A group of people living in a specific territory sharing the common geographical, cultural, economic, and political landscapes is called a nation. So people living in that space must have the sense of being one nation one people that work for the common goals of the nation and stand together to fight against any kind of challenges faced by the nation, thus, can be addressed as nationalism. Until the colonization, South African Blacks were ignorant of the concept of nation and nationalism due to the absence of education. With the passage of time, western education enlightened them which aroused a sense of nationalism that led to the birth of national consciousness. This essay is an analysis of the loss of the colonial identity of the Whites and the reconstruction of the identity of the Blacks in South Africa during the post-apartheid era as depicted in John Maxwell Coetzees (1940 ) Disgrace (1999), and Nadine Gordimers (1923) Julys People (1981). According to Fearon (1999), Identity refers either a soci
al category defined by membership rules and characteristics attributes or expected behavior or socially distinguishing features that a person takes a special pride in or views as unchangeable but consequential. I agree with Fearons idea of identity as it covers all the essential components of identity. In Julys People, Gordimer portrays the trivial colonial supremacy and power reversal between whites and Blacks during the interregnum through the characters, Maureen and her black male servant July. Coetzees Disgrace (1999) is a post-apartheid literary work that embodies the emergence of the new identity of South African Blacks and the diminishing power politics of whites. It deals with how the whites had to disregard their stereotyped colonial attitudes and construct a new identity in order to integrate with the Blacks of South Africa. Coetzee also reveals the power reversal of white and black through the characters such as David Lurie and his daughter Lucy with Petrus, the black African (Coetzee, 1999).