Nation building.

A map showing countries with the most ethnic diversity & countries with the least ethnic diversity.

There's this concept of nation-building going on in the higher spectrums of South African society where mixed-ethnicity people are celebrated & mixed-ethnicity couples, especially one with a Zulu female & a non-Zulu male are publicised. You'll see in soapies where families will have a Xhosa grandmother, a Zulu parent & a Sotho child all in one family. I cannot say I condone this concept because put simply, it does not sit right with me. It seems perverse & honestly quiet disgusting. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I still believe in pre-colonial African states but there's a scientific aspect to it as well.

Children of mixed ethnicities often grow up conflicted, luckily there is a English-speaking middle ground in South Africa those children could grow up in but most often than not that child will grow up isolated & not feel like they fit in. Mixed-race children often have certain specific diseases & are often not the best of both worlds some experimentalists think they will be. In fact, it is more likely that a child will grow up healthier with parents of the same ethnic & language group than parents of different races or language groups.


USING CLASS TO DIVIDE A NATION 

Since quiet often ethnicity, religion, heritage, culture & language unite a people & could lead them to be a self-determining region in South Africa separate from other groups, class is used to separate the tribe or nation & incorporate sections of that tribe or nation with other ethnicities of a similar class. I have seen this happen, quiet often Sothos in Gauteng assume Zulus in KwaZulu-Natal as poorer when this is simply not the case. If KZN is so poor, why are so many Sothos (& Xhosas) rushing here to try earn some money? If we're talking of global standards of wealth then Gauteng & Western Cape themselves may be considered poor but, in general, KZN is as wealthy as Gauteng. Often uniting certain groups of people based on class almost gains you enemies from all sides because of the disenfranchised "lower-class" people of various ethnicities you've created. What you've done is create a class war rather than a simple ethnic war. We must never forget that the nations that existed before Jan van Riebeek arrived at the Cape are still mostly in the exact same regions they occupied 300 or 400 years ago so while we want to blend South Africa into this weird, magical rainbow cocktail; we still have the Tswana, Venda, Zulu, KhoiSan etc. regions. These regions have been known historically & have been documented today so if Pedis, for example, feel a surge of nationalism, they know exactly where the borders of their land are. The "higher classes" of people in South Africa aren't that apart from poorer South Africans & are often relatives, colleagues or friends of so-called "lower-class" people so cultural ideas spread very easily between classes. While some want to reinforce the concept of class in South Africa, it is a very porous membrane & an all out class war at this stage in South Africa would end terribly for the "upper class" who have much more to lose. 

Fifteen of the world's most ethnically & culturally diverse countries are in Africa. Ethnic & cultural diversity = poverty.

At this stage, I think it is too late to try any attempts at nation building in South Africa. The cultural divide that existed before has widened irreparably & we'll soon have to divide groups based on ethnicity again. Perhaps, having to forcibly deport some ethnic groups to their pre-colonial lands. Were it 1870, perhaps it would have been easier to unite the eastern part of South Africa into a nation-state but it's 2021, twenty-seven years after the last Bantustans were incorporated into South Africa & some might remember life under a semi-autonomous, self-governing ethnic homelands & see nation-state life as better. But nationalist sentiments are dwindling in a cosmopolitan state, some may feel angered by the system but are likely not going to see secession or ethnic squabbles as an option. So as more time goes by the process of nation-building might naturally happen but it takes just one nationalist or xenophobic sentiment to separate a group & South Africa will be exposed for the capitalist British project / oppresive Dutch outpost it was. Like Babylon & the Roman Empire, a land of many languages will never fully unite