Thanks Zohra Dawood and Centre for Unity in Diversity for invitation.

Audience.

In my comments I will cover 3 things:

First, I will briefly look at apartheid’s construction of identities – and its legacy in South Africa today.

Second, I will examine the South African Constitution to highlight the sections that refer directly or indirectly to the issue of identity.

Third, I will make some comments as to what kind of identity we as South Africans may wish to pursue – and look at the possibilities and challenges that we confront in pursuit of such identity.

Please allow me to make some comments as a curtain raiser to the topic.

For obvious reasons I am peddling in the generalized and simplistic.   Many of you have thought about these issues at great length – I would venture to state that it is currently ournational obsession – and I suspect that some of you have also written on the topic.

The issue of identity is a huge topic with many moving parts as well as quite a bit of fluidity.

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*PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF PROFESSOR ANDREWS. THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE A SCHOLARLY PAPER, BUT A SERIES OF COMMENTS BASED ON THE SPEAKER’S RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP