Abstract

The former South African first black President’s vision aimed to unite and fight racial tensions and inequalities by introducing and envisioning a South Africa for all who live in it. However, twenty-five years later, the post-apartheid South Africa is riddled with cancerous ills such as racial inequality, racism, and failure to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. This paper will attest to the notion that the 1994 rainbow nation ideology is dead because racial inequality is still a norm, and that the implication of the negotiated settlement has preserved racial inequality and its core racist foundations. The ideology of the “rainbow nation” has failed to erode racial inequality in South Africa. It has failed to close the gap between the poor and the rich and most importantly, the “rainbow nation” ideology has shown that it was a one-sided concord dependent on whose privilege matters most and not a collective view to addressing racial inequality. Black South Africans have, therefore, continued to bear the brunt of poverty, unemployment and inequality compared to white South Africans. I argue that the “rainbow nation” has failed to address racial inequality and build the imperative ideology of sameness and togetherness. I will employ a standard method of applied analytical philosophy to perform this task, which is grounded in critical conceptual analysis and systematic rational argumentation.