Chapter 6 - Xenophobia and Xenophilia

Summary

Chapter 6 returns to questions of identity and citizenship, specifically what ‘South African’ means by contrast with ‘African’. The terms of this conversation have been pre- and over-determined by violent xenophobia, with major outbreaks having taken place across the country in 2008, 2015 and 2019. This chapter pauses on our understanding of the causes of xenophobic violence, especially South African exceptionalism, before considering in more detail the country’s literary responses to the phenomenon. On the one hand, writers like Phaswane Mpe, Patricia Schonstein and Andrew Brown develop strategies for interrogating xenophobic myths and for cultivating sympathy for migrants. However, some of these techniques hinge on questionable assumptions which threaten their humanising goals. Other South African works, like the film District 9 and an early work by Richard Kunzmann, develop explicit xenophobic tropes which can be understood in relation to the domestication of threat and the negotiation of change in South Africa after apartheid.