POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS CULTURAIS DO SUL GLOBAL: uma análise do documento político White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage, da África do Sul democrática (1994-2018)

Abstract

In recent decades, we have witnessed an expansion in debates on cultural policies from the perspective of the Global South, especially from the approaches of the field of African Studies. In Africa, for example, cultural policies have created a new economy and market (SANSONE, 2012), involving different conflicts and negotiations, different modes of agency and interpretation of cultural processes by different social agents and public institutions (XULU, 2005). Thus, this research aimed to analyze transformations, impasses and perspectives present in the debate on cultural policies in South Africa, between 1994 and 2018. The reflection also hovered over the relationship between State and Culture in democratic South Africa. The aim was to reflect on the influence of culture in the construction of South African national identity in the post-1994 period. In South Africa, the cultural policies woven between 1994 and 2018 influence and were influenced by the national memory of that country. Temporally, this research focused on the years 1994 to 2018, a period that corresponds to the construction of the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage, as well as its four subsequent revisions and reissues. The White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage is a political document woven by several hands during the government of former President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1994-1999), being used as a national guide for the elaboration of public cultural policies in the lands of the “Rainbow Nation” post-Apartheid. The first edition of the White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage was published in 1996, being revised and reissued in 2016 and 2017, during the government of former president Zacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (2009-2018). Theoretically and methodologically, this thesis was structured at the interface of discussions in the field of African Studies, Southern Epistemologies and English History and Social Anthropology.