When tears become a language: Frictions in a xenophobic national ‘imaginary’

Abstract

In the past few years, South Africa has experienced three widely publicized xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals. The victims of each of these incidents of antiimmigrant violence were Mozambican nationals and each received prominent media attention: the ‘burning man’ of 2008; the ‘police-dragged’ national of 2013; and the savagely-knifed Emmanuel Sithole of Alexandra in 2015. This article is framed by these incidents, in which the ‘alien’ found their negotiation of identity and history subverted by experiences in the diaspora. It discusses these incidents in order to broadly interrogate xenophobia, and in order to locate the genesis and implications of violent multicultural nuances reported in several hundred televisual broadcasts and newspaper articles across South Africa. A critical discourse analysis of these reports provides a platform for an examination of the nationalist and ethnicitycentred dynamics at play, and attempts to generate an understanding of the historical genesis of xenophobia in South Africa. Diasporic refugee and migrant movements within Southern Africa in recent times have brought about the ‘right to narrate’, hence the article’s enquiry into narratives, sites, sights, media reports and witness accounts that cut across the narrower interests of polities and nation states.

Kaka country: An intertextual reading of national dysfunction in Bulawayo’s We Need New Names and Jinga’s One Foreigner’s Ordeal

“…This is the fate of the 'strangers' in a foreign land, providing a glimpse into the lives of (il)legal foreigners in a space where they are unwanted. This is understood as administrative (in)justice, pushing to the periphery all non-citizens, as rightly observed by both Hove (2017) andJukka (2018). This is the new testament and manifestation of several borders within the 'outside' borders which follow the 'makwerekwere'.…”

“Connection error! Consult the user manual”: The dissonance between ‘digital natives’ and the intentions of mother-tongue instruction policies

“…The political changes in post-apartheid South Africa accelerated the growth of hybrid cultures, languages and identities by removing racially configured human interaction barriers -intellectually and spatially -at local, regional and international levels. The political changes also provided space for many other nationals worldwide seeking refuge in South Africa, even though this positivity has been severely compromised by flares of xenophobia and violent crime (Hove, 2017). Oddly, these messy developments facilitated encounters between people, cultures and languages.…”

The translingual subjects: Shaping identities and deconstructing rainbowism in One Foreigner’s Ordeal

“…The term 'rainbow nation' contradicts its semantic signification in the context of xenophobia, inequalities and inter-ethnic conflicts that have been reported from 2008, 2012 and 2015 to date. Thus, scholars such as Hove (2017) and Vambe (2019) have spurned rainbowism as just another myth and a politicised fallacy that has lost its seriousness. Msengana (2006) argues that race and ethnicity have remained principal axes of consciousness because South Africans generally think about themselves as an exclusive and exceptional enclave.…”

“…Immigrant populations are violently excluded and these are pertinent spheres that demand critical assessment at both the social and political levels. The pastor character uses a religious platform to debate and reflect on contemporary versions of an incendiary and dehumanising politics of exclusion (Hove 2017). Thus, history becomes an attribute of narrative that engenders a new awareness and inaugurates a new critical consciousness (Biko 2013;Gilroy 1993).…”

“…Thus, history becomes an attribute of narrative that engenders a new awareness and inaugurates a new critical consciousness (Biko 2013;Gilroy 1993). Hove (2017) interrogates xenophobia in the South African context of migration and increased mobility and argues that ideas of nation and nationality are increasingly complicated.…”