s lamented quality of being inaccessible, unapproachable, that the narrator enacts with respect to Dyson. So, advances Truscott (2012), while the loss of the relationship with Dyson might here be negotiated in all sincerity, Dyson is in fact “a secondary cast member on stage where a[n] … identification with the father plays out”, indeed, the aloofness to Dyson could be “exactly a sign of an identification with the lost white father”.

Truscott’s (2012) line of argument would concur with my own insofar as it suggests a more substantive form of identification occurring beyond the bounds of the relationship with Dyson. Whereas I have termed this a form of symbolic identification activated in a compensatory manner – the assumption being that it is intensified by the loss of Dyson – Truscott rightly intimates that such an identification may have pre-empted, even caused the loss of the imagined relationship with Dyson. The text itself, perhaps unwittingly, includes reference to this point of change brought on by the identification with the father. This provides a nice example of psychoanalytic reading practice, of the double-reading of a text, because the change the author has in mind is the change of his relationship with Dyson which he appears to view as disconnected with the relation to the father. As Truscott puts it, referring to the words of the narrator: “The identification with the father is marked here (the ‘change’ being the onset of the loss of, and identification with, the father)”:

I don’t know how and when a change occurred – even for sure that one did – but I do remember at a certain point becoming excessively formal with [Dyson], avoidant, distanced, as if a type of enacted superiority and distance had become necessary.

Fully aware of the declarative force of the narrative, of what it aims to do by virtue of the admissions it makes, of how it tries to rehabilitate the white (post) apartheid subject, Truscott (2012) reiterates the non-melancholic nature of the attachment. The loss of Dyson is not a cause of “the loss that never was a loss”. It is, by contrast, certainly within the post-apartheid context, “a wholly appropriate and completely declarable loss one which would enable the writer of the text to become a part of the postcolonial community”. The loss of Dyson “seems like a loss the writer of the text “can only hope” was a loss”. Furthermore:

“[T]he overriding wish of the text seems to be that there were faux pas made, that [the author] … did actually almost call him daddy. The most horrifying thing for the writer seems to be not that he held back sincere feelings that must, surely, have been there, but that there were none, no feelings of sincerity, that there were never ‘carefree times before an awareness of race came into play’, that he only ever knew him as a ‘good African’ … that the racist codes of the time were the only way that he knew Dyson” (Truscott, 2012).

Despite the apparently mimed melancholia of the extract, which, incidentally, might equally be understood along the lines of the promiscuous shame identified by Straker (2011) in the apartheid reminiscences of whites South Africans, one might argue that there is, nonetheless, a genuine loss evinced here. What is in question is not simply the loss of Dyson, although this autobiographical fragment is, very possibly, the vehicle through which a more serious loss is expressed. In other words, there may be an intermingling of losses here; the loss described may be of an overdetermined sort. This more debilitating loss – and here we need read the text as produced by a post-apartheid subject in a post-apartheid context – is more probably of the discursive figure of Dyson, of “apartheid’s Dyson”.

“Isn’t it possible that it isn’t Dyson who has been lost, but … the ‘Dyson’ who he knew only through the racist codes of the day, not in spite of these codes. The grief that cannot possibly be professed here, the truly unmournable loss, is of these codes … [It is] grief for the loss of racist codes that helped him to know who ‘Dyson’ was … ‘Dyson’ has been lost, and, with him, not an unmediated intimacy between him and a fellow man, but an ‘intimacy of apartheid’” (Truscott, 2012).

This observation shifts on its axis the perspective of our entire analysis thus far. If the consciously offered story of (Dyson’s) loss does both express and conceal another, more substantial loss, then that unmourned loss is very possibly that of apartheid itself, or, following Truscott’s (2012) argument, that of the “apartheid symbolic” that framed everyday interactions and identifications. We have moved thus from the topic of lost “cross-racial” attachments within apartheid to the topic of the loss of apartheid’s symbolic network itself. Such a change in perspective concurs with the more general argument I have been developing in respect of identification, i.e. the need to consider not only inter-subjective ties and investments (an analysis of ego-level functioning), but to look also to the symbolic factors (the discursive codes, symbolic roles, the behavioural framework grounding everyday interactions) which play a more formidable and foundational role in structuring affects and inter-subjective relations.

This draws attention to a tenet of Lacanian theory. Rather than prioritizing a given affect or interpersonal relationship as the focal-point in the analysis of a text, look to the often overlooked “determining” role of symbolic factors which are often themselves productive of (rather than secondary to) affects. It hardly seem necessary to emphasize that the “apartheid symbolic”, that is, its network of roles and reciprocal subject. Moreover, this network of relations and values provided not only a strong sense of ontological security, but a readily available social script, i.e. frame of intelligibility, for its white adherents. It is no wonder then that Steyn’s (2001) study of post-apartheid whiteness emphasizes the subjective experience of dispossession and displacement particular in white Afrikaners who have felt a loss of home, autonomy, control, legitimacy and honour.

All things considered, it would be surprising if the end of apartheid was not experienced as a debilitating – and potentially melancholic – loss for white South Africans. Such a glowing period of “white narcissism” was apartheid, enabling whites en masse to retain the belief in themselves as extraordinary, as deserving of privilege, that it is unlikely that its demise did not occasion an acute (if not wholly conscious) experience of loss. Apartheid continually affirmed notions of white privilege and entitlement, producing, one might assume, a jouissance of assumed superiority. Such a jouissance is akin perhaps to the jubilation of the mirror-stage (mis)recognitions in which an ego identifies with an idealized image whose capacities far outstrip its own. My attempt to couch the relation of whites to apartheid as one of narcissistic love is, of course, strategic. Having stressed how apartheid’s symbolic network might itself provide an object of melancholic loss, I want to emphasize also that the libidinal quality, the jouissance of white investment in apartheid might equally prove an object of melancholic attachment. I underscore the narcissism of this white relationship to apartheid also for another reason. Toward the end of his famous 1917 essay Freud remarks that the object of melancholic attachment will, in the final analysis, invariably be shown to bear the qualities of a narcissistic object-choice. If then the relationship that many (if not all) whites had with apartheid was tantamount to one of narcissistic love, then a central precondition of melancholic attachment would clearly have been in place by the time of apartheid’s formal demise.

Apartheid unmourned
I have spent a good deal of time in this paper outlining the potential uses and limitations of thinking melancholia as a model of foreclosed “cross-racial” attachments and refused identifications. The unexpected outcome of this critical journey is that there may be a melancholic condition apparent within such texts after all, not in view of a literal application of lost objects (lost “cross-racial” attachments) but rather in terms of certain lost ideals – far more difficult to pinpoint – of apartheid. This is not to dispute the dynamics of compensatory symbolic identification that I have described above, which are crucial in understanding how the “cross-racial” libidinal attachments are transformed into powerful forms of refused identification. It is certainly not to overturn the various critiques assembled above in respect of postcolonial rehabilitations of melancholia. In fact, it is exactly the constituent elements of Freud’s model that have been omitted by such rehabilitations (hostility towards the lost object; the inability to summon the preserved object to memory) that will need to be stressed if the idea of apartheid melancholia is to emerge as a coherent notion.

This line of discussion opens up the broader topic of the unprocessed and unmourned losses of previous historical eras. It recalls thus Mitscherlich & Mitscherlich’s (1975) influential analysis of post-war Germany’s inability to mourn its fascist past, and the subsequent redirections of libido, the multiple types of denial that accompanied this inability. Such losses remain unspeakable for members of the post–apartheid nation, a nation whose founding definition relies precisely on the repudiation of all that apartheid signified. Apartheid is not an object over which grief can be authorized; it is a loss that should not be a loss at all, “the end of apartheid can only be a sign of progress”, those who laments its loss “become “the other from the past” against which the post-apartheid nation has constituted itself” (Brock & Truscott, 2012: 8). Herein lies the dilemma undercutting the ethico-political imperative to identify in opposition to the apartheid past: it neglects the complications of the multiple symbolic and libidinal attachments – the entanglements, to use Nuttall’s (2009) evocative phrase – of past and present, conscious and unconscious identifications. It is worth noting here that the difficulty of this situation, of the unprocessed losses for (the ‘ungrievable’ nature of) one’s history, indeed, of one’s own possible – even if tacit – identifications with the past, are not only those of white but also black South Africans, as Dlamini’s (2009) Native nostalgia makes clear.

An advantage of the Mitscherlichs’ (1975) approach is that they register the breadth of responses to unprocessed loss. As Lapping (2011: 26) stresses, the disavowal of Nazi identity they trace is achieved “not through the absolutist, exclusionary mechanism of … foreclosure, but through multiple cultural, political and personalized mechanisms of  denial”. Their speculations about unprocessed loss in a given socio-historical location are, in other words, more varied and textured than is the case when an assumption is made, as in Butler’s theorization, about a general state of cultural melancholia. This attention to the variety of historical circumstances underlying unprocessed loss is of vital importance in investigating how differing social constituencies within a given social mass respond to unprocessed losses. Doing so enables us to make two further critical remarks in reference to postcolonial rehabilitations of melancholia. Melancholia, firstly, as subjective condition or social state, cannot be expected to map neatly upon given political groups. Of course, one appreciates the logic of the argument that all subaltern identities are, as Crociani-Windland & Hoggett (2012) put it, marked by the shadow of a loss that cannot be grieved. The shorthand assumption here is that “subaltern communities are constituted by melancholia” (Crociani-Windland & Hoggett, 2012: 165). Setting aside for the moment the apparently erroneous supposition that has been made here we may note simply that there is, in practice, no guarantee that so broad and schematic a view would be affirmed. Such are the complexities and ambivalences of psychical life: oppressor and oppressed alike might share a mode of melancholic (or nostalgic) attachment to what has gone before, just as there may be significant differences in how a given social constituency responds to unprocessed loss. As in a psychoanalytic treatment, one needs attend not only to given socio-historical circumstances but the singularity of the given subject’s (or subject community’s) responses to such circumstances, a set of responses which never fit the answer that theory would predispose us to expect.

In concluding, I should be as clear as possible: the unprocessed losses of apartheid need not form the basis of a melancholic formation. As in the foregoing analysis of refused identifications, the underlying mechanism in question may be less that of a type of foreclosure – – as in Butler’s (1997) conceptualization – than a type of neurotic response, that seeks substitutive displacements for the lost object and the sustenance of broader, lateral field of identifications. This, I would suggest, is a less radical and perhaps more likely response. Such losses may, following the argument I’ve developed above, form the basis of diverse compensatory symbolic identifications with a suitably evocative yet nonetheless “empty” signifier, such as “the new South Africa”. That being said, we need to keep this possibility open, namely that melancholia for apartheid may well exist, just as an unconscious fidelity to its values may persist in many post-apartheid social formations.

If melancholia can indeed be used to describe the response of white South Africans to the racist social system that benefitted them, then this usage of the concept cannot but unsettle celebratory rehabilitations of the term. The presumption of the silent ethical dignity of the melancholic, of their heroic loss, becomes extremely uncomfortable in this instance, implying as it does the possibility of an ethical fidelity to a system of massive and brutal social injustice. Such an account of fidelity to a lost and hated – and properly hateful – object certainly does trouble celebratory treatments, but it is, precisely perhaps because of this, all the more accurate for doing so. It would make apparent something routinely overlooked in many adaptations of the Freudian problematic, namely the fact that melancholic attachment is not a question of conscious – or moral – choice.

Acknowlegements.
A special thanks to my colleagues in the Apartheid Archive Project, and particularly to Norman Duncan and Garth Stevens for initiating the project and the structural support and encouragement that made this research possible.

NOTES
[i] I am aware that in using the term “cross-racial” I risk affirming both “race” and “racial differences” as natural categories. This is certainly not my intention. I have opted to retain these terms “race” and “inter-racial” so as to reflect the force and lived reality of these constructs in the (post)apartheid context. Incidentally, it is worth noting that I view “race” as more than socially constructed in the narrow sense of textual or epistemic practices, certainly so in view of the broad array of enactments, embodiments, libidinal weightings and phenomenological and unconscious values that “race” comes to assume in such contexts.
[ii] I draw here on a lengthy email exchange between the author and Ross Truscott, discussing the Apartheid Archive narrative in question.

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About the author:
Derek Hook, Reader in Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, UK and Extraordinary Professor of Psychology, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Previously published in PINS – Psychology in Society:
Hook, D. (2012). Apartheid’ lost attachments (2): Melancholic loss and symbolic identification. Psychology in Society, 43, 54-71.

See: www.pins.org.za

Multicultural education, intercultural education, nonracial education, antiracist education, culturally responsive pedagogy, ethnic studies, peace studies, global education, social justice education, bilingual education, mother tongue education, integration – these and more are the terms used to describe different aspects of diversity education around the world. Although it may go by different names and speak to stunningly different conditions in a variety of sociopolitical contexts, diversity education attempts to address such issues as racial and social class segregation, the disproportionate achievement of students of various backgrounds, and the structural inequality in both schools and society. In this paper, I consider the state of diversity education, in broad strokes, in order to draw some lessons from its conception and implementation in various countries, including South Africa. To do so, I consider such issues as the role of asymmetrical power relations and the influence of neoliberal and neoconservative educational agendas, among others, on diversity education. I also suggest a number of lessons learned from our experiences in this field in order to think about how we might proceed in the future, and I conclude with observations on the role of teachers in the current socio-political context.

Introduction
Although many of my examples are based on the U.S. context and on my research within that context, much of what I have to say is familiar to others in different societies around the world because the power relations and social injustices in the other countries I mention may be similar to the U.S. experience, especially South Africa which, like the United States, also has a history of racial discrimination. Moreover, increasing globalization is making our world smaller and more connected than ever. As a result, whether education is taking place in a large urban school in Johannesburg, a suburb of Boston, a colegio in Buenos Aires, a rural school outside Beijing, a sprawling high-rise community on the outskirts of Paris, or in numerous other places around the world, we face many of the same challenges, problems, and possibilities brought on by the post-colonial condition and by immigration and global economic issues.

Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s ‘Teacher’

Although diversity education is widely recognized as having its origins in the mid-twentieth century United States in what was called the intergroup relations movement (Banks, 2005), glimmers of what could loosely be understood as multicultural education were also taking place in other countries around the world. For instance, Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s 1963 book Teacher chronicled her innovative work with Maori children in New Zealand. Eschewing basal readers and other materials that had little connection to the lives of the children she taught, Ashton-Warner undertook what she called ‘organic teaching’, that is, teaching based on the discourse and realities of her students. At the same time, Paulo Freire’s (1970) groundbreaking literacy work with Brazilian peasants, in which they learned to ‘read the word and the world’, was beginning to have an impact on both literacy and liberation movements around the world. Although neither of these authors used the words now associated with diversity education, they were both concerned with providing students with an education based on the principles of social justice and critical pedagogy, central tenets of what most people today would define as diversity education.

What came to be known as multicultural education in the United States, intercultural education in Europe, antiracist education in the U.K. and, later, nonracial education in South Africa, began with a focus on race. This focus is historically logical and understandable. In the United States, the field has its roots in the civil rights movement while in the U.K. it was a reaction to the tremendous educational inequities faced by young people from former colonies.
In South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement provided a basis for the nonracial movement, and it is still, according to Mokubung Nkomo, Linda Chisholm, and Carolyn McKinney (2004) the underlying basis for the movement which was ‘born out of a conscious effort to transform undemocratic apartheid culture and practice by replacing it with a democratic, inclusive education ethos founded on a human rights culture’. More recently, the focus of diversity education has expanded beyond race alone to also include ethnicity, gender, social class, language, sexual orientation, ability, and other differences. Although there is by no means general agreement on this more inclusive definition of diversity education among either scholars or practitioners in the field, there is a growing recognition that there are complex and important intersections among all social identities that need to be accounted for in diversity education.

Definitions and parameters
For the purposes of convenience, and to be as inclusive as possible, in this paper I refer to the movement that is now most commonly called multicultural or intercultural education with the more neutral term diversity education. Needless to say, there are numerous perceived and real differences among all the terms mentioned, but because I do not want to spend all my time discussing the nuances among these differences, I instead propose some general parameters that I believe most of us in the field would agree with. At the same time, I am mindful of the tremendous differences in context, condition, and history of each society in relation to diversity education. In some nations, diversity education has been concerned primarily with marginalized people of colour, as is the case in the United States. In other nations, particularly in Europe, xenophobia towards both long-term and short-term immigrants is the defining issue (Santos Regó & Nieto, 2000). In South Africa, integrating an immense population that was legally excluded from the full benefits of citizenship looms much larger. Hence, diversity education has not been experienced similarly across distinct contexts. As Crain Soudien, Nazir Carrim and Yusuf Sayed (2004) have argued, One size does not fit all because citizens are not located in homogeneous, symmetrical and stable social, economic, and political positions. How one addresses the differences and the different kinds of inequalities thrown up by the complex social contexts in which people find themselves is a strategic matter.

In the broadest terms, diversity education recognizes the pluralism that students embody (racial/ethnic, social class, gender, and other) as resources to be used in the service of their education. At the same time, multiculturalism is not simply the recognition of group identity, although it has been used in this way in some places, most notably in the United States. Rather, I use diversity education to mean multiculturalism as public policy, as the term is used in Canada and Australia, among other nations (Castles, 2004; Hill & Allan, 2004). Diversity education, used in this way, acknowledges that structural inequalities in society impede equitable outcomes in education, not to mention in life, and it recognizes the role of the state in addressing such inequalities.

For some on the left, multiculturalism is little more than a distraction in the face of the massive global neoliberal retrenchment of the welfare state and the neoconservatives’ outcry for a return to the past. Whether we agree with this assertion or not, it is important to be aware of the palliative nature of ‘feel-good’ multiculturalism unaccompanied by a commitment to social and economic justice (Kalantzis, 1987). The danger of unquestioning loyalty to any particular cultural group may in fact lead to supporting policies and cultural practices that can be repressive; in the worst cases, uncritical cultural affiliations can result in extreme sectarianism and the fundamentalisms that inevitably slide into racism and exclusion of others. We are living with the results of these fundamentalisms in many countries around the globe. Amy Gutmann (2002) suggests instead that the primary social allegiance must be to social justice: ‘Doing what is right’, she says, ‘cannot be reduced to loyalty to, or identification with, any existing group of human beings’.

Related to the issue of group loyalty are competing notions of identity, or what has been called identity politics. Given the roots of diversity education as an attempt to address the scandalous condition of education to which many marginalized populations have been subjected, it is understandable that racial, ethnic, and linguistic identity became the defining features of diversity education. The implication, however, is that all students from a particular group behave and learn in more or less the same way, believe the same things, and share the same values. This assertion is problematic because it essentializes culture, assuming that culture consists of specific elements that can be applied mechanically to all within a particular social group. In turn, essentializing can lead to generalizations and stereotypes that get in the way of viewing students as individuals as well as of members of groups whose cultures are constantly evolving. One problem with a static view of culture is that it fails to recognize that all societies are more heterogeneous than ever. With multiple identities growing ever more rapidly, it is impossible to speak about culture as lived today as if it were unitary. In fact, a static view of culture contradicts the very notion of diversity education today. A more accurate term to describe the cultural fusion that is a fact of life for millions of people in many nations today is hybridity, that is, the synthesis of various cultures to form new, distinct, and every-changing identities.

Acknowledging this reality aligns diversity education directly with social justice while it also challenges approaches – variously referred to as ‘heroes and holidays’, ‘tourist approach’, or ‘polka and pizza’ – that simply affirm differences and include ‘ethnic titbits’ (Nieto, 2004) or mention cultural icons in the curriculum. Thus, segregation and other institutional policies and practices that separate students from one another are generally viewed as impediments to equitable education. This is particularly true in South Africa where, according to Nkomo and his colleagues, the dismantling of apartheid meant the dismantling of an inequitable education system predicated on the separation of the races: ‘If race segregation was the defining feature of schools in the apartheid era’, they write, ‘race integration became a defining aspiration in the postapartheid era’ (Nkomo, Chisholm, & McKinney, 2004, p. 5). At the same time, as Naledi Pandor (2004) suggests, the policy of ‘first mix then engage’ was naïve. She writes, The challenge is not simply racial integration. The challenge is the successful promotion of the values of dignity, equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. The challenge is to teach that skin colour is not a marker of superiority and inferiority and that we can all take pride in our cultures and heritages.

In general, as my colleague Patty Bode and I have suggested elsewhere, access and equity must be the overarching framework for diversity education (Nieto & Bode, forthcoming). Absent this critical perspective, diversity education can too easily skirt the issues of inequality that make creating a just school system, and indeed, a just society, impossible.

Another aspect of diversity education that is especially challenging is bilingual and multilingual education. Both in seemingly homogenous societies as well as in more culturally diverse societies, language differences pose a unique challenge. In countries as diverse as Canada, Sweden, Japan, and the United States, policymakers and the general public have often viewed language differences as problematic and as an impediment to social cohesion (Crawford, 2000; Cummins, 1998; Fishman, 1976; Ota, 2000). As a result, programs such as bilingual and multilingual education, immersion education in the national language, and second language instruction have been viewed with varying levels of suspicion, depending on whether they are perceived as adding to, or detracting from, national unity. South Africa is unique in having eleven official languages, and this too presents challenges and opportunities as each of the languages is associated with a particular ethnic group which in turn has a specific set of political, social, and economic conditions.
Although promoting multilingualism is an official policy of the South African constitution, realities such as the lower status and prestige of languages other than English (and to an extent, Afrikaans) and the social, cultural, and economic capital to be derived from them, are issues of particular salience in this context (Mda, 2004). Finding a balance between promoting language diversity and securing social cohesion is thus a conundrum that will need to be worked out, not only in South Africa but also in numerous nations around the world. What is evident to proponents of diversity education, however, is that an imposed language that neglects to recognize and affirm languages other than the lingua franca (such as is the case with English Only in the United States), is in direct contradiction of the very nature of social justice and equal rights.

‘Profoundly multicultural questions’
When used in simplistic ways, diversity education fails to address the tremendous inequities that exist in schools. For example, to adopt a multicultural reader is far easier than to guarantee that all children will learn to read; to plan an assembly program of socalled ‘ethnic music’ is easier than to provide music instruction for all students; to equip teachers with a few lessons in cultural awareness is easier than to address widespread student disengagement in learning; and to simply bring white and black students in close proximity in South African desegregated public schools, is far easier than interrogating the quality of post-apartheid contact. Although these may be useful activities and initiatives, they fail to confront directly the deep-seated inequalities that exist in schools and society. Because they are sometimes taken out of context – isolated as pre-packaged programs or ‘best practices’ – diversity education can become a bandaid approach to serious problems that require nothing short of major surgery.

Diversity in Education

Diversity education is also not simply about culture and cultural differences, although of course it does embrace these concerns. But a focus on culture alone, as if everyone from the same background behaved in the same way or held the same values, is in the end ineffective (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). The same can be said of the kind of diversity education that focuses on the past glories of marginalized populations. If we agree that it is centrally about access and equity, then we need to accept that some culture-centric approaches based on romantic notions of an idealized past can simply obfuscate the primary goals of diversity education.

Instead, I want to suggest that diversity education is primarily about what I have elsewhere called ‘profoundly multicultural questions’ (Nieto, 2003a). That is, it needs to address questions that at first glance may not seem to be about diversity at all:
• Who’s taking calculus?
• Who’s in talented and gifted programs?
• Do all schools receive equal funding?
• Do all children have access to quality integrated schools?
• Are all teachers prepared to teach – and do they value – children of all
• backgrounds?

I define these as ‘profoundly multicultural questions’ because they concern first and foremost equity and access. In addition, they imply that hidden dimensions of education, including low expectations of students of marginalized backgrounds, are equally vital to consider.
Diversity education must also take into account how asymmetrical power relations position pluralism in schools and society. A simple ‘celebration of diversity’ is not enough because it fails to address how some groups benefit from unearned power and privilege based on their race, gender, social class, or other social difference, and how such power and privilege are used against the very same people whose diversity is being celebrated. The antiracist movement, first in the U.K. and Canada, and later in the United States, is a case in point, particularly because multiculturalism without an antiracist perspective has been viewed by some as simply a way to manage disruptive groups of people of colour (Troyna, 1987).

Social justice
It is clear, then, that if diversity education is to go beyond a simple recognition of differences, it must be aligned with the concept of social justice. Yet this term, although frequently invoked, is rarely defined. Bandied about as if there were universal agreement as to its parameters, social justice has become little more than another mantra (such as the ‘all children can learn’ mantra in the United States that rarely leads to real changes in student achievement). For the purposes of our discussion, then, I want to make clear what I mean by the term. I offer the definition that my colleague Patty Bode and I use: we define social justice as a philosophy, an approach, and actions that treat all people with fairness, respect, dignity, and generosity. On a societal scale, this means affording each person the real – not simply a verbalized – opportunity to reach their potential by giving them access to the goods, services, and social and cultural capital of a society, while also affirming the culture and talent of each individual and the group or groups with which they identify (so long as such groups are willing to live peacefully and respectfully with others).

In terms of education in particular, social justice is not just about ‘being nice’ to students, or about giving them a pat on the back. Social justice in education includes four components: First, it challenges, confronts, and disrupts misconceptions, untruths, and stereotypes that lead to structural inequality and discrimination based on race, social class, gender, and other social and human differences. This means that teachers with a social justice perspective consciously include topics that focus on inequality in the curriculum, and they encourage their students to work for equality and fairness both in and out of the classroom.

Second, a social justice perspective means providing all students with the resources necessary to learn to their full potential. This includes material resources such as books, curriculum, financial support, and so forth. Equally vital are emotional resources such as a belief in students’ ability and worth; care for them as individuals and learners; high expectations and rigorous demands on them; and the necessary social and cultural capital to negotiate the world. These are not just the responsibilities of individual teachers and schools, however. Going beyond the classroom level, social justice means reforming school policies and practices so that all students are provided an equal chance to learn. As a result, policies such as high-stakes testing, tracking, student retention, segregation, and parent and family outreach, among others, need to be viewed critically. Social justice in education, however, is not just about giving students resources. A third component of a social justice perspective is drawing on the talents and strengths that students bring to their education. This requires a rejection of the deficit perspective that has characterized much of the education of marginalized students around the world, to a shift that views all students – not just those from privileged backgrounds – as having resources that can be a foundation for their learning. These resources include their languages, cultures, and experiences.

Finally, a fourth essential component of social justice is creating a learning environment that promotes critical thinking and supports agency for social change. Creating such environments can provide students with an apprenticeship in democracy, a vital part of preparing them for the future (Nieto & Bode, forthcoming).
Maintaining the focus on social justice in diversity education, however, is not easy given the current sociopolitical context of schools and society, to which I now turn.

The sociopolitical context of education today
Given our globalized economy and huge population diasporas, the world is a vastly different one from what we knew just a few decades ago. Public education, often viewed by people around the world as the central way out of poverty and ignorance, will either gain from this unique time or lose its moral authority as the one place where young people of all backgrounds and conditions can expect to receive an education that will prepare them to live productive lives. Hence, understanding the sociopolitical context of schools and society will be decisive in helping chart the course of diversity education in the years ahead.

Defining the sociopolitical context
The sociopolitical context to which I refer includes the ideologies, conditions, laws, regulations, policies, practices, traditions, and current events that define a society. In many cases, these ideologies, laws, traditions, and so on, support the status quo and keep structural inequality in place, although they could just as easily promote equality and social justice. In the South African context, the apartheid ideology supported and enforced laws regarding the promotion of white supremacy and the subjugation of all those who were not whites. Moreover, taken-for-granted societal ideologies, assumptions, and expectations – which are often related to people’s identities, including their race, ethnicity, social class, language, gender, sexual orientation and so on – may work in tandem with the material and concrete conditions in society to create barriers to (in the case we’re concerned about here) educational progress. Although there is never complete consensus concerning these assumptions and ideologies (if there were, change would be impossible), they nevertheless help define what a society collectively believes that people from particular groups are capable of doing and worthy of receiving.
At a personal level, we take in the ideologies and beliefs in our society and we act on them whether we actively believe them or not. In the case of the ideology of racism, for example, Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997) has aptly described it as ‘smog in the air’. She goes on to say: Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in. None of us would introduce ourselves as ‘smog breathers’ (and most of us don’t want to be described as prejudiced), but if we live in a smoggy place, how can we avoid breathing the air? (p. 6).

At the societal level, these laws, traditions, assumptions, and ideologies determine who counts? That is, who has access to education? Health care? Employment? Housing? And what counts? That is, whose language is ‘standard’? Whose lifestyle is ‘normal’? At the school level, we must consider questions such as: How do school policies and practices (i.e. curriculum, pedagogy, disciplinary policies, hiring practices, parent outreach, etc.) benefit some students over others? For instance, in terms of curriculum, whose knowledge counts? What knowledge does the curriculum reflect? Whose perspective is represented? Who benefits? Who loses?

The South African experience shows that in many desegregated public schools, white upper/middle class cultural values have become a normalized and at times required school discourse (Chisholm, 2004; Vandeyar, 2008a; Vandeyar, 2006) to such a degree that the schools prioritize these cultural values, thus marginalizing those from outside this dominant discourse. It becomes a case of systematic assimilation of black students into white culture in order to be part of the school.

At the individual level of biases and expectations, the sociopolitical context manifests through teachers’ and administrators’ practices and decisions. For instance, in terms of teachers’ relationships with students, who is favoured? This is particularly evident in the United States where research has shown that pre-service teachers expect – and want – to teach students much like themselves (Irvine, 2003). And since about 90% of all teachers are white, middle-class, and English monolingual speakers, that leaves little room for immigrants, those who speak languages other than English, the poor, and students of colour. Decisions about who is gifted and talented and who needs to be in special education are also affected by teachers’ biases. For example, in the United States, black and Latino students are chronically underrepresented in programs for the gifted and talented, being only half as likely to be placed in a class for the gifted as are white students, even though they may be equally gifted (Harry & Klingner, 2006.).

Changing demographics and diasporas
The current sociopolitical context also includes dramatically changing demographics in both the society in general and in classrooms in particular. Whether we live in small hamlets or large urban centers, whether we are from Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, or anywhere else, our world has changed enormously in the past several decades, and it will continue to do so. For example, what were once fairly homogeneous populations are now characterized by a tremendous diversity of race, ethnicity, and language, among other differences. In some cases, such as the United States and South Africa, diversity has always been a fact of life – although it has not always been acknowledged, accepted, or adequately dealt with. In other nations, the demographic changes have proven to be cataclysmic, challenging the sense of nationhood and community that once seemed fairly straightforward and secure. In all these contexts, children living in poverty, children of backgrounds that differ from the majority, and those who speak native languages other than the common language are now becoming the majority in urban centers and urbanized suburbs, and even in rural areas. Numbers alone, however, as may be seen from the experience in South Africa, will not change the status quo. And even when there is a significant power shift, as has happened in South Africa, it will take many years for changes to be felt by the majority of the population. This is certainly the case in the area of education.

Structural and social inequality
Another aspect of the sociopolitical context concerns the long-standing and growing structural and social inequality throughout the world that invariably results in poverty, inadequate housing, joblessness, poor access to health care, and the attendant racism and hopelessness experienced by many people on a daily basis. In South Africa, the post-apartheid government’s adoption of the neoliberal ideologies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund through the macroeconomic policy known as Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR), has placed the socio-economic conditions and the prospects of social mobility of the poor in a precarious situation in this new democracy. (Although GEAR has been recently replaced by the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA), neoliberal principles are also inherent in ASGISA). This macroeconomic policy has been favourably reviewed by the World Bank, but it has had the effect of economically disempowering poor South Africans (Bond, 2004; Desai, 2002; Gumede, 2005). Since education does not take place in a vacuum, this economic inequality trickles down to public schooling, especially because most public schools in poor townships of South Africa have not yet recovered from apartheid inequalities, even though the education budget has increased in all nine provinces (Ndimande, 2005).

In the United States, educators Jean Anyon (2005) and David Berliner (2005), as well as economist Richard Rothstein (2004) have all argued that it is macroeconomic policies, that is, policies that regulate such things as the minimum wage, job availability, tax rates, health care, and affordable housing, among others, that are chiefly responsible for creating school failure because educational policies by themselves cannot transcend these larger policies. While none of them deny the importance and necessity of school reform, they make it clear that what schools can accomplish will be limited if these larger macroeconomic policies do not change. In his report released in June 2006, ‘Reforms that could help narrow the Achievement Gap’, Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., asserts that education reform without complementary investments in early childhood education, health care, housing, after-school and summer programs, and other social and economic supports (more jobs and a liveable minimum wage would also no doubt help), the so-called achievement gap will never be closed. He goes on to warn about the pitfalls of creating a society that is increasingly characterized as having a very few ‘haves’ and many ‘have-nots’. He writes: If as a society we choose to preserve big social class differences, we must necessarily also accept substantial gaps between the achievement of lower-class and middle-class children. Closing those gaps requires not only better schools, although those are certainly needed, but also reform in the social and economic institutions that prepare children to learn in different ways. It will not be cheap.

It is clear, then, that dramatic inequalities exist in the access that students around the globe have to an excellent, high quality education, inequalities that are lamentably too frequently based on race, social class, language, and other differences. No matter how much schools change to accommodate student differences, they cannot, by themselves, completely overcome these structural realities. Moreover, given the current political realities we are facing in the world, it is clear that it will take concentrated work at many levels – institutional, state, national, and international – to turn the situation around.

Neoliberal and neoconservative politics
Current global conditions may have even more of an impact on education than local or national policies. Neoliberal and neoconservative movements around the world, for instance, have had a devastating impact not only on diversity education, but on education in general, not to mention on national policies and practices that affect all other arenas of life. In his book, Educating the ‘Right’ Way (2006), Michael Apple describes how right-wing neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies have had a powerful and negative impact on public education around the world. The right, according to Apple, is not a unitary force, but rather a coalition of sometimes strange bedfellows. It includes, for instance, neoliberals (defined by Apple as ‘capitalism with the gloves off’), who believe in a ‘weak’ state and view the world through a market lens and define freedom as individual choice; neoconservatives, who believe in a ‘strong’ state and tend to hold a vision of an idyllic past that they yearn to return to; and religious fundamentalists who want to bring God (or, more accurately, their version of God) into public institutions. Then there is the New Middle Class/Managerial Class, which tends to swing back and forth in the Alliance, based on where they benefit with their managerial skills. Together, this amalgam of ideologies forms the ‘new right’, or what Apple calls conservative modernization: Conservative modernization has radically reshaped the common sense of society. It has worked in every sphere – the economic, the political, and the cultural – to alter the basic categories we use to evaluate our institutions and our pubic and private lives.

There are numerous examples of how neoliberal and neoconservative policies have impeded progress in diversity education, particularly as it relates to social justice. In South Africa, Ndimande (2006) has made the case that the influence of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism has partly contributed to the lack of resources in township schools and has impeded school access and equal educational opportunities. In Australia research in urban secondary schools shows that the introduction of community languages had very positive effects not only at the school level but also in the community (Kalantzis, Cope, Noble, & Pynting, 1990). Notwithstanding their success, many of these programs were dismantled in the 1990s when neoliberal educational policies began to be implemented around the world (Castles, 2004).

No Child left behind

A growing standardization, bureaucratization, and privatization in education are also part of the international sociopolitical context. Needless to say, diversity education has suffered in this sociopolitical context. For instance, the conservatives’ vision of ‘traditional values’, narrowly defined to include only the values of the majority, denies any credibility to multiculturalism. The loss of local authority and a concentration of central control through high-stakes tests and a national curriculum are other important elements of neoconservative ideology. The contribution of neoliberals has been a determined focus on privatization through vouchers, charter schools, and other such schemes. In the United States, the No Child Left Behind legislation is a perfect amalgam of these forces, but it is clear that the United States is not alone in forging such policies. England, New Zealand, Canada, and other nations have also felt the effects of this new agenda (Apple, 2006; Gillborn & Youdell, 2000). In the United States, this has meant, among other things, a growing pressure to ‘teach to the test’, influenced by the No Child Left Behind federal legislation that is, in fact, leaving many children behind, particularly those that this legislation was supposed to help. Moreover, evidence is mounting that the testing frenzy, which is a direct result of the call for ‘high standards’, is limiting the kinds of pedagogical approaches that teachers use, as well as constricting the curriculum, especially in classrooms serving the most educationally disadvantaged students. Recent research has found that high-stakes testing, rather than increasing student learning, is actually raising dropout rates and leading to less engagement with schooling: Audrey Amrein and David Berliner (2002) reported findings from research in 18 states that student learning was unchanged or actually went down when high stakes testing policies were instituted.
From this discussion, it is evident that the sociopolitical context is a complex issue with many layers: it is an ideological problem, an institutional problem, and a personal problem. The solutions, therefore, have to be at all these levels as well.

Hard lessons learned
What to do with the chasm that exists between stated ideals and the grim realities of life is an especially vital question for nations and educational systems to consider. A common response, unfortunately, is to behave as if this chasm did not exist. Given the parameters of diversity education I outlined previously, however, I argue that the appropriate response is to confront these challenges directly at various levels, including the ideological, national, local, and classroom levels. I want to suggest some ways of doing so by proposing three lessons to be learned from our experiences with diversity education over the past half-century or so. One is the obstinate power of asymmetrical relations, the second concerns how changing the situation is easier said than done, and the third is how teachers – in spite of the sometimes stifling and unsupportive contexts in which they work – have an immensely crucial role to play.

The obstinate power of asymmetrical relations
One of the toughest lessons that proponents of diversity education have learned is that, in spite of admirable intentions and enormous passion, no program, approach, or perspective will, by itself, change the sociopolitical status quo in either schools or society. Put another way, power relations do not disappear simply because we implement diversity education. We certainly have many examples of this throughout the world, including attempts to integrate schools in the United States (Orfield & Lee, 2006), address inequality in Brazil (Gonçalves e Silva, 2004), or reform the curriculum in South Africa to include topics concerning social justice (Moodley & Adam, 2004).
What often happens when marginalized communities make a claim for equitable treatment in housing, employment, education, or other institutions (through uprisings, court cases, or other means) is that authorities, while seemingly paying attention to these claims, end up providing a watered-down version of what was demanded, thus subverting its original intention. In the United States, while segregation was outlawed through the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, states were so slow in acting that there was little change for many years. In the end, after years of stalling, some desegregation did in fact occur but in the decades to follow, there was continued resistance to desegregation, ‘white flight’ from urban areas where most black students lived, and so many other ways of getting around the requirement for integrated schools that segregation once again prevailed. In fact, schools in the United States are even more segregated now, in total, than they were over 50 years ago.

South Africa is a unique case because there was no watered-down version of reforms as the post-apartheid government was always committed to democratic change. Yet a formidable challenge and resistance comes from the right, especially those who have the financial power and access to information to manipulate, for instance, school zones so they can keep their own districts segregated (Jansen, 2004). Racism is still evident in South African public schools (Vally & Dalamba, 1999), including a 2008 racial incident at the University of Orange Free State where white students urinated on a plate of food and duped or intimidated black workers into eating the urinated food. Other white students who appeared on national television claimed that this despicable act was an expression of their opposition to racial integration on what they still consider ‘their’ university campus, especially in ‘their’ white dormitories.

In England, uprisings in 2001 led to the Cantle Commission Report (2001). The report, while agreeing that there was tremendous polarization and little meaningful interaction among various ethnic and racial groups, rather than suggesting diversity education instead recommended a renewed emphasis on the English language, a recognition of the contributions of all groups to the development of the nation, and primary loyalty to the U.K. According to Peter Figueroa (2004), Yet, there is scant evidence that a lack of English language or of loyalty to the U.K. were important factors in causing the riots. Instead, social and economic deprivation, discrimination, Islamaphobia, resentment between the White and Asian communities, and political activity by the far right all seem likely contributing factors.
Another example is what in the United States is referred to as the ‘achievement gap’, that is, the disproportional achievement rates among various groups. The ‘achievement gap’ refers to the fact that some students, generally those from the dominant class or race or ethnic group, achieve substantially more than students from the marginalized and dominated classes. This situation, of course, is not unique to the United States. Although the so-called ‘achievement gap’ is generally positioned simply as a problem of students’ motivation, culture, race, or community, or of teachers’ competence to teach, I want to suggest that it could just as legitimately be called the resource gap or the caring gap: the resource gap because achievement is usually tied to widely varying resources provided to students based on where they live and who they are, and the caring gap because it is too often influenced by teachers’ low expectations, lack of caring, and inability to teach students who are different from them. Yet we persist on calling attention to the so-called ‘achievement gap’, once again laying the blame squarely on the children rather than on the system that created the gap in the first place.

Del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho
The Spanish phrase del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho, literally translated as ‘there’s a big difference between what people say and what they do’, or in more colloquial terms, ‘easier said than done’, is another lesson learned from the state of diversity education in the world today. In spite of enormous differences in history and culture, diversity education is a taken-for-granted reality in many nations today. To quote Will Kymlicka (2004), This trend is quite remarkable given the many obstacles faced by proponents of multiculturalism. These range from deeply rooted legacies of ethnocentrism and racism that denigrate the value of minority cultures to modernizing ideologies of nation building that privilege uniformity and homogeneity over diversity.

Yet in many societies multiculturalism as a policy and practice has not taken root in any meaningful way. In many countries, diversity education is viewed either as threatening to the status quo or as irrelevant to the national interest. In other countries, if acknowledged at all, there is little more than lip service paid to diversity and social justice. But even in cases where the principles of social justice and multiculturalism are inscribed into a nation’s most venerable documents, making these concepts part of the very way a nation defines itself, there is still a discrepancy between what is said and what is done. The ‘policy gap’ (Sayed & Jansen, 2001) is thus a reality in even those nations that have written diversity and social justice into their constitutions. This is, for instance, the case with Canada (Joshee, 2004) and South Africa (Nkomo, McKinney, & Chisholm, 2004; Vandeyar, 2006). Multiculturalism as public policy in Canada, for instance, dates back all the way to 1971, but the shift to the right in the 1990s also brought about changes in educational policies that made a commitment to diversity education difficult, if not impossible (Joshee, 2004). As a result, the fact that multiculturalism and social justice are public policy in no way guarantees that they will be carried out in practice.

Diversity education is also increasingly linked with citizenship education, and more recently, with the notion of democracy. Here too, the fact that multiculturalism is, if not accepted, as least grudgingly recognized, does not mean that it is a reflection of democratic practice in those nations. At a conference of major academics in diversity education that took place at the Bellagio Conference Center in Italy in 2002, one of the major findings was articulated by James Banks (2004), the convener of the conference:
In nation-states throughout the world, citizenship education programs and curricula are trying to teach students democratic ideals and values within social, economic, political, and educational contexts that contradict democratic ideas such as justice, equality, and human rights.

‘Easier said than done’, therefore captures the challenge we are facing if we want to make a difference in the life chances of young people around the world. Why have I focused on macro, policy, and institutional levels? I do so because otherwise we fall into the trap of thinking that teachers alone will make all the difference. Most reports about the ‘achievement gap’, for instance, focus on teachers, school administrators, and students: what teachers and principals are doing wrong, how their beliefs and biases affect student learning; how students’ lack of motivation leads to their failure, how their families need to take more responsibility for student learning; and so on. There is some truth in all of this. But it is misleading, and I might say even immoral, to address the problem at only these levels if we do not at the same time look at the structural inequalities in schools that are, after all, simply a reflection of the inequalities in society. If we start at the teacher and student level, once again blaming them for student failure, we are being at best naïve, and at worst cynical.

Teachers change lives forever
Given the bleak sociopolitical context of education I have outlined, what is the role of teachers, and of those who prepare them, in confronting and challenging social injustice in schools and society? I believe that teachers play an enormously significant role in the lives of students, and even in the life of a society. The final lesson from the past few decades of diversity education that I want to propose is that teachers can, and indeed to, make a difference, sometimes a life-changing difference, in the lives of students around the world. Because I have focused my remarks on the larger context in which education takes place, in what follows I shift my attention to the levels closest to learners, that is, the teacher and school levels.

I now want to turn to my final point: that teachers can and do make a difference in spite of everything. Although we need to also work to change societal ideologies and structural barriers, we cannot wait around for these things to happen. In the meantime, we know that good teaching can help to alleviate – although it certainly cannot completely overcome – the situation in which many children attend school. There is a growing body of research, for instance, that good teachers make the single greatest difference in promoting or deterring student achievement. In the United States, for example the landmark 1996 report of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (1996) found that ‘what teachers know and do is one of the most important influences on that students learn’. One widely-cited study, for instance, found that students who are assigned to several highly effective teachers in a row have significantly greater gains in achievement than those assigned to less effective teachers, and that the influence of each teacher has effects that spill over into later years (Sanders & Rivers, 1996).

Let me then briefly focus on the role teachers have in creating success in spite of societal inequities. Teachers, after all, are not apolitical actors in a neutral space. Education is always a political endeavour and teachers are significant players in this context. The most successful teachers with whom I have had the privilege to work are skilled in their pedagogy, well versed in their subject matter, and consciously political in the sense that they know their work makes a difference. Consequently, they embody particular behaviours and attitudes that help them both teach and reach their students, while at the same time they challenge inequities both in their schools and, more broadly, in their societies.

To define these behaviours and attitudes more concretely, I draw on my work with teachers over the past thirty years, and more specifically, on my research with teachers in the past decade or so (Nieto, 2003b and 2005). These are: affirming students’ identities; creating a sense of belonging; expecting the best from all students; teaching students to be critical; and understanding their own power as teachers. I focus on these not because they are the only behaviours that make a difference but rather because more bureaucratic responses to teacher quality such as certification tests and specific courses in subject matter assume that these alone will result in higher quality teachers. While recognizing that other elements besides behaviours and attitudes are equally important, I focus on these because they are equally significant. Subject matter knowledge, for instance, is crucial, but if teachers do not learn how to question it, they end up reproducing conventional wisdom and encouraging students to do the same. Knowing pedagogy is also necessary, but if teachers do not at the same time develop meaningful relationships with their students of all backgrounds, the students simply will not succeed. And if teachers do not understand the life-and-death implications of the work they do, no amount of certification requirements or tricks of the trade will help.
The first behaviour, then, is to affirm students’ identities. Too frequently, students’ identities – their race, culture, language, social class, and other characteristics – are treated as problems to be disposed of rather than as resources to be used in the service of their education. To affirm identities also means that teachers admire, respect, and honor their students’ differences. This affirmation is manifested through the curriculum and pedagogy, as well as through teachers’ relationships with students.
A related behaviour of successful teachers is creating a sense of belonging. Students who feel alienated from school find it difficult to claim membership in that particular social circle and they may instead look to other, sometimes more negative spaces, to claim membership. Creating a sense of belonging means making space for all students of all backgrounds. This sense of belonging is visible in classroom activities as well as in outreach activities with families.

Third is to expect the best from all students. The low expectations that teachers and schools have for some of their students based on both societal ideologies and personal biases make their way into pedagogy and other school practices. Numerous research studies over the past several decades, however, have demonstrated that when teachers hold high expectations for their students – in spite of the conditions in which students live or the lack of resources in schools – they meet, and even surpass, those expectations (see Nieto & Bode, forthcoming, for a review of this research).

A fourth behaviour is to teach students to be critical. Too often, controversial topics such as power and inequality are taboo subjects in schools, and this should come as no surprise. After all, as institutions schools are charged with maintaining the status quo and discussing such issues can be threatening. But schools in most societies also claim that a major goal of the educational system is to wipe out inequality. The contradictions between democratic ideals and actual manifestations of inequality need to be exposed, although it might make educators uncomfortable. Such matters are at the heart of a broadly conceptualized diversity perspective because the subject matter of schooling is society, with all its wrinkles and warts and contradictions. Students, therefore, must learn to challenge the ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1980) perpetuated by societal institutions, including schools. Ethics and the distribution of power, privilege, status, and rewards are basic societal concerns. Students of all ages should be allowed to engage in conversations about these issues if we are serious about teaching for, and about, democracy. Moodley and Adam (2004) agree. They write, We argue that problematizing the contested issues in the context of current debates makes for more relevant and effective learning about democracy than the abstract and idealized exposition of democratic values.

Finally, teachers who make a difference understand their own power. Every day, around the world, teachers matter tremendously in the lives of their students. Let me quote the words of Karen Gelzinis, a high school mathematics teacher I worked with a number of years ago. Karen, who taught in an urban high school in Boston, Massachusetts, was one of the teachers in an inquiry group I led that met for a year at various high schools in the city to reflect on the question of ‘What keeps teachers going?’ On our final day together, we met at a beautiful retreat centre outside Boston. Karen brought a card for me to that final meeting. It said simply, ‘Teachers Change Lives Forever’. She did not really think about it until later that summer when she sent me a long email, only a small part of which I reproduce here: ‘Teachers change lives forever’… Driving home, thinking about the whole day, the verse on the front of the card hit me. I had looked at the verse: We change lives forever. What power! Of course, we all know it. But how often do we really think about it? Does it get lost in the papers that we correct? In the scores/grades that we write down? This has been another of the group’s gifts to me.. I always knew teachers made a difference, a tremendous difference, and I’ve always taken the responsibility very seriously, but to think about it using these words: Teachers change lives forever and ever … and ever … lives … To really think about that, for a long time, is frightening, that type of power, to use it day after day… We are going to change lives forever, one way or another, for good or for bad. Are we doing all that can be done? Despite everything in our way, why do some of us end up staying? Is it because our lives continue to be changed forever, for the better, by our students? What would my life be without Sonie? Without Jeramie? It’s not a give-and-take; it’s a cycle … Once your life has been changed, you understand the power.

Conclusion
What are the implications of all these things for diversity education? And what are the responsibilities and roles of teachers, and of those who prepare them for the profession? Given the current context, I believe these are incredibly crucial questions. At present, most responses to them are bureaucratic: devise more stringent teacher tests; create rubrics, benchmarks, and templates; count the number of courses prospective teachers take; look at college grades to determine who will teach. While some of these may be important, they are certainly not enough.
Let me briefly mention some of the changes that need to take place at both the macro and institutional levels if diversity education is to succeed. Beginning with fair funding of education, for example, which would make a tremendous difference. In the United States, the richest country in the world, the most recent Funding Gap Report from Education Trust (2006) found that across the country US $907 less is spent per student in the highest-poverty districts than in the most affluent districts. In the worst case scenario, The Christian Science Monitor (Huh, 2005) reported that the difference in annual spending between the wealthiest and the poorest districts has grown to a staggering US $19,361 per student! Surely no one can say with a straight face that this difference does not matter.

Since South Africa allocates a large portion of its budget to education, it is important that this money be efficiently distributed and spent, especially on poor schools in the townships, instead of being returned to the Department of Treasury as surplus at the end of a fiscal year (MacFarlane, 2002). Most importantly there should not be a mismanagement of funds in departments of education (Jansen, 2005), funds which could otherwise be used to improve teaching and learning conditions. This would give children in poor neighbourhoods access to public schools with better resources, rather than transporting these children to suburban public schools with better educational resources (Ndimande, 2005).

At the institutional level, removing or reforming school policies and practices that get in the way of student achievement would also lead to a change in student learning. These policies and practices include curriculum, pedagogy, tracking, high-stakes testing, retention, the recruitment and hiring of teachers, parent and family outreach, and others. In teacher education, we can develop programs that encourage prospective teachers to learn more about the students who they will teach and the contexts in which they live, and to respect their families and communities (Vandeyar, 2008b). We can provide experiences – through courses, field experiences, and extracurricular activities – that will help prospective and practicing teachers learn to speak other languages and learn about cultures other than their own. We can create a climate through innovative courses and assignments in which prospective and practicing teachers can become critical thinkers. We can help practicing and prospective teachers understand – through dialogue in courses and seminars, through interactions with excellent veteran teachers, through critical readings, and through reflection in journals and essays – that teaching is more than a job.

Change is also possible if we reform the climate in universities and faculties of education. This is a tall order, but an absolutely necessary one if we are to make a difference. This means recruiting a more diverse faculty in terms of experience and background, as well as determining which attitudes and behaviours dispositions will best serve them if they are to be successful with students. At the societal level, we can advocate for teachers to be well paid for their work, and given the respect they deserve. This means committing the nation’s economic and moral resources to the problem. Both the bureaucratization and the marketization of public education, I submit, are wrong-headed choices. Even diversity education, in and of itself, will do little to change things. What is required is a change of will – as well as a reorganization of national and international priorities – to address the tremendous inequalities that exist in our societies today. The struggle is long and difficult, but the result, I know, will be worth the time and energy we commit to it.

Acknowledgements
The author appreciates the comments of two anonymous reviewers. She also wants to thank Professor Bekisizwe Ndimande for a careful reading of the manuscript and for providing examples from the South African experience to strengthen this chapter.

About the author
Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture in the School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has taught students at all levels from elementary grades through graduate school, and worked at the university level preparing teachers and teacher educators for over thirty years. Her research focuses on multicultural education and the education of Latinos, immigrants, and students of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Her books include Affirming Diversity (4th ed., 2004), The Light in Their Eyes (1999), What Keeps Teachers Going? (2003), and two edited volumes, Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Schools (2000), and Why We Teach (2005). In addition, she has published dozens of book chapters and articles.

This essay has been published in:
Mokubung Nkomo & Saloshna Vandeyar – Thinking Diversity, Building Cohesion – A Transnational Dialogue on Education
Rozenberg Edition ISBN 978 90 3610 128 8
Unisa Edition ISBN 978 1 86888 567 1