‘(I’ve Never Met) a Nice South African’ Virtuous Citizenship and Popular Sovereignty* Lawrence Hamilton Abstract: What is virtuous citizenship? Is it possible to be a virtuous citizen whatever the form of one’s state? Is it possible to be a virtuous citizen in the new South Africa? In this article I defend some Repub- lican ideas on civic virtue and popular sovereignty, especially as found in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to suggest that pop- ular sovereignty is a necessary condition for active and virtuous citi- zenship. For it is only under conditions of popular sovereignty that the right kind of political agency is possible. I discuss these ideas in the context of modern constitutional democracies, and argue that consti- tutional democracy in South Africa is not an instance of popular sov- ereignty and thus does not provide the possibility for virtuous citizenship. I end the article with a proposal for addressing these defi- ciencies: effective citizen control over the constitution by means of a decennial plebiscite—a carnival of citizenship. Keywords: virtue, citizenship, popular sovereignty, Rousseau, constitutional democracy, South Africa. Introduction ‘(I’ve Never Met) a Nice South African’ is a witty skit that was writ- ten and performed for UK television in 1986 about the arrogance, ignorance and racism of white South Africans. 1 Although this satiri- cal view of white South Africans during Apartheid is in parts insult- ing and unfair, it hits the mark in a number of ways. In particular, the clear association between the illegitimacy of the political regime and the bad or evil conduct of its citizens is insightful and telling. 2 In the common imagination of progressive English people at the time, there Theoria, June 2009 doi:10.3167/th.2009.5611905