Rainbow Nation is a term coined by the then Anglican
ArchbishopIn Christianity, an archbishop is an elevated bishop. In many Christian Churches, this means that they lead a diocese of particular importance called an archdiocese, or in the Anglican Communion an Ecclesiastical Province, but this is not always the case. An archbishop is equivalent to a bishop in...
of
Cape TownCape Town is the second most populous city in South Africa, and the largest in land area, forming part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. It is the provincial capital of the Western Cape, as well as the legislative capital of South Africa, where the National Parliament and many...
,
Desmond TutuDesmond Mpilo Tutu is a South African cleric and activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. In 1984, Tutu became the second South African to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...
to describe post-apartheid South Africa after apartheid rule officially ended after
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
's first fully-
democraticDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
election in 1994, which was won by the
African National CongressThe African National Congress has been South Africa's governing party, supported by its tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party , since the establishment of non-racial democracy in April 1994. It defines itself as a "disciplined...
(ANC).
The phrase was elaborated upon by President
Nelson MandelaNelson Rolihlahla Mandela is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election, who held office from 1994–99. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of the African National Congress's armed wing Umkhonto...
in his first month of office, when he proclaimed: "Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous
jacarandaJacaranda is a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The genus name is also used as the common name....
trees of
PretoriaPretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
and the
mimosaMimosa is a genus of about 400 species of herbs and shrubs, in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the legume family Fabaceae. There are two species in the genus that are notable. First the Mimosa pudica because of the way it folds its leaves when touched or exposed to heat...
trees of the
bushveldThe Bushveld is a sub-tropical woodland ecoregion of Southern Africa that encompasses most of Limpopo Province and part of the North West Province of South Africa and extends into western Botswana and southern Zimbabwe.- Geography :...
- a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world" (cited in Manzo 1996, p. 71).
Symbolic identity
The term was intended to encapsulate the unity of multi-culturalism and the coming-together of people of many different races, in a country once identified with the strict division of white and black.
In a series of televised appearances, Tutu spoke of the '
RainbowA rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere...
People of
GodGod is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
'. As a cleric, this metaphor drew upon the
Old TestamentIn Christianity, the Old Testament is the collection of books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. These works correspond to the Hebrew Bible , with some variations and additions. In the Eastern Orthodox Church the comparable texts are known as the Septuagint, from the...
story of Noah's Flood, and its ensuing rainbow of peace.
Within South African indigenous cultures, the rainbow is associated with hope and a bright future (as in
XhosaThe Xhosa ) people are speakers of Bantu languages living in south-east South Africa, and in the last two centuries throughout the southern and central-southern parts of the country....
culture).
The secondary
metaphorA metaphor is a figure of speech concisely comparing two things, saying that one is the other. The English metaphor derives from the 16th c...
the rainbow allows is more political. Unlike the primary metaphor, the room for different cultural interpretations of the colour spectrum is slight. Whether the rainbow has
NewtonSir Isaac Newton FRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is perceived and considered by a substantial number of scholars and the general public as one of the most influential men in history...
's seven colours, or five of the
NguniNguni languages are mostly spoken by Nguni people, which are a group of clans and nations living in south-east Africa.The languages are a group of Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa including Zulu, Xhosa, Swati, isiHlubi, Phuthi and Ndebele .The appellation "Nguni" derives from the Nguni...
(i.e., Xhosa and
ZuluThe Zulu are the largest South African ethnic group of an estimated 10–11 million people who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Mozambique. Their language, Zulu, is a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni...
) cosmology, the colours are not taken literally to represent particular cultural groups. The implied
rhetoricRhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to persuade. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public...
avoids direct reference to colour in the sense of race (especially when acknowledging that natural rainbows have neither white nor black, the two race-associative colours). The colours are simply said to symbolise the diversity of South Africa's usually unspecified cultural, ethnic or racial groups.
Rainbow influence
Rainbow Nation, as a spoken metaphor for South African unity is uniquely (although not deliberately) represented by the
South African flagThe current flag of the Republic of South Africa was adopted on April 27, 1994, during the 1994 general election. A new national flag was adopted to represent the new democracy....
, which sports six near-rainbow colours.
The term 'Rainbow Nation' is most often applied by the South African media when referring to South Africa in the context of its fledgling
democracyDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
. As such, many non-South Africans know the country by this term. The wide-scale use of the term has lent itself as a quasi-patriotic expression, used in a multitude of applications (for instance, commercial when advertising a product.)
Rainbowism
South African political commentators have been known to speculate on 'rainbowism', whereby true domestic issues such as the legacy of racism,
crimeCrime is a prominent issue in South Africa. South Africa has a high rate of murders, assaults, rapes, and other crimes compared to most countries.Many emigrants from South Africa state that crime was a big factor in their decision to leave.-Statistics:...
and the such are glossed over and 'sugar-coated' by the cover of rainbow peace;
South African politician, academic and noted poet
Jeremy CroninJeremy Cronin is a South African philosophy academic, political activist, and noted poet. Cronin is a member of the South African Communist Party and participates as a SACP politician in the African National Congress...
cautions:
Wider interpretations
Gay-rightsLesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender social movements share inter-related goals of social acceptance of sexuality and gender minorities. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies have a long history of campaigning for what is generally called LGBT rights, also called gay...
activists in South Africa have used the imagery provided by the Rainbow Nation phrase to interpret it to mean tolerance of homosexuals in the country. This alternative interpretation connects well to the international rainbow colour motif as used by gays and
lesbianLesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
s around the world to express their identity, as well as the original connotations of diversity and tolerance expressed in the term, but is an unintentional connotation of the phrase as originally used.
Rainbow coalition
The coalition of
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the fifth largest country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the fifth most populous country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean...
,
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
and South Africa is known as the
Rainbow coalition in diplomatic parlance because the location of the respective nations form an arc on a traditional political map of the world.
See also
- Proudly South African
The Proudly South African campaign, launched by government, business, labour and community organisations, aims to promote South African companies, products and services to create jobs and foster economic growth in South Africa. It is supported by organized labour, organized business, government...
- Rainbow Nation Peace Ritual
The day after F W De Klerk's landmark announcement that the African National Congress and other political organisations would be unbanned and Nelson Mandela would be released from prison, a small group of Capetonians took to the streets in an act of guerrilla street theatre...
- Nation building
- Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the acceptance of multiple ethnic cultures, for practical reasons and/or for the sake of diversity and applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g. schools, businesses, neighborhoods, cities or nations...
- Rainbow Family of Living Light - sometimes called the Rainbow People or Rainbow Nation
External links