Rainbow Nation: Growing Up South African in the Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Eras

“It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.”—Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

“For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.”—Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948)

How do the contexts in which we live influence our development? And how do these contexts influence the questions we ask about development and the ways in which we interpret our observations? In this course, we will answer these and other key questions about development through a discussion of human development in South Africa during and after the apartheid era from a cultural-ecological perspective. We will discuss how children’s cognitive, language, social and emotional development, as well as their mental and physical health, are influenced by the environment in which they live—which, during apartheid, was determined by the governmental classification of race. Key topics will include fear, racial stereotyping and discrimination, identity formation, crime and violence, and forgiveness and reconciliation. We will also take a broader view of these topics in discussing what human development in apartheid and postapartheid South Africa can tell us about human development in general. In thinking about human development in South African contexts, we will also discuss South African psychological research during and after apartheid, with a view toward understanding more broadly how psychological research can both influence and be influenced by public policy. How did researchers’ political affiliations, race, ethnicity, and culture affect the questions they asked, the measures they used, the ways in which they interpreted their data, and even whether and where they published their research findings? Readings will be drawn from both classic and contemporary research in psychology, human development, anthropology, sociology, and public health; memoirs and other first-hand accounts (including Nelson Mandela’s autobiography); and classic and contemporary South African literature. We will also view and analyze several classic and contemporary films, including The Power of One, Tsotsi, Catch a Fire, and Cry, the Beloved Country.