The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), which was publicly launched as a think tank in March 2011, was founded to create a platform for engagement around strategic issues facing South Africa. The views across the essays may not be entirely consistent; and the issues they raise may be contentious.

Nation Formation and Social Cohesion is the publication of a MISTRA research project that set out to examine different interpretations and meanings that diverse social actors attach to the calls and prospects for nation formation and social cohesion. The publication links theories of nation formation and social cohesion to actual practices, both focused on the attainment of a just society founded on the irreducible equality of all its members on the one hand, and the factors militating against achieving this, on the other. Ethnographic research in four provinces provides the substance or practice to the theoretical framing of the discourse. The study proceeds by interrogating the theoretical suppositions of nation formation and social cohesion and this serves as a starting point for a thorough reflection on these two processes. Thus a synthesis, and not a conceptual position is arrived at, where the interdependence of nation formation and social cohesion, specifically for postcolonial societies, (and South Africa in particular) can be interrogated effectively and critically. This publication, with contributors Andries Oliphant, Yacoob Abba Omar, Joel Netshitenzhe, Leslie Dikeni, Shepi Mati, Vincent Williams, Robert Gallagher and Feizel Mamdoo, is intended to add to the debate and stimulate new thinking around the diffcult processes that are being sought to build a nation in the 21st century.