[SAFM] The Reality Check Series - Day 1: Revisiting the National Question

Professor Tshepo Madlingozi opened the series by reflecting on what he described as one of the most important yet insufficiently understood challenges facing South Africa: the unresolved National Question.

Marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Tshekisho Solomon Plaatje , founding Secretary-General of the South African Native National Congress (later the ANC), celebrated intellectual and author of Native Life in South Africa, Madlingozi drew on Plaatje’s enduring insight that Black South Africans had become “pariahs in the land of [their] birth.” More than a century later, he argued, many of the country’s deepest social, political and economic crises can be traced to the failure to adequately confront and resolve the National Question.

Madlingozi suggested that this failure is reflected in ongoing community protests for meaningful inclusion, persistent disputes over land redistribution and historical redress, and continuing debates around decolonisation and Africanisation. These issues, he argued, point to unresolved questions about belonging, justice, identity and the character of the post-apartheid nation.

Central to his argument was the distinction between the National Question and social cohesion. While social cohesion concerns trust, unity and a sense of belonging, Madlingozi contended that genuine cohesion can only emerge once the National Question has been addressed. Without confronting the historical legacies of settler colonialism, apartheid and dispossession, calls for social cohesion risk becoming little more than symbolic gestures.

He outlined four key dimensions of the National Question:

• How South Africans can forge a common nation from the historical realities of conquest, dispossession, enslavement and apartheid.

• How the constitutional vision of a non-racial and non-sexist society can be realised through the creation of a genuinely post-colonial and post-apartheid nation.

• What values should underpin the new nation and form the basis of a shared social compact.

• How South Africa can engage the world as a sovereign, compassionate and solidarity-driven society without sliding into exclusionary nationalism.

He concluded by arguing that nation-building requires what he termed the “three Rs of decolonisation” — redress, reparation and restitution — as the foundation for the fourth R: reconciliation. Combined with ethical leadership and a capable state, these measures, he suggested, offer a path towards overcoming the condition of “pariahdom” that Plaatje identified more than 110 years ago.

The remainder of the Reality Check series built on this foundational argument, exploring how South Africa might confront its past honestly in order to build a more just and cohesive future.

Listen to the full interview: