Revista Científica da UDM

1 - Livio Magnaghi - The democratic South Africa between violence and xenophobia

Luca Bussotti

This research is about the rise of South Africa’s xenophobic violence after the fall of the Apartheid’s segregationist regime. Since 1994 (the year democratic South Africa was born) the hope of creating a “rainbow nation” was not fulfilled and the country is still heavily afflicted by violence, corruption, poverty and unemployment, problems that are affecting a growing majority of the population, especially black South Africans. In this environment of misery and precarity, prejudices and stereotypes thrive along with the fear of foreigners, which make up just a little part of the total population but are continuously blamed for the actual situation the country is in. These popular beliefs are the center of a defamatory campaign from politicians and institutions, and have been amplified even more in these last years by social media. But if we look deeper into South African society, we’ll see that xenophobia is also profoundly connected to racism and afrophobia, a particular type of xenophobia directed towards African immigrants. Therefore, xenophobia cannot be explained without looking at the political and social context in which it prevailed, nor its origin in a not so distant past, characterized by violence and racial segregation. Using a sociological approach and relying on statistics, South African and international journalistic sources and detailed reports made by the scientific world and various NGOs, this research proposes to look at xenophobia describing the social context, the attacks’ timeline, the role of politician, social media and xenophobic movements; While also delving deeper into South Africans world of hate and frustration and their ways to cope with post-apartheid broken promises, a corrupted political class, and rising poverty.