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Mediating Xenophobia
in Africa
Unpacking Discourses
of Migration, Belonging
and Othering
Edited by
Dumisani Moyo
Shepherd Mpofu
Mediating Xenophobia in Africa
Mediating
Xenophobia in Africa
Unpacking Discourses of Migration, Belonging
and Othering
Editors
Dumisani Moyo Shepherd Mpofu
Department of Journalism, Department of Communication,
Film & Television Media and Information Studies
University of Johannesburg University of Limpopo
Johannesburg, South Africa Polokwane, South Africa
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
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now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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Foreword
v
vi FOREWORD
that is divisible into the honoured—those that have power and class—and
the loathed—those that are powerless and vulnerable.
The subject of the foreign Other is imbricated in world power rela-
tions and invites strong political reactions, passions and tempers, making
its treatment complicated. Dumisani Moyo and Shepherd Mpofu, the
editors of this volume, note the ‘uneasy and nervous’ nature of thoughts
and conversations around the subject of immigration, the movement
and settlement of people from other countries. The contributors to this
volume, in their different chapters, journey into the zones of discomfort
to ponder the inconvenient issues concerning the foreign Others that are
in many ways the true wretched of nation-states. It is a critical and coura-
geous work that the writers assembled here have put together: to peel
away the layers of official language and diplomatic accents employed to
hide the ‘thing itself’, the actuality of the foreign Other as the condemned
prodigal child of world order. Naming and marginalising the foreign
Other, in other words, lies in the unconscious of nation-states. From
their birth as institutions of societal organisation and governance, states
have produced insiders in the shape of citizens and outsiders that became
subjects (Mamdani 1996). Citizens are the first-born children and benefi-
ciaries of the social contract who can claim rights and extend responsibil-
ities. In contrast, the foreign Others are subjected outsiders that do not
enjoy the full protection of the state.
Nations are imagined communities (Anderson 1983) that organise
themselves along the lines of history and bloodlines. Nations, there-
fore, have their insiders and outsiders. Part of the self-knowledge of
every nation-state is the understanding that there are foreigners that
must be managed. Nation-states were formed through violence in Europe
(Mamdani, 2004). Their imposition on Africa was also a violent colonial
affair that put much premium on the classification of people according to
race, ethnicity and nationality. As nations imagined and formed themselves
as political communities (Anderson 1983), they drew strict lines between
their insiders and outsiders. The trinity of the state, its nation and country
has come down from colonial history as a monumental monstrosity of
borders.
Nation-states and the countries in which they are situated are systemat-
ically and structurally formed against foreign others that not only have to
cross geographic borders but must also navigate legal regulations, polit-
ical prohibitions and cultural lines in order to travel and seek to belong.
The life of the foreign Other is, therefore, a bordered life that perpetually
FOREWORD vii
lay the blame for hatred and violence against foreign Others on Africans
themselves. Xenophobia and Afrophobia are terms that lay the blame for
the hatred of foreigners on Africans that are victims who violently turn on
each other and not the racial and imperial political history where people
were classified according to race, ethnicity and nationality in the first place.
The shifting of the blame from the imperial and colonial world order goes
further to construct the foreign Others themselves as criminals, terrorists,
carriers of disease and thieves of life opportunities such as jobs, businesses
and intimate partners. The book in your hands rescues the debate on
xenophobia and immigration from myths, fiction and other constructions.
This is a book for all that are interested in the media, human movement
and the workings of power in Africa.
References
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. London and New York: Verso.
Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy
of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mamdani, M. (2004).Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the
Roots of Terror. New York: Pantheon Books.
Mbembe, A. (2001).Necropolitics. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
Mbembe, A. (2019). Blacks from Elsewhere and the Right of Abode. New
Frame.com. Available at newframe.com/ruthfirst-memorial-lecture. Accessed
10 February 2020.
Wallerstein, I. (2004). World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham and
London: Duke University Press.
Zizek, S. (2009). Violence: Six Sideway Reflection. London: Profile Books.
xi
Contents
Index 375
Notes on Contributors
xvii
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
William Bird obtained B.A. and Honours degrees in Drama and Film
from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
While working in television, he began part-time monitoring for the Media
Monitoring Project, now Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), in 1995. He
joined the MMA as a researcher in 2006 and has overseen or been directly
involved in over 100 media monitoring projects on subjects ranging from
gender-based violence, HIV and racism to children and the media. He also
oversaw the data analysis for the biggest civil society media monitoring
exercise in the world—the Global Media Monitoring Project. He has been
Director of the MMA for 12 years.
Sarah Helen Chiumbu is an Associate Professor in the School of
Communication at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She
holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in media studies from the University of Oslo,
Norway. Her research interests include media, democracy and citizen-
ship, digital and alternative media, African political thought, and decolo-
nial and postcolonial theories. She has written several journal articles and
edited two books. Her ongoing work includes edited volumes on radio
and television, focusing on issues of citizen participation and deliberation.
Dr. Patrick Dzimiri is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Develop-
ment Studies at the University of Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa,
teaching development studies, politics and international relations. He
holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Pretoria
and his research interests include human rights, migration politics, gover-
nance, electoral and development politics in Africa, peace, conflict and
development, global political economy, democratisation, human security
and humanitarian affairs, teaching and learning, and social change, as well
as issues of inequalities in multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-ethnic
social settings.
Sarah Findlay is an independent research consultant based in Johan-
nesburg, South Africa. She completed her undergraduate and postgrad-
uate degrees through the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
where her Master’s research examined the roles of local traditional and
democratic leaders in regulating firewood harvesting in rural communities
in South Africa. She is currently the project lead for the Africa Data Hub,
a Bill and Melinda Gates-funded project that provides ready-to-publish
data visualisations and other solutions for journalists in Kenyan, Nigerian
and South African newsrooms to improve the quality of health reporting.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xix