Striving for equality or equity? Post apartheid reflections of black and white South Africa

This research explores how citizens of the South African middle class construct their knowledge of race relations during the tumultuous transition period of the past decades. My focus is on how individuals reflect upon their life experiences during and post-apartheid. Data was collected through field work including seventeen qualitative interviews, and triangulated with the historical literature, to identify pre and post transitional cultural continuities and changes. The plentiful literature on revolution and transition within South Africa, itself a reflection of the degree of revolutionary mobilization of the past decades, implies a dramatic transformation within the lives and worldviews of the country's middle classes. My research findings, by contrast, found primarily continuity of past thought and few new mental constructs. All South Africans post-democratization continue searching for a national identity and many, especially whites, and in some ways blacks, cling to past conceptions. Conflict between social strata continues to exist, often still defined by race, but more recently and increasingly also by class.