The Nation-as-Family Metaphor in Crisis South Africa: Intergenerational Solidarity or National Compliance?

A deepening generational disjuncture has added another layer to the unfolding social and sovereign crisis in South Africa. In the context of thin intergenerational solidarity, and a public health crisis that was the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed the re-emergence of the nation-as-family metaphor in political discourse and everyday life. Nationalism, as the scholarship shows, is a doctrine of crisis and typically deploys gendered metaphors to reassert authoritarian control. Instead of building systems of intergenerational support and solidarity, South Africa’s public culture seems unable to move beyond blaming victims and extracting compliance from citizens, thereby fermenting potential authoritarianism disguised as familial care.