Four Shades of Whiteness: A History of the White South African Beachgoer

Abstract

I consider four moments in the politics of belonging: 1) naivety, the beaches as a white playground in the 1970s, illustrated by newspaper clippings, 2) challenge, consideration of the “All God’s beaches for all God’s people” anti-apartheid beach protests of the 1980s, 3) disruption, late 1990s/early 2000s loss of place and confrontation with the out-of-place black body—as analyzed in work by Durrheim and Dixon, and 4) counter-attack, reclaiming belonging and criticizing (black) government in Covid-19 beach protests of 2020/21. The various senses of belonging and exclusion enacted on South African beaches poignantly reflect the change that has taken place in South Africa more generally. Although my narrative is chronological, the four moments of naivety, challenge, disruption, and counterattack are coexistent potentialities of the politics of belonging.