Ideology and utopia in South Africa: twenty years after

In a seminal paper published in 1963, Kurt Danziger produced evidence that English, Afrikaans, Indian and African students in South Africa had quite distinct future orientations (K. Danziger, ‘Ideology and Utopia in South Africa: a methodological contribution to the sociology of knowledge’, in: British Journal of Sociology, vol. 14). English speakers tended to be predominantly ‘catastrophic’, Afrikaners tended to be ‘technicist’, Indians tended to be ‘liberal’, and Africans tended to be ‘revolutionary’. In the present paper the authors inquire into the stability of these positions and find that some things have changed. English students remain predominantly catastrophic and Afrikaans students have moved to a liberal posture, whereas Indians, Africans and Coloured are split between a revolutionary and a liberal orientation. Historical orientation is further explored in this paper by using a scenario and a model history method. App., bibliogr., ref.