Negative identity may be the most available, functional, and unifying coin of solidarity.
William Zartman
Introduction, and the modern challenges facing South Africa
If we can conceptualize South Africa as a unified idea, we find that it has for the longest time been facing external or internal enemies of one type or another. Before unification in 1910, various local identity groups fought each other, and everyone fought the British and other colonial powers. Both world wars created further friends and enemies in South Africa, long-simmering hate and distrust of the British played an important if diminishing role in bonding Afrikaner identities, and of course, apartheid created an enemy of the few against the majority of South Africans.
At no stage in the last century or two did South Africa (and its conceptual predecessors) live meaningfully without at least one enemy in its sights. This is of course not a unique global phenomenon, quite the contrary.
As South Africa continues to find its way in the brave new multipolar world, where political realism has again so forcefully taken the controls, we stand to learn much from the mechanisms at play in those past conflicts, and in understanding them at a deep level, being able to prevent the repetition of past mistakes, enabling us to break cyclical and harmful conflicts that imprison us, and to face the challenges that we are facing from a solid and modern foundation.
We need not repeat here these socioeconomic challenges, as they are well understood and debated elsewhere. What we will be focusing on is the influence of identity conflicts on the trajectories and potential for success of a country, and hopefully, we will realize the dangers of some our current political decisions and methods.
Identity conflicts
It is necessary to understand the concept of identity conflicts, to a relatively advanced extent, in order to follow the debates presented here, and in order to understand the risks and dangers we are facing as a nation. I have tried to incorporate these concepts into our discussion here without the need for any brief further study on the topic, but readers who need or want to expand their knowledge on this crucial modern concept can read my article at https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/identity-conflicts-or-how-to-waste-time-and-money-on-politics-how-to-effectively-change-the-south-african-political-landscape
or consider some of the material referred to in the resources list at the end of this article.
In its simplest form, identity conflicts (not the same as identity politics) understands how human nature operates in the real world. It is a simple scientific reflection of reality, without being judgmental or critical, and with these building blocks the various conflict sciences then get to work. Our identities are made up of various components – you can be an attorney, a female, a mother, a cyclist, a conservative and many other things, all in one person. Those changeable components form your identity, your values, the “you” of being you. If there is an “I”, it does not take too long before there is an “us”. People like me. Not long after that, there will be a “them”. People not like me. Our identities are of existential importance to us, even though we may never consider it all that much.
Some of the components are flexible and not all that important to us, some we will go to war for. These identities give us a place in the world, it is a literal sense-making lens through which we approach and understand the world.
We are comforted in these spaces, we belong there, we are rewarded for belonging and, often, we are punished in all sorts of ways for breaking the internal rules of those spaces, those safe identities we occupy. This simplified structure and framework play the most enormously important role in how we are influenced and persuaded, in the things we believe, can believe and will probably never believe, it forms the spectrum of what we are allowed to do and believe, and what “people like us” should not accept or believe. The costs for leaving our identities, for changing them significantly, are enormous and complex.
The easy road, or the high road
Using these building blocks, our national leaders, most often by instinct and sometimes by informed design, shape and guide the paths of our various countries and regions throughout history. That history, modern research and case studies show us the rather depressing reality that it is far easier to build a group, a nation in particular, using a negative conflict identity, than what it is using a positive identity.
Having an enemy binds a group together far easier, stronger and longer, than having to build a positive identity in the absence of such an enemy. Conflict studies show such strong, persistent and predictable patterns that the phenomenon is known as the conflict cohesion theory. This observation has motivated leaders and rulers throughout the centuries.
Think of the near-automatic group coherence that follows on debates and campaigns echoing throughout history against Nazis, fascists, communists, Jews, gays, all the racial shades and slurs, Muslims and a long list of other “enemies”. It becomes a type of political shorthand – “everyone knows” how and what “they” are. The fires of distrust, persecution, bias and much worse are lit with the single idea: “You are our enemy, and you are a threat to us.”
Just in today’s global news and social media you will find a list of classical identity conflicts playing out, the “enemy” – also known as Palestinians, or Ukrainians, or Democrats, or women, or immigrants. All of this runs on, and can only be effectively understood and dealt with, the complex mechanisms of modern identity conflicts. As an easy assessment will show us, picking any range of modern examples, it is easy to create that risk, that danger, that enemy. The coherence of the group follows on that enemy being created, nearly as a reflex. Any flagging of enthusiasm simply needs a new incident, a new viral video of what “they” have done now. The work of creating group coherence by using negative conflict identities can be done by any idiot. And have been so done throughout history.
The challenge, in conflict practice in general, and in South Africa’s immediate future in particular, is the building of a strong, sustainable, resilient positive identity, one not built around that eternal enemy.
Does South Africa not have that positive national identity already?
The question is a healthy and necessary one. But I would suggest that concluding that we have already reached that rather rare achievement is naïve and, from a leadership perspective, irresponsible at a time when we can least afford such luxuries. We have made a lot of progress towards some form of a general South African identity, but it is still built around a collection of negative identities in large part. We are still isolated pockets of us, against them, variously defined as circumstances require. Some of those enemies are internal, increasingly, some are external. We are still easiest defined by what we are not, than by what we are. The in-group narrative still completely decides what we believe, who we vote for, and in doing so, we define, and limit our potential, and our future trajectories.
The short, steep downhill – South Africa’s real risks
All the evidence points clearly towards a consistent, predictable pattern in nations or groups built around negative identity – the negative identity focus (the enemy) disappears or is overcome, a positive identity is attempted and failed at (or simply never attempted), and internal fragmentation and complex, intensely harmful conflicts develop from which a country has increasingly poor odds in escaping from a downward spiral of destruction and deterioration. Let’s test this framework against a few geopolitical examples as illustration.
Historical geopolitical examples
Post-World War 2 Western alliances found themselves without that useful enemy, and for a while communism and all the dangers and threats of the Cold War did all that was necessary in cohering nations and groups. It was not necessary to do much work on who we are, because of them, and we were, obviously not like them. With the demise of the Cold War, efforts at either creating a new enemy continue, and efforts at building positive identities are increasingly being shown up to be less powerful and unassailable than what was claimed until recently, with the American Dream being a particularly illustrative example.
The history of, and wars between Somalia and Ethiopia, especially post-1960, are further illustrations – the deeming demise of the enemy, unsuccessful positive identity transitions, and a fracturing of those identities in the vacuum that follows, either requiring a new or renewed enemy, or then that slide into internal harm and fragmentation. North and South Sudan follow the same trajectories. Study Colombia and FARC, culminating in the 2022 apparent end of the “enemy”, and the rise of new conflicts and problems. The problems and collapse of the erstwhile Yugoslavia after the end of the USSR as enemy is another clear example.
Consequences of transition
Before we consider the clearly evidenced fragmentation phase, and apply that to the current and potentially future South African environment, we need to briefly pause and notice, again from historical examples and case studies, that the mutual negative identities (we hate each other / mutually agreed enemies) also in time lead to several very poor conflict outcomes, and the very prognosis for either conflict management or conflict resolution becomes more grim as time goes by. Parties build up a sort of comfortable inertia in those conflict identities – we hate them, we have always hated them, and that is all ok. Who else would we be if not this?
The phase that so clearly follows on the absence (for whatever reason) of a “them”, an enemy, after either a failed effort to build a positive national identity, or simply ignoring that step, is that of fragmentation. The earlier idea, the country, the group, now has very little keeping it together. The energies and purpose of those dangers, fighting those enemies, have left a cold, windy vacuum. Who are we, then?
Tribalism, polarization, fascism, a range of extreme options become suddenly more attractive, more sensible, especially as they fulfil that valuable identity building role, that compass that we need so badly. Here South Africa should heed the very clear, and predictable, lessons of conflict history. As William Zartman shows in his study of the topic, in the absence of that national framework of being built around, existing, the negative national identity, very quickly that nation collapses to the smallest group, not to the level of some abstract country or nation.
In our instance, if and when that collapse happens, when we no longer have an enemy, and when our efforts at building our nation around a positive identity have failed or been abandoned, we will not fall, by default, to the level of being South Africans first, we will seek, and find, our identities in the groups that we are already comfortable with: as Xhosas, as Afrikaners, as whites, or Indians, and so on. I would suggest that it can be argued, with much conviction, that we are already at that stage. This fragmentation should be self-evidently harmful for the interests of the nation state.
Case studies clearly show patterns of increasing polarization, of heightened tensions around resources, the in-group narratives become more radical, less reasonable, the point in those conflicts are soon reached where the mere suggestion of reasonable behaviour, including negotiations, with “the other” becomes offensive, behaviour that should be punished. Extremist options and narratives become more acceptable, and, in a rather spectacular show of irony, soon we have that comfortable tool: a brand new enemy.
Conclusion
I hope that Minister Dean Macpherson allows me to borrow his slogan of “making South Africa a construction site”. As a government, and certainly as a nation, we need to understand these mechanisms and risks, and we need to make a few decisions, soon. Are we going to stick to always creating and having some enemy? Who would that be, and how incredibly dangerous and morally impoverished is it for a nation to build its future on that type of philosophy, as easy and as popular as it may be?
And if, as I hope most of us agree, we cannot eternally rail against the windmills of that “other”, then we need to make a choice between building a strong, resilient and powerful positive national identity, or descending down the hill towards the fragmentation consequences we studied earlier. Building that positive national identity is hard work, and most national leaders opt for the low road, as we can see, or they simply lose control of the fragmentation process, as we can also see. I believe that we are already in the early stages of those dangerous places as a nation. The how-to of building that positive national identity deserves its own dedicated spaces and debates, but for now, I would be assured if we can simply become aware of the mechanics of what is happening, and how we should get to work to prevent these consequences.
We cannot say that we did not know.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. Negotiating identity conflicts in a fragmenting world order (Key Studies in Diplomacy), edited by Mark Anstey and Paul Willem Meerts, Manchester University Press (2026)
2. A comprehensive study of identity conflicts in Chapter 4 of my book Dangerous Magic: essays on conflict resolution in South Africa, Paradigm Media (2023)
3. A shorter discussion of identity conflicts at https://www.conflict-conversations.co.za/conversations/persuasion-across-identity-conflict-lines-why-important-ideas-need-more-than-facts-and-taionality
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.)
(c) Andre Vlok
May 2026