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«Блага» апартхейда – воспоминания южноафриканских индийцев о режиме расовой сегрегации
After 1994, the construction of the “Rainbow Nation” became a central objective
of the new South African government, which sought to establish a non-racial democracy
based on equal rights and national unity. Yet more than a decade after the formal end of
apartheid, scholars continued to identify persistent forms of racial inequality, reflecting the
incomplete and often contradictory character of post-apartheid transformation. Against
this background, the Apartheid Archive Project sought to address the legacies of apartheid
by documenting personal experiences of everyday life under racial segregation. Among its
participants were South African Indians, a minority community whose narratives reveal a
distinctive engagement with the apartheid past. Emphasising the importance of preserving
ancestral culture, many participants described the apartheid era as a period in which com-
munal solidarity and ethnic identity acquired particular significance. This article examines
how South African Indians represented the apartheid past within the framework of the
Apartheid Archive Project and analyses these narratives as an alternative to the dominant
post-apartheid politics of memory. It argues that memories of apartheid among South Af-
rican Indians reveal the persistence of a distinct communal identity that has not been dis-
solved by the official ideology of the “Rainbow Nation”. The study concludes that the po-
sition of South African Indians in post-apartheid South Africa remains shaped both by the
legacy of apartheid and by post-1994 legal and political arrangements that have preserved
forms of racial differentiation. In this context, memory narratives provide an important
perspective on the continuing relationship between identity formation, state policy, and
the management of ethnic diversity.