Mediating Xenophobia in Africa: Unpacking Discourses of Migration, Belonging and Othering 303061235X, 9783030612351

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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 “Otherness is socially constructed. Whether in South Africa, Europe, Asia, or the Americans, commercial and social media or the political rhetoric they convey are potent forces. They shape the labels we use and to whom they apply. As this volume’s authors demonstrate, the names and terms we use carry moral value about deservingness, about hospitality, and about rights to space and resources. As communal conflict continually reminds us to seek and fear communal solidarity, this book offers distinct insight that explain the dynamic dangers of exclusion. This is not the first book on xenophobia across Africa. Nor should it be the last. Xenophobia is an increasingly prominent feature of a continent grappling with the combined and continual impact of inequality, imperialism, and political unaccountability. Often explained away as an almost inevitable by-product of popular dissatisfaction with government and material conditions, this book bolsters scholarship locating xenophobia where it should be—at the heart of politics and nation-building. One cannot speak about contemporary configurations of class, race, political party, or gender without recognise their connections to fundamental processes of othering and inclusion. The book deserves particular credit for deploying a remarkable collection of scholars and practitioners to surface these themes. This is not a story of outsiders looking in. Rather, almost all the writers are from the region. While many will not yet be known to the global academy, their contributions suggest they should be.” —Loren B. Landau, Professor, University of Oxford, UK and University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Dumisani Moyo · Shepherd Mpofu Editors

Mediating Xenophobia in Africa Unpacking Discourses of Migration, Belonging and Othering

Editors Dumisani Moyo Department of Journalism, Film & Television University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa

Shepherd Mpofu Department of Communication, Media and Information Studies University of Limpopo Polokwane, South Africa

ISBN 978-3-030-61235-1 ISBN 978-3-030-61236-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8 © 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 retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology 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 names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

This compendium of research articles investigates media discourses on migration, belonging and the construction of the foreign Other in Africa. The foreign Other is that troubled, and in many ways also troubling, child of the global interstate system. Be they immigrants under attack in South Africa or refugees in Europe, the foreign Other presents a stubborn international challenge. Human movement is not only regulated but it is policed. When it comes to those that have been constructed as foreigners, the world privately behaves according to the dictum of ‘fear thy neighbour’ (Zizek 2009, p. 34), while openly professing to protect and accommodate immigrants under local and international laws. Xenophobia, which denotes strong prejudice against the foreign Other, is politically denied and socially enforced. Political leaders openly condemn it by day but by night are tempted to resort to it as a political instrument to garner popular support. Foreign Others do not appear to carry the same weight, nor do they go by the same names in Africa. Some are expatriates that are dressed in the glory of their talents and their enlightened aptitudes. Others are defined by their needs, largely poor and hungry arrivals whose appetites for greater opportunities are suspect and need to be watched. Then, there are the illegals, the undocumented, unidentifiable but nevertheless real people that must be feared for their supposed criminality and corruption. They are easily regarded as societal pollutants. Perhaps, Achille Mbembe (2019) is correct in viewing the foreign Other as the easy enemy in Africa v

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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 relations 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 courageous 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 beneficiaries of the social contract who can claim rights and extend responsibilities. 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, therefore, 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 systematically and structurally formed against foreign others that not only have to cross geographic borders but must also navigate legal regulations, political 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

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negotiates changed identity politics. Nationalism as the political ideology of the nation works through the passion of patriotism, a love for and dedication to the nation that makes men and women prepared to kill and die for the country (Anderson 1983). The militant xenophobes that insult and attack foreign nationals in any country might not see themselves as hateful criminals but as dutiful patriots defending the authenticity and purity of their nation. It is in the name of love for country and nation that most of the violence against the foreign Other is unleashed. The nation erects sociological and psychological fences that close in the national as belonging and close out the foreigner as an alien. Even the national political leader, as a state operator in charge of the nation, sees the violence as criminality, not punishment of the hated and feared foreign Other. What is called xenophobia, therefore, might be a passion and a prejudice against the foreign Other that is deeply rooted in the spirit of the nation and politics of the country. The range of contributors to this volume explode the myths and unmask some concealed agendas in the representation of the foreign Other in Africa. The researchers question and tease out the use of power and communication to conceal the reality of the marginalised. The country as a physical territory is a landscape upon which the nation-state performs its natural powers and effects, which includes deploying visible and invisible borders to protect some and punish others. What is a fortress of protection and security for insiders becomes a boundary of prohibition and discipline for the outsiders. The world-system itself, as an organisation of countries, states and nations that have a political economy, is a system and a structure of power that produces inequalities, insiders and outsiders, conquerors and victims. ‘The modern world-system as a capitalist world economy’ (Wallerstein 2004, p. 23) creates and feeds on inequalities that are based on differences of being, belonging and power. The accumulation and monopolistic logic of capitalism that has defined the world economy means that some must have a lot and others very little. Some must belong, and others must remain vulnerable as subjects of tolerance and charity. The celebrated international political experiment of capitalism does not seem to have created adequate resources to protect the foreign Other, while the democratic promise of inclusion and equal rights has not delivered justice for migrants. Democracy itself, otherwise, gets weaponised against the vulnerable foreign Others. It is for that reason that Mbembe (2001, p. 42) laments that, ‘perhaps it has been this way, perhaps democracies

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have always been communities of fellow beings … societies of separation’ of those that belong and those that do not. In this regard, the media play a significant role. If they simply rely on democratic thinking as a framework for understanding the foreign Other and its condition in Africa, then the media are likely to deepen rather than negate the alienation of immigrants. Furthermore, if democratic language remains the tool of engaging with the condition and experience of the foreign Other, then our very thinking and engagement will also continue to be guided by misunderstanding and punishment of the foreign Other. One of the critical qualities of this volume is that, in the main, the authors of this volume go beyond the democratic framework of thinking and the politically correct language of rights and tolerance to unmask the systems and structures of power that not only cause but also conceal the social injustice suffered by the foreign Other. It is a mark of critical novelty how most of the writers are able to avoid the usual essentialisation of xenophobia as a South African problem. In that way, the suggestion that the hatred and fear of the foreign Other is an artefact of the world-system and global power structure becomes obvious. Every nation-state otherwise is systematically structured to be hostile to the foreign Other that tends to be at the bottom of the pyramid of being and belonging. The intensity of the xenophobic sentiment and effect in South Africa can be understood from the country’s colonial history and in particular the apartheid system that placed emphasis on the separation of ethnic and national groups into homelands and promoted the identity politics of separation among South Africans. A South Africa that was internally divided along racial, ethnic and national lines was always going to be hostile to other Africans that crossed its borders to try and make a living in the country. Foreign Africans became ‘the Other of the Other’ in a South Africa where citizens had homeland mindsets and sensibilities forced upon them by law. The historical and cultural bonds of Ubuntu existential philosophy and the ideologies of Pan-Africanism and other forms of black African solidarity have not been able to overcome the systematised and structured politics of nativity and belonging to a state, a nation and a country that isolates foreign Others for exclusion and victimisation. Misleading politics of naming play out on the media landscape. The term xenophobia itself as a reference to a fear and hatred of foreigners does not disclose that the targeting of foreigners derives from the very colonial and imperial genealogy of nation-states and countries. The term Afrophobia tends to

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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. Dr. William Mpofu Researcher Wits Centre for Diversity Studies University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South 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. William Mpofu is a Researcher at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies (WICDS) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of South Africa (UNISA). Mpofu is a founder member of the Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN), a free alliance of scholars that research and write on decoloniality as a philosophy of liberation. His research

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interests are in decoloniality especially the philosophy of liberation and critical diversity literacy. Mpofu’s recent book is Robert Mugabe and the Will to Power in an African Postcolony, Palgrave Macmillan (2020).

Acknowledgements

This book is mostly based on papers that were originally presented at a workshop on ‘Reporting Xenophobia in Africa’, organised by the two editors at the University of Johannesburg in July 2018. The editors would like to thank the Faculty of Humanities Research Committee of the University for the invaluable support given to the workshop. Two young scholars from the faculty deserve special mention and an expression of gratitude for their assistance with this workshop project, namely Happiness Shabangu and Gontse Lebakeng. Happiness assisted tirelessly with the logistics of putting the workshop together and making sure all participants were satisfied, while Gontse helped to communicate with the workshop contributors at the early stages of the project. The editors would also like to thank all the individual authors for their eager participation in the workshop and for patiently staying with the book project until the end. Our special thanks go to photojournalists James Oatway and Alon Skuy for generously allowing us to reproduce some of their outstanding images in this volume. Our gratitude also extends to our respective institutions, the University of Johannesburg and the University of Limpopo, for their different forms of support that made it possible for us to work on this book. Finally, we would like to deeply thank Reinoud Boers for painstakingly language editing and indexing this volume to make it as accessible as possible. The two editors take responsibility for any weaknesses or errors that may be found in the book.

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Contents

Part I Conceptualising Xenophobia, Migration and Media 1

2

3

4

5

Mediation, Migration and Xenophobia: Critical Reflections on the Crisis of Representing the Other in an Increasingly Intolerant World Dumisani Moyo and Shepherd Mpofu

3

Defying Empirical and Causal Evidence: Busting the Media’s Myth of Afrophobia in South Africa Laura Freeman

17

Talk Radio and the Mediation of Xenophobic Violence in South Africa Dumisani Moyo and Sarah Helen Chiumbu

43

Media, Migrants and Movement: A Comparative Study of the Coverage of Migration Between Two Pairs of Sub-Saharan Countries William Bird, Thandi Smith, and Sarah Findlay Knowledge, the Media and Anti-immigrant Hate Crime in South Africa: Where Are the Connections? Steven Lawrence Gordon

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6

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of Representations of Immigrants in the South African Print Media, 2011–2015 Nixon K. Kariithi

Part II 7

8

9

11

12

Framing the Other—From Outside Looking In

Xenophobia, the Media and the West African Integration Agenda Adeoye O. Akinola

147

National Identity and Representation of Xenophobia in Mozambican Private and Public Television Tânia Machonisse

167

‘They Are Vampires, Unlike Us’: Framing of South African Xenophobia by the Nigerian Press Allen Munoriyarwa and Chisom Jennifer Okoye

185

Part III 10

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Belonging, Identity Construction

‘Uganda Can Protect Chinese Investors but Not Its Own Citizens?’ Paradoxical Perspectives in Xenophobic Narratives and Practices Fostering Otherness in Uganda Elizabeth Lubinga Feminisation of Migration: A Thematic Analysis of News Media Texts About Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa Joanah Gadzikwa and Nicola-Jane Jones ‘Africa Must Be … One Place, One Country’: Xenophobia and the Unmediated Representation of African Migrants in South Africa Pragna Rugunanan

207

229

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CONTENTS

13

14

Complicity and Condonation: The Tabloid Press and Reporting of Migrant Access to Public Health in South Africa Thabiso Muswede and Shepherd Mpofu Gateways and Gatekeepers: Social Media and the (Re)Defining of Somali Identity in Kenya’s Security Operations Gianluca Iazzolino and Nicole Stremlau

Part IV 15

16

17

18

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Social Media and Framing the Margins

Social Media, Migration and Xenophobia in the Horn of Africa Ayalkibet Berhanu Tesfaye Not Just a Foreigner: ‘Progressive’ (Self-)Representations of African Migrants in the Media Kezia Batisai and Patrick Dzimiri ‘They All Speak English So Well …’ a Decolonial Analysis of ‘Positive’ Representations of Zimbabwean Migrants by South Africans on Social Media Selina Linda Mudavanhu Picturing Xenophobia: Photojournalism and Xenophobic Violence in South Africa Dumisani Moyo

Index

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307

323

341

359

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Notes on Contributors

Adeoye O. Akinola, Ph.D. is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the United Nations University for Peace (UPEACE), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He has about 12 years of teaching/research experience at four universities in Africa and is the recipient of the 2013 UPEACE/International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Doctoral Award. He authored two books published in 2018: Globalisation, Democracy and Oil Sector Reform in Nigeria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) and (an edited volume) The Political Economy of Xenophobia in Africa (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG). He specialises in globalisation, African political economy, development studies, resource governance, and peace and conflict studies. Kezia Batisai is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Johannesburg and holds a Ph.D. in gender studies from the University of Cape Town. With a research focus on gender, sexuality, health, migration, questions of being different and the politics of nation-building in Africa, she has written several journal articles and book chapters. Beyond the academy, she has more than ten years of work experience as a senior researcher for local and international organisations. She is an active member of the International Sociological Association, the South African Association for Gender Studies and the South African Sociological Association, where she has been the gender working group coordinator since 2015. xvii

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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 citizenship, digital and alternative media, African political thought, and decolonial 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 Development 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, governance, 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 Johannesburg, South Africa. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate 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.

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Laura Freeman is a Research Associate at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI). Her research focuses on the (violent) exclusion of groups based on their (perceived) nationality and ethnicity, with a particular focus on xenophobic violence in South Africa, and rebellion and insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa. While Deputy Director at ALPS Resilience and Conflict and Migration Advisor at Freedom House Southern Africa, Laura gained practitioner experience, including working on projects in communities that have suffered xenophobic violence. She served as an expert external panellist at the South African Human Rights Commission’s (SAHRC) national investigative hearing on xenophobia, social cohesion and migration, and was also course director for an African Centre for Peace and Security Training (ACPST) course on xenophobia in Africa. Joanah Gadzikwa is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the School of Social and Health Sciences at the Independent Institute of Education (IIE MSA). She joined IIE MSA and then Monash South Africa, in 2010, having gained work experience lecturing in communication at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her teaching interests are in the areas of media studies, new media and cybercultures, development communication and corporate communication. She has a Ph.D. in Media and Cultural Studies from at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her thesis focused on identity constructions/negotiations of women migrants in their host nations. Her other qualifications include a Master of Arts (Media and Cultural Studies), a B.A. Honours in Culture, Communication and Media Studies, and a B.A. in English and Communication Studies. Driven by a strong quest to understand the role of the media in society, her research interests include media representation, interactivity in new media spaces, social media and cybercultures. Steven Lawrence Gordon is a Senior Research Specialist at the Human Science Research Council (HSRC), Pretoria, South Africa, working in the democracy and governance and service delivery research programme. He is also a Research Associate in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. He has a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and an M.A. in Social Science from the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany. He has worked in the quantitative social sciences for more than ten years. In the last decade, his focus has been on public opinion research, investigating issues related to social justice, intergroup relations and xenophobia.

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Gianluca Iazzolino is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of International Development and the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa at the London School of Economics, UK. He is currently working on a project on data-driven agro-innovation in Kenya. His main research interests are information and communication technology, migration, informal economy and digital finance, with a focus on the interplay of technology and power. He is particularly interested in how information and value circulate, and the role of digital platforms in the Global South in reshaping processes of inclusion and exclusion. He had done extensive fieldwork in Kenya, Uganda and Somaliland, and has worked for NGOs in Senegal, Burkina Faso and Niger. Nicola-Jane Jones is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg) and teaches journalism and ethics, new media, feature writing, opinion and specialist writing. Jones worked as a journalist for 12 years before leaping into the university world and still writes whenever she can. She particularly likes the thought of subverting an entirely new generation of journalists, is widely published and writes a syndicated column called, ‘The Unravelling Supervisor’. Nixon K. Kariithi is Chief Executive Officer of Tangaza Africa Media, South Africa, and an African media and journalism scholar with research interests in media research methods, African media systems, media economics, media and politics, and business journalism. He holds a B.A. (Hons) from University of Nairobi, Kenya, a M.A. in Journalism Studies from Cardiff University, UK, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Houston, USA. He was previously Associate Professor and Head of Media Studies at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Associate Professor and Pearson Chair of Economics Journalism at Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa. He has held visiting professorships at Cairo University, Egypt; Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; and City University of New York, USA. He has authored over 30 journal articles and book chapters and is the editor/co-editor of five books. His latest book titled How African Economies Work: A Guide to Business and Economics Reporting (2019, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung) is a collaborative work with media scholars from ten African universities. Elizabeth Lubinga is currently an Associate Professor, Department of Strategic Communication at the University of Johannesburg, South

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Africa. She holds a Ph.D. from Tilburg University, Netherlands. Over the years, she has worked in the media industry and in academic institutions. She has published articles in journals and written book chapters, as well as presented papers at various national and international conferences. Her teaching experience spans various communication and related subjects at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her research interests include health communication, communication for development and social change, and political communication. Tânia Machonisse is a Lecturer in the School of Communication of Arts in the Journalism and Public Relations Department of the University Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique. She holds a B.A. degree in Journalism from the same university and a M.A. in Communications from the University of Southern Indiana, USA. Her field of interest is the representation of social minorities in the media. Dumisani Moyo is an Associate Professor and Vice Dean, Academic, at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oslo, Norway. His research interests include media policy and regulation in Africa, new and alternative media, political engagement through media in Africa, journalism in the digital era, and media and elections. Among his major works are two co-authored books: Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (2011, Wits University Press) and Media Policy in a Changing Southern Africa: Critical Reflections on Media Reforms in the Global Age (2010, Pretoria: University of South Africa – UNISA – Press). Shepherd Mpofu holds a Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Languages, Media and Communication at the University of Limpopo, South Africa. He is also an African Humanities Programme Fellow. His research interests mainly include digital media: media, elections, protests and democracy; new media, diaspora, race and identity; and media, violence and genocide. He has published several book chapters and journal articles and has also commentated on media issues in local and international media. Selina Linda Mudavanhu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Media Studies. At the time of writing this article, she was a Global Excellence and Stature Postdoctoral

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Fellow in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research interests include critical media studies, critical race studies, and social media and the politics of representation. Her current research focus is on understanding the ways in which meanings are constituted in social media texts, as well as the likely implications of such constructions on the lives of ordinary people. Allen Munoriyarwa is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg. He completed his Ph.D. in Journalism in the same department in 2019. His research interests are in journalism practice, with particular emphasis on big data, surveillance and social media. His research employs different qualitative methodologies like framing, content and discourse analysis. His ongoing work is around data journalism practices, digital surveillance practices and application of new technologies in African newsrooms. He is currently coordinating a research project on exploring the growth of digital surveillance practices in Southern Africa under the auspices of the Media Policy and Democracy Project. This is a joint University of Johannesburg and University of South Africa research project. Thabiso Muswede is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Information Studies at the University of Limpopo, South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in Media Studies and teaches journalism, global media, community media and mass media research. His research interest is in media and democracy, community media, and media and society. He has published numerous articles in the areas of broadcasting studies, print journalism, the media’s coverage of xenophobia, elections and the land discourse in South Africa. Chisom Jennifer Okoye has over two years’ experience as a general and hard news reporter at The Citizen, a national South African newspaper. She completed her B.A. Honours degree in Journalism at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2017, where she earned a distinction in her research dissertation on reporting xenophobia. Pragna Rugunanan is an Associate Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a Ph.D. from the same university. Her research interests include the sociology of migration, labour studies, changing patterns of work, social networks and community studies. She

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has published on migration, gender, xenophobia, education and citizenship. Her current research is titled ‘Migration, identities and transcontinental linkages: studying the South Indian diaspora in South Africa’. Thandi Smith is a doctoral candidate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She has worked for Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) for nine years and has headed the Policy and Quality Programme for the last four years. This programme focuses on a range of issues, including media policy, regulation and quality journalism. She holds Honours and Master’s degrees in Media Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Her Master’s dissertation examined issues of universal access in South Africa’s digital migration. Thandi has a keen interest in research around new media, internet governance and media law. Nicole Stremlau is Research Professor in the Humanities at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and is Head of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the University of Oxford, UK. She currently leads a European Research Council project on social media and conflict with focus on the Horn of Africa. Her recent books include: Media, Conflict and the State in Africa (2018, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Speech and Society in Turbulent Times (edited with Monroe Price) (2018, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) and World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development, with Iginio Gagliardone and Monroe Price (2018, Paris, UNESCO). Ayalkibet Berhanu Tesfaye is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of KwaZuluNatal, South Africa. His doctorate focused on ‘Migration: challenges and experiences of the Ethiopian diaspora in the city of Johannesburg (2000–2015) and the role of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church’s Ministry’. His work experience has covered issues related to social, pastoral and community development activities, including HIV and AIDS prevention and counselling, and women empowerment. His current research interests include Ethiopian migration to South Africa, the migrants’ cultural traits and social integration.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Fig. 4.7 Fig. 4.8 Fig. 4.9

Men presumed to be involved in violence are lined up and searched by members of the South African Police (Photo: Alon Skuy, 18 May 2008) Interpersonal trust in South Africa (Source IJR, SA Reconciliation Barometer 2017 , 2018: 44) Map showing the basic migration trends between the four African countries analysed. A red star indicates the country of origin and a blue star the country of destination Topics covered in migration stories between Zimbabwe and South Africa Affiliation group of sources accessed between South Africa and Zimbabwe Race of sources accessed between South Africa and Zimbabwe Gender of sources accessed in migration stories between South Africa and Zimbabwe Number of stories with different topics between Kenya and Tanzania Affiliations of sources in migration stories between Tanzania and Kenya Race breakdown of sources accessed in migration stories between Tanzania and Kenya Gender breakdown of sources accessed in stories in Kenya and Tanzania

26 32

71 80 82 83 84 86 88 90 90

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 18.1

Fig. 18.2

Fig. 18.3

Fig. 18.4

Mean freedom of expression index scores (0–1) for Southern Africa, 1910–2018 (Sources V-Dem Database, Version 9) Public hospitality or hostility towards international migrants in South Africa, 2003–2018 (Source South African Social Attitudes Survey 2003–2018) Self-reported knowledge of foreign nationals living in South Africa by level of educational attainment, 2018 (Source South African Social Attitudes Survey 2018) Cluster analysis of the 2011–2015 media content data Lemmas analysis of the 2011–2015 media content data Cluster analysis of the 2011 media content data Lemmas analysis of the 2011 media content data Cluster analysis of the 2012 media content data Lemmas analysis of the 2012 media content data Cluster analysis of the 2013 media content data Lemmas analysis of the 2013 media content data Cluster analysis of the 2014 media content data Lemmas analysis of the 2014 media content data Cluster analysis of the 2014 media content data 20 May 2008. A man leads a mob of men on a main road near Reiger Park in search of foreigners they believed were hiding near a mine dump (Photo by Alon Skuy) 24 February 2017. A man produces his South African identity document after being attacked by a group of men during an organised ‘anti-foreigner’ incident (Photo by James Oatway) 18 April 2015, Alexandra Township. Mthintha Bhengu (21) about to stab Mozambican trader Emmanuel Sithole. Sithole later died from his wounds (Photo by James Oatway) 24 February 2017. A man peers through a gap in a fence while angry locals shout outside. Furious South Africans protested outside a building, claiming that the foreigners inside had weapons. A march took place with a backdrop of attacks against foreigners across select sections of Johannesburg and Pretoria (Photograph: Alon Skuy)

103

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108 128 128 129 131 132 132 134 135 136 137 139

362

364

367

373

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 5.1

Table 5.2 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4

Victim nationality in xenophobic attacks Perceptions of various South African and foreign groups Impressions of migrants by country of origin, 2006 and 2010 The media monitored for the analysis List of topics and description for the types of stories they describe List of all key messages that could be identified in stories Top ten key messages identified in migration stories between South Africa and Zimbabwe Top 10 key messages identified in Kenyan and Tanzanian stories on migration Most trusted sources for information on foreign nationals living in South Africa by hospitality or hostility towards international migrants (multiple response), 2018 Count (’000) of adult population who Reported participation in anti-immigrant violence, 2015–2018 SA media use of phrases/keywords relating to immigration, 2011–2015 Institutional responses to SA’s immigration challenge Legal responses to SA’s immigration challenge Judicial responses to SA’s immigration issue

29 31 33 73 74 77 81 87

107 109 122 123 124 124

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Table 6.5 Table 6.6 Table 11.1 Table 11.2

Faith-based organisations’ responses to SA’s immigration challenge Refugee NGOs’ responses to SA’s immigration challenge Themes Identified and codes used News excerpts on victimhood and vulnerability

124 125 234 236

PART I

Conceptualising Xenophobia, Migration and Media

CHAPTER 1

Mediation, Migration and Xenophobia: Critical Reflections on the Crisis of Representing the Other in an Increasingly Intolerant World Dumisani Moyo and Shepherd Mpofu

Introduction Immigration has become one of the most charged topics of discussion in the twenty-first century. In many countries, it has brought to the fore uneasy and nervous debates around citizenship and belonging, which have manifested themselves in both policy deliberations and media representations of immigration and immigrants. In some countries, it has elicited extreme hatred and violent outbursts aimed at excluding the ‘foreign

D. Moyo (B) Department of Journalism, Film & Television, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] S. Mpofu Department of Communication, Media and Information Studies, University of Limpopo, Polokwane, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_1

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Others’. In many instances, these acts of violence are performed by ‘powerless insiders’ against equally ‘powerless outsiders’, with the former often furthered by power elites for political gain. In as much as these discriminatory practices rob the immigrants of their right to dignity as human beings who have been pushed by circumstances to leave their home countries, they also tend to dehumanise the perpetrators who in the process devalue their own humanity. While a significant amount of research has been conducted on xenophobia, which in simple terms refers to a strong prejudice, dislike or hatred of foreigners, and on some of its ramifications in different parts of the world, little has been written about how it has been mediated, particularly in the mainstream and social/alternative media in the Global South. Worse, little attention has been paid to the voices of the victims of xenophobia to understand its detrimental psychological effects as they experience what in many instances is ‘secondary victimisation’. This epitomises what W. E. B. Dubois (1897) described as ‘ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of framing it … How does it feel to be a problem?’ For to be a migrant is to be a problem. The term ‘mediation’ in this book is used similar to what has in recent years been termed ‘mediatisation’ (Lundby 2009), which refers to ‘the process by which everyday practices and social relations are historically shaped by mediating technologies and media organisations’, as opposed to its general usage in reference to processes of ‘conciliation, intervention or negotiation’ (Livingstone 2009, pp. ix–x). It is used to highlight the power of the media in shaping discourses, not just reproducing them. Understanding how the media report immigration and its consequences, including xenophobia, is critical in today’s world, where the majority of global citizens do not ‘experience’ immigration and xenophobia first-hand but mostly through secondary sources, including personal networks and institutions such as schools, churches and the media (Crush and Pendleton 2004; McDonald and Jacobs 2005). The media, in particular, are in the frontline of enabling this experience since they wield enormous power not only in shaping public perceptions on immigrants but also in influencing public policy on immigration. What has often been referred to as the ‘migration crisis’ in Europe and the USA, for instance, has largely been ‘witnessed’ by many through the media, which play the role of ‘primary definers’ in naming and describing the phenomenon. They use terms such as flow, influx and tide, which

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often generate fear of an immigrant takeover. This, however, does not suggest that the media are all-powerful since the mediation process does not exclude listeners, readers or viewers who also have power in negotiating social meanings (Hall 2006). As such, Roger Silverstone (2002, p. 761) views it as a dialectical process, which is both technical and social, and whose significance lies in that it ‘provides a framework for the definition and conduct of our relationships to the Other, and especially the distant Other, the Other who only appears to us within the media’. In the age of global terrorism, religious extremism and uncertain and often declining economies, immigrants often suffer multiple layers of prejudice and are blamed for everything that is going wrong in the receiving/host countries, from increasing crime, unemployment and overpopulation, the erosion of cultural values and the diminishing quality of social services, such as health and education, among others. In a context where globalisation is under attack and resurgent nationalism is fuelling unprecedented levels of nativism and intolerance for the foreign Other, immigration becomes both an effect and a cause of friction. Increasingly, right-wing parties are garnering more votes in several Western countries, including the USA, Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in part on the promise that they will deliver tougher immigration policies and tighten border controls to keep immigrants out. In the USA, President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ ethos has stoked up strong anti-globalisation sentiments and triggered new calls for what Morley and Robins (1995, p. 8) called ‘a return to the pure’, which is premised on imagined homogenous identities of a romanticised past. Trump’s position was sharply articulated in his address to the United Nations in 2019. He emphasised the primacy of ‘sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens’, arguing that ‘[T]he future does not belong to globalists but to patriots’. According to this logic, immigrants are an inconvenience to the project of returning to pure ‘sovereign nations’ since they simply do not belong and pose a threat to that project. This, together with Trump’s obsession with erecting electric fences and tall boundary walls, underscores what Francis Nyamnjoh (2006, p. 1) described as ‘paradoxes of accelerated flows and closures’, where ‘the rhetoric of free flows and dissolving boundaries is countered by the intensifying reality of borders, divisions and violent strategies of exclusion’.

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In Africa, despite growing messaging around the theme ‘Africa rising’ and an ‘African Renaissance’, a myriad of challenges continue to contradict these narratives of hope that have been constructed deliberately to counter a stereotypical narrative of Afro-pessimism, which dwells on hopelessness, darkness, famine and conflict as definers of the continent. Underlying some of the positive messaging about the continent is the argument that not all migration from the continent is forced or results from the typical calamities that are associated with African immigration. In its October 2019 policy brief, the Johannesburg-based Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) emphasised the need to combine the ‘root causes’ discourse that ‘focused on material conditions, and … centred largely around conflict and violence, poor governance, political instability, socio-economic inequalities, climate change, and lack of solid economic opportunities’ with the reality that migration ‘is often voluntary’ (IPATC 2019). Most studies on African migration have tended to focus on Africato-Europe migration, which is characterised not only by large numbers of deaths as immigrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea but also by widespread international media coverage. Yet evidence points to the fact that 70% of African migration happens within the continent and represents 10% of the world’s immigrant population.1 Even then, recent literature on migration and xenophobia on the continent has largely focused on one country—South Africa—creating a perception that it is the xenophobia capital of the continent. In this book, we demonstrate that xenophobia is not unique to South Africa since many other African countries, at different times and in different ways, have had their own xenophobic moments. Historically, the infamous ‘Ghana Must Go’ campaign in 1983 and the mass expulsion of Indian nationals from Uganda under Idi Amin in 1972 are among the commonly cited ones. The inordinate focus on South Africa currently can partly be explained by the fact that incidences of xenophobic violence in this country have received more international media attention than that of any other African country, not least because of the graphic nature in which protests tend to be ‘performed’ in South Africa (Duncan 2016). The fact that xenophobic violence in South Africa happens in an age where the social media play a significant role has also meant that the incidences have received far wider international attention than any of the previous xenophobic occurrences in Africa.

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In addition, because South Africa is arguably the biggest economy on the continent with a huge promise and a place of considerable opportunity following the collapse of apartheid in 1994, the country has been the destination of choice for many immigrants from across the continent. However, in a context where many apartheid injustices remain unresolved, especially around wealth redistribution and general access to resources, the competition between immigrants and those South Africans on the margin of society has remained acute, presenting an ever-present danger of conflict. While inescapably this book gives more attention to South Africa than to other African countries, we make the point that the challenges of immigration and xenophobia are not necessarily confined to South Africa. On the contrary, as the volume testifies, African immigrants elsewhere on the continent almost invariably find themselves unwelcome in host countries, where allegations of their contribution to rising crime, ‘job-stealing’ and engagement in or support of terrorism, among others, are rife. To a great degree, xenophobia has been on the rise across the continent, much to the detriment of some of the collective aspirations for a united Africa. We wish to emphasise that the absence of overt acts of xenophobia in many African countries does not necessarily translate to the absence of a deep hatred for the foreign Other. Manifestations of xenophobia in different countries have varied in nature and scale. In some, it has been explicitly expressed through graphic violence and even bloody and fatal attacks. This has led to lamentations about the loss of African customary values of Ubuntu (defined by a spirit of inclusivity, tolerance, compassion and humanity) among supposedly ‘un-African’ perpetrators who dehumanise desperate ‘neighbours’ and ‘fellow Africans’. At the same time, these xenophobic attitudes and practices have invoked fundamental questions from pan-Africanists about the necessity of sustaining arbitrary colonial borders that continue to define the continent and reinforce a ‘them and us’ attitude many years after the demise of colonialism. The vision of a united, borderless Africa has always been integral to pan-Africanist struggles for independence and the decolonisation of the continent. Several African Union (AU) agreements underscore these aspirations, including the AU Agenda 2063 and the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment.2

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Recent developments in Benin, Rwanda and Kenya, where all African citizens receive a visa on arrival, have widely been praised as a critical step towards attaining these goals. Studies by Danso and McDonald (2001), McDonald and Jacobs (2005), Smith (2010) and Nyamnjoh (2010) have looked at the press coverage of migration in specific southern African countries, including South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. These illustrate that the press does not merely reflect what is happening in society but is also in some cases an ‘interested’ actor. The studies have concluded that the press in the region is generally xenophobic in the way it has portrayed immigrants and refugees as being associated with illegality, crime, jobstealing and so on. Often these newspapers have used metaphors and visual imagery that frame immigrants in a negative manner, using terms such as ‘influx’, ‘illegals’ and ‘swarming’. The sustained use of these terms by the media has often resulted in the imagery becoming part of the ‘reality’ by which the public understands and ‘experiences’ immigrants. However, the studies also point to a reverse trend of the press becoming less xenophobic, a shift that McDonald and Jacobs (2005) attribute to various factors, not least being an increased understanding of immigration issues by journalists after decades of exposure to cross-border activity, a growing professionalism and changes in the South African government’s position on immigration. A more important finding, not just for South Africa, as argued by McDonald and Jacobs (2005, p. 310), is that the shift towards pro-immigrant coverage is linked to persistent owner/corporate interests wishing to ensure ‘access to skilled and unskilled labour from outside the country through a relatively open and liberal immigrant regime’. The eighteen chapters of this book are divided into four parts that tackle the mediation of immigration and xenophobia in Africa from different but often related perspectives, namely concepts and methodologies; framing of xenophobia in the media; belonging and identity; and the social media and migration. The chapters comprising these parts are discussed in detail below. The chapters themselves touch on a number of countries from eastern, southern and western Africa. As such, the book cannot claim to be fully representative of the continent but it certainly sheds considerable light on the pervasive and complex nature of xenophobic sentiment across the continent, and how xenophobia is treated in the media of the relevant African countries. The authors cover a range of diverging and intersecting themes that are connected by a common thread.

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Part I: Concepts and Methodologies The first five chapters deal with issues that are conceptual and methodological in nature and seek to create a deeper understanding of xenophobia, Afrophobia, immigration and the media, and how these are studied in specific contexts. Evidently, the x-word (xenophobia) is a source of discomfort for the political elite everywhere. In South Africa, for instance, successive governments from that of Thabo Mbeki to Cyril Ramaphosa have persistently rejected the idea that violence against immigrants is fuelled by xenophobia, arguing that South Africans are not a xenophobic people. They have preferred to label these as acts of criminality that, as Mbeki argued, are ‘cloak[ed] in the garb of xenophobia’,3 a position that both the police and many journalists have embraced uncritically. Interestingly, another label, ‘Afrophobia’ started gaining currency after the 2015 xenophobic attacks as a more acceptable explanation for the hatred and violence against black immigrants. Laura Freeman’s chapter points to collusion between the South African government’s denialism about xenophobia and the uncritical embrace of ‘Afrophobia’ by the media and the police. According to her, this was an attempt to explain away what had become a disturbing phenomenon that threatened the country’s international standing. The chapter interrogates the validity of adopting the Afrophobia concept and argues that the number and demographics of victims does not support the Afrophobia claim. In the process, she highlights the shortcomings in reporting by the South African media, which is quick to grab the latest buzzword. Freeman draws on empirical evidence, including public opinion surveys, to dispute the Afrophobia claims. She argues, for instance, that Afrophobia fails to account for the favouring of some African foreign nationals over others (e.g. Swazis, Basotho and Batswana are largely left alone, while other foreign nationals are attacked), or the fact that there are ‘insider Others’, people from the northern parts of the country who are often attacked because they do not look or smell ‘like us’. By focusing on discourses about xenophobia on talk radio, Dumisani Moyo and Sarah Helen Chiumbu tackle a hitherto neglected yet popular medium that has huge ramifications for influencing public perceptions about the Other in South Africa. They argue that the nature of talk radio, especially the live phone-in programmes, significantly reduces the gatekeeping powers of the host and therefore makes it possible for hate speech

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and insensitive comments to enter the public space before they can be filtered out. Despite the immense power of talk show hosts to moderate xenophobic discourses, the authors illustrate that negative stereotyping and framing of the foreign Other is dominant on talk radio. William Bird, Thandi Smith and Sarah Findlay look at the dynamics of media reporting of migration between two pairs of sending and receiving/host countries: Zimbabwe and South Africa on the one hand and Tanzania and Kenya of the other. They focus on how the media in these countries not only frame immigration but also source their stories. They cover gender, race and class, as well as what the coverage means for responsible and effective reporting in this critical area. Their findings are varied and tentative but in general indicate the disturbing reality that the political elite (including those in foreign governments and multilateral organisations), as well as white male voices dominate the media discourses on immigration to the exclusion of the people who are the most affected. This power dynamic has implications for the generation and sustenance of perceptions that form public opinion on immigrants. This theme is pursued further in Steven Gordon’s study, which highlights that, more often than not, exposure to particular sources of information explains people’s disposition when it comes to xenophobic attitudes. Gordon points to the enduring power of television and radio in influencing attitudes, as opposed to newspapers that have ironically received considerable scholarly attention, and social media that is still an evolving but increasingly influential platform. He illustrates that what Stephen Ellis called ‘pavement radio’ continues to be a critical source of information on key topics such as immigration and xenophobia. Gordon emphasises that any anti-xenophobia campaign should be informed by a close understanding of people’s sources of information to develop appropriate interventions. Nixon K. Kariithi’s study demonstrates that quantitative methodologies can provide a more nuanced understanding of issues such as immigration, migrants and xenophobia. The advantages that come with computation and automation mean that large quantities of data can be manipulated to produce exceptional patterns and trends that can illuminate existing qualitative research on the subject. Broadly, the findings are consistent with prior qualitative research, especially when it comes to the association of immigrants with ‘illegality’, ‘undesirability’ and ‘crime’. Kariithi concretises some of the findings with facts and figures in a way that most previous studies have not done.

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Part II: Framing of Xenophobia in the Media The four chapters making up Part II deal with issues of media framing of xenophobia in different contexts. Adeoye Akinola articulates the challenges posed by xenophobia to regional integration in West Africa. Focusing on the economic hubs of Ghana, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, he demonstrates that there have been spates of both violent and non-violent manifestations of xenophobia in these countries that suggest tendencies of resurgent nationalism even as regional integration under the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) forges ahead. He argues that while the media may not, in most cases, be the cause or trigger of xenophobia, they ‘have become major instruments to aggravate antiimmigration sentiments’ through a misrepresentation of issues and the negative stereotyping of the foreign Other. Tania Machonisse’s chapter points to the power of the media to ‘build national and transnational perceptions about global issues, such as immigration and xenophobia’. Focusing on how the xenophobic violence in South Africa in 2015 was framed in the Mozambican media, she illustrates how journalistic norms and practices were influenced by a strong sense of patriotism, culture and national identity. This evoked strong sympathy for fellow Mozambican nationals caught up in the attacks. Machonisse’s underlying argument is that during such key events, journalists who belong to a specific national identity are ‘bound’ by those identities to report as citizens belonging to that specific nation. Along the same lines, Allen Munoriyarwa and Jennifer Okoye’s chapter analyses how the South African xenophobic violence of March 2017, in which several Nigerian nationals were implicated, was framed by the Nigerian press. Beyond the usual ‘them and us’ frames, the authors established that the Nigerian press took a patriotic stance, portraying Nigerian citizens caught up in the violence as victims of barbarism and cruelty. In addition, the Nigerian press had a tendency to juxtapose the South African and Nigerian governments, presenting the latter as strong, decisive and caring of its citizens, while the South African government was berated and demonised for indecision and lack of will to deal with the crisis.

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Part III: Belonging and Identity The chapters in Part III tackle the subject of media, immigration and xenophobia from the angle of belonging and identity by looking at ways of re-imagining migration and the migrants’ self-perception of their role in and contribution to their host communities. Elizabeth Lubinga’s chapter explores the tensions between locals and Chinese investors in Uganda, where the government’s obsession with Asian investment has brought Chinese migrants into direct conflict with local businesspeople, who argue that their Chinese counterparts should not receive preference over them. The institution of a legislative framework by Uganda’s political elite to permit Chinese businesses to operate in the country has resulted in dissatisfaction among Uganda’s citizens and a negative stereotyping of the Chinese Others. Lubinga illustrates the conflicting media frames of the Chinese as desirable foreign ‘investors’ in pro-government media on the one hand, and as exploitative and irresponsible employers on the other. She argues that government’s desperate attempts to attract Chinese investment not only fuels illicit practices but also leads to a neglect of Ugandan citizens who are struggling to create opportunities for themselves. Lubinga warns that if the negative stereotyping of Chinese migrants is not dealt with, it may give rise to violence involving the foreign Others. This would have the potential of disrupting the government’s economic growth agenda. Jonah Gadzikwa and Nicola-Jane Jones in their chapter look at how the coverage of Zimbabwean women immigrants by five South African English language newspapers has reinforced the social and psychological oppression of these women. According to the authors, the portrayal of these women as victims of a range of calamities has erased their agency and undermined their humanity. The question of belonging is further explored by Pragna Rugunanan, who provides a sociological analysis of the interrelationships between three immigrant groups: Egyptians, Malawians and South African Indians in Johannesburg. She argues that immigrant communities ‘withdraw into enclaves, allowing new identities to emerge’. Social networks and social capital facilitate the economic and social integration of these communities. Thabiso Muswede and Shepherd Mpofu look at immigrants’ access to essential services, such as health care, and how this has been reported in the South African tabloid press. They demonstrate that there is a paucity of reportage (or a complete lack thereof) on access by immigrants

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to health care, which has implications for their well-being. Where this issue is, in fact, reported on, Muswede and Mpofu say, the reportage is inadequate and lacks sophistication. Poorly contextualised stories mostly present stereotypical views of immigrants as being a burden to the health system. In their chapter, Gianluca Iazzolino and Nicole Stremlau explore the social media’s role in advancing narratives that reflect power relationships in the predominantly Somali neighbourhood of Eastleigh in Nairobi. Local Somalis are largely perceived in Kenya as a homogenous group with terrorist intentions. Focusing on the security operations of the government, in particular the Project Usalama Watch, they argue that narratives about the Kenya-Somali conflict are largely framed on two divergent levels, both of which exclude significant minority groups and thus reinforce existing inequalities in the Somali social structure in Nairobi. The authors also argue that despite social media, minority voices remain unheard since powerful interests serve as gatekeepers and define the Somali community’s response to government security operations.

Part IV: The Social Media and Migration The chapters in Part IV focus on the different ways in which the social media are implicated in the migration processes. Ayalkibet Tesfaye’s chapter explores the dual role of the social media in, on the one hand, inducing and facilitating the migration of citizens from the Horn of Africa to South Africa and other parts of the world and, on the other, discouraging such migration by exposing the challenges of migration, such as xenophobia, in destination countries. The author explores the complexities of conflict in the Horn of Africa that have created conditions that press citizens to migrate. He provides context to the pattern of shops being set up by Ethiopian, Somali and Eritrean migrants in South Africa, which has become one of the triggers of sporadic and sometimes devastating bouts of xenophobia. Tesfaye argues that the social media, which can be included among what the IPATC called the ‘migration infrastructure’ (IPATC 2019, p. 3), play a critical role in shaping people’s perceptions and decisions on migration. In their chapter, Kezia Batisai and Patrick Dzimiri attempt to disrupt the dominant imagination of foreign nationals in South Africa as a socio-cultural and economic burden by foregrounding the progressive self-representations of African migrants through the digital, print and

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social media. They consider how digital technologies have empowered previously marginalised communities and provided them with a voice in alternative public spheres. This has enabled them to express their identities and connect with fellow immigrants and local citizens. It has also given them the opportunity to create a better understanding of themselves and in this way to curb xenophobia. Through the various media platforms, African immigrants have been able to talk about their homelands and highlight their positive contributions to South Africa. Selina Linda Mudavanhu picks up this thread. In her chapter, which is based on a study of comments by a Facebook group called The Joburger, she reports that while the foreign Other is usually represented as ‘nonbelonging’ and criminal in the headline media, some South Africans have a positive impression of immigrants. The respondents shared positive stereotyping about Zimbabwean immigrants, such as their ability to express themselves well in English, being hard workers and resilient. Mudavanhu notes that this appreciation of Zimbabweans seems to go hand in hand with disparaging remarks about and an internal Othering of black South Africans, who are portrayed as being lazy and violent. In the final chapter, Dumisani Moyo’s interview with two leading South African photojournalists, who have produced some of the most iconic headline photographs on xenophobic violence in the country over the past decade, highlights photojournalism’s role in mediating the reality of xenophobia. He explores the ethical dimensions of photojournalism in conflict situations and the power dynamics that take place in the selection processes at various levels, from the field to publication stage. By focusing on how individual photojournalists struggle or deal with the trauma of capturing some of the grisly moments of xenophobic violence, Moyo demonstrates the tensions they experience when attempting to serve the public interest, while at the same time protecting society, and themselves, from images of graphic and gratuitous violence. The two journalists provide rare and interesting insights that are both reflective and self-critical when reporting on the phenomenon of xenophobia in South Africa.

Notes 1. Of the 272 million international migrants in 2019, Africa with 26.5 million migrants accounts for about 10% of the total. Asia with 83.6 million migrants accounts for the highest number at 31%, followed by Europe with

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30% (82.3 million migrants) and North America with 26% (58.6 million migrants). See https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/migration/ index.html. Accessed 20 March 2020. 2. See ‘Towards a borderless Africa? Regional organisations and free movement of persons in West and North-East Africa’. https://www.die-gdi.de/ uploads/media/BP_1.2019.pdf. Accessed 20 January 2020. 3. See Mail & Guardian, 3 July 2008, ‘Mbeki says attack on foreigners not xenophobia’. https://mg.co.za/article/2008-07-03-mbekisays-attacks-on-foreigners-not-xenophobia. Accessed 4 January 2020.

References Adebajo, A. (2019). Implementing the United Nations Global Compact on Migration: Conflict, governance, and human mobility in Africa/European Union relations. Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) Policy Brief. Available at https://ipatc.joburg/wp-content/uploads/2019/ 10/ipatc-policy-brief-5-draft-3.pdf. Accessed 13 January 2020. Crush, J., & Pendleton, W. (2004). Regionalising xenophobia? Citizen attitudes to immigration and refugee policy in Southern Africa. Southern Africa Migration Programme, SAMP Migration Policy Series # 30. Available at https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1& article=1126&context=samp. Accessed 30 January 2020. Danso, R., & McDonald, D. (2001). Writing xenophobia: Immigration and the print media in post-apartheid South Africa. Africa Today, 48(3), 114–137. Dubois, W. E. B. (1897, August). Striving of the Negro people. The Atlantic. Available at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivi ngs-of-the-negro-people/305446/. Accessed 13 January 2020. Duncan, J. (2016). Protest nation: The right to protest in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: UKZN Press. Hall, S. (2006). Encoding/decoding. In Meenashki Gigi Durham & Douglas M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and cultural studies: Keyworks (Rev. ed., pp. 163–173). Oxford: Blackwell. Livingstone, S. (2009). Coming to terms with ‘Mediatization’. In K. Lundby (Ed.), Mediatization: Concept, changes, consequences (pp. ix–xi). New York: Peter Lang. Lundby, K. (Ed.). (2009). Mediatization: Concepts, changes, consequences. New York: Peter Lang. McDonald, D. A., & Jacobs, S. (2005). (Re)writing xenophobia: Understanding press coverage of cross-border migration in South Africa. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 23(3), 295–325. Morley, D., & Robins, K. (1995) Spaces of identity: Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries. London and New York: Routledge.

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Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2006). Insiders and outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar: Codesria Books and Zed Books. Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2010). Racism, ethnicity and the media in Africa: Reflections inspired by studies of xenophobia in Cameroon and South Africa. Africa Spectrum, 45(1), 57–93. Silverstone, R. (2002). Complicity and collusion in the mediation of everyday life. New Literary History, 33(4), 761–780. Smith, M. J. (2010). Synthesis report: The media’s coverage of xenophobia and the xenophobic violence prior to and including May 2008. Available at http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/ 07/7_Media_c.pdf. Accessed 12 February 2020.

CHAPTER 2

Defying Empirical and Causal Evidence: Busting the Media’s Myth of Afrophobia in South Africa Laura Freeman

Introduction In South Africa (and in Africa as a whole), there is a tendency to report attacks on perceived outsiders or foreign nationals as ‘Afrophobia’, a complex form of (black) self-hate. In most instances, this description has remained uncontested in opinion columns and general reporting in the South African press. Some commentators even go so far as to suggest that ‘Afrophobic violence [is] incorrectly named “xenophobia”’ (Mngxitama 2015), often even (incorrectly) noting that attacks are against black Africans only. In this chapter, I question the Afrophobia hypothesis by arguing that using Afrophobia to explain attacks on outsiders is misleading for two main reasons. First, it defies empirical data, which shows that about a third of those killed are South Africans and that Asians have been continually targeted in violent attacks. Second, Afrophobia, as an underlying cause of attacks against foreigners, is not compelling when compared to

L. Freeman (B) University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_2

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the underlying psycho-social reasons that explain xenophobia. Research findings that xenophobia is a rubric to explain anti-outsider sentiment and behaviour are both more compelling and reflect empirical data more closely. This chapter is structured into four parts. First, it will outline the major conceptual and causal differences between Afrophobia and xenophobia as explanations for attacks on foreigners. Second, it will look at how xenophobia (or what other choose to call Afrophobia) is reported in the South African press. Third, it will explore the empirical evidence around xenophobic attacks that, broadly speaking, undermine the Afrophobia hypothesis. Fourth, it will briefly explore the reasons for the increasing use of the term Afrophobia by the media.

Afrophobia and Xenophobia: What Is the Difference? Perhaps one of the reasons for the generally uncontested assignation of both Afrophobia and xenophobia in opinion columns and media reporting, as well as in academic literature, has occurred because there has not been a clearly defined and developed conceptual or causal understanding of either concept. The lack of conceptual clarity means the terms are used either interchangeably or selected based on the author’s preference, politics or worldview. Given the absence of clear differentiation, the aim of this section is to discuss the central psycho-social and emotional features of Afrophobia and xenophobia, and to explore the definitional and conceptual differences between them. On the most basic level, Afrophobia can be defined as discrimination of Africans (by Africans) because they are African.1 As such, its manifestations in South Africa, with black South Africans seen as the primary perpetrators of violence, can be viewed as a variation on the Fanonian idea of black self-hate (Fanon 2008). Xenophobia, on the other hand, can be understood as ‘attitudes, prejudices and behaviour that reject, exclude and often vilify persons based on the perception that they are outsiders or foreigners to the community, society or national identity’ (World Conference Against Racism 2011). Both Afrophobia and xenophobia, therefore, rest on processes of othering and the creation of in-out groups. However, in the case of Afrophobia it can also be an internal process of self-othering. Given that Afrophobia’s potential analytical use rests on its ability to explain the psycho-social or emotional causes of (self-)discrimination,

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I will similarly focus on xenophobia’s psycho-social and emotional elements. Given the emphasis on psychological causes of discrimination, I will not differentiate between attitudes and violence, or sentiments and actions, but rather assume that attitudes can create pre-conditions for discriminatory or bias-motivated behaviour and that certain types of discrimination can become socially permissible. Scholars of Afrophobia and xenophobia argue that colonial and apartheid logics and imprints are central to explaining discrimination in South Africa today. They agree that colonialism and apartheid created fixed identities that cast long shadows and continue to manifest themselves in South African politics and society. From this point, however, their views on the two concepts start to diverge. On the one hand, proponents of Afrophobia emphasise the separation of black(ness) and white(ness) created by apartheid and how this instilled black inferiority and black selfhate. In particular in South Africa, apartheid sought to separate (black) South Africans from Africa, making the ‘“we-image” distorted so that the “we” is South Africa and “they” is Africa’ (Matsinhe 2011). Matsinhe (p. 300) has developed the fullest theorisation of Afrophobia in South Africa and is worth quoting at length: The almost exclusive loathing of African foreign nationals in South Africa suggests that, to a lesser or greater extent, South Africans – their social relations, their interdependencies, their attitudes towards life, their habits, their personality structure, their collective conscious and unconscious, and their emotions – bear the imprints of colonial/apartheid relations. Among African countries South Africa is unique in that it is the place where the doctrine of white supremacy was meticulously systematised and implemented to the smallest detail of the mundane for the longest period of time.

The colonial and apartheid projects in South Africa reinforced notions of black inferiority with dehumanising daily reminders and left a level of internalisation not experienced elsewhere on the continent. This, along with the concomitant removal of South Africa from Africa, creates the context in which Afrophobia is pronounced in South Africa. By this logic, under the Afrophobia hypothesis, the makwerekwere in South Africa is solely African. As Gqola (2009, p. 213) articulates:

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No one is attacking wealthy German, British, or French foreigners … This is unthinkable … what makes it unthinkable is the clear value and whiteness of the safe Europeans versus the disposability of and blackness of the brutalised African foreigner.

Under the rubric of Afrophobia, attacks on ‘whiteness’ are unthinkable, given the depths of the colonially created black self-hate. Thus, Afrophobic violence is perpetrated by black South Africans against black Africans. On the other hand, the logic of xenophobia rests on how apartheid created a connection between identity and the claiming of geographical and cultural space. Xenophobia is related directly to the segregationist apartheid logic, the manifestation of which was the geographic designation of ethnic black groups into homelands. As Landau (2010, p. 220) explains: Apartheid turned black South Africans into “foreign natives” within the country, guests of the South African Republic should they stray beyond the “homelands” (dubbed Bantustans) to which they ostensibly belonged. In law, if not always in practice, black South Africans were made temporary sojourners in the city, aliens whose usefulness lasted only for as long as [they] could build the city, care for gardens and pools, or nurture white children.

The spatial alienation of black South Africans from the city has become manifested in the ‘new’ South Africa. In urban centres in particular, black South Africans claim space as ‘belonging’ to them (Landau 2010; Neocosmos 2006; Nyamnjoh 2006). The process of claiming space (often along ethnic group lines) inherently excludes any other group, including non-South Africans and South African migrants from other ethnic groups. For proponents of the xenophobia hypothesis, the makwerekwere in South Africa can be any group or set of individuals who are assigned as not belonging to or being of the space. Identity and belonging are social constructs and can shift over time, which means the ‘outsider’ can take on new and different formations over space and time. Following the same logic, xenophobic violence is most likely to occur in contested (urban) spaces. In sum, both Afrophobia and xenophobia argue that exclusion of ‘outsiders’ is pronounced in South Africa because of the colonial and especially the apartheid experience, which assigned identity and belonging in particular ways. Afrophobia’s emphasis on black self-hate as its central

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feature means it can potentially explain instances where South African Africans show hatred towards ‘other’ or ‘foreign’ black Africans. Under the auspices of xenophobia, othering is contingent and can change over time. It can thus include South African ‘Others’, African, Asian and European ‘Others’ and can be specific to certain ‘out’ groups.

Reporting on Afrophobia in the South African Press This section is divided into two parts and seeks to review the literature on and reporting of xenophobia and Afrophobia in the South African press. First, it will briefly review reporting on xenophobia and immigration in South Africa. Second, it will analyse the way in which ‘Afrophobia’, as a term to explain attacks on immigrants, has been utilised in the media. General Reporting on (Im)Migration and Xenophobia It is beyond the scope of this paper to conduct a systematic review of media reporting on immigration, xenophobia and Afrophobia. However, it is important to note the current base of knowledge with regard to news coverage.2 Some broad findings have emerged from across all reviews of migration and xenophobia reporting in South Africa (Danso and McDonald 2011; Fine and Bird 2002; McDonald and Jacobs 2005; Mtwana and Bird 2006; Bekker et al. 2008). First, media reporting on immigration tends to be negative, with most articles presenting an anti-immigration stance. Media reporting tends to fall into two categories: anti-immigrant and non-analytical articles, or pro-immigration and analytical pieces. While the number of proimmigration reports is increasing, the polarity of reporting remains, with nearly half the reports remaining overtly negative (McDonald and Jacobs 2005, pp. 301–305; ROi Africa 2018). In general, coverage tends to embolden negative stereotypes about migrants and contains little evidence of facts having been cross-checked. Government statistics and numbers are regurgitated, be they true or not. Furthermore, the media uses highly emotive language to describe immigration into South Africa, using terms such as ‘flooded’ or ‘overrun’ and often talking about ‘aliens’ or ‘illegal immigrants’ (Mtwana and Bird 2006, p. 13).

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Second, outside of xenophobic attacks, the majority of reporting on foreigners tends to centre on crime, depicting non-nationals as perpetrators. Interestingly, reporting on crime tends to be broken down by nationality. Ameen et al. (2016, pp. 13–17) find that the country of origin is specified in 64% of reports. When nationality is mentioned, Somalis (21.4%), Zimbabweans (13.0%), Ethiopians (12.1%), Mozambicans (10.7%), Pakistanis (9.3%) and Bengalis (8.9%) were the most cited. Danso and McDonald (2011, pp. 126–127) are worth quoting at length: … the press tends to nationalise and racialize crime involving migrants. Criminal syndicates, smuggling and drug trafficking are usually associated with particular groups of foreign nationals in South Africa, with black Africans being portrayed either as perpetual criminals or more prone to commit serious crime than immigrants from non-African countries. In the process, crime is not only “racialised”, it is also “Africanised”. … [T]here are regular reports about Taiwanese and Chinese “illegals” said to be responsible for the smuggling of poached contraband, suggesting an additional layer of racial and ethnic bias at play, but these reports are not as frequent as stories about crimes committed by African nationals. More importantly, there is an almost complete lack of references to crime and illegality on the part of Western Europeans and North Americans in South Africa, despite the fact that nationals from these regions also commit crimes and many are in the country “illegally”.

In other words, the media tends to associate Africans and, to a lesser extent, Asians with (organised) crime and being in the country illegally and does not similarly interrogate European and other non-South African criminal activity. As such, there is a skew in media reporting that may feed into negative stereotyping about African and Asian migrants. Third, media coverage on crime against foreign nationals, including attacks on them, fluctuates significantly. Attention tends to be high at times of large-scale attacks but then substantially drops the rest of the time. As such, larger attacks seem to ‘come out of nowhere’ instead of reflecting a continuum of violence against foreigners (Harber 2015). Relatedly, reporting on the 2008 xenophobic attacks tended to be negative. For example, in a review of Daily Sun coverage, Els (2013, p. 62) found ‘rampant stereotypes and prejudice about non-nationals’ who are displayed as dangerous, criminal and unwanted ‘aliens’. Reporting on the causes of the 2008 violence tended to focus on structural factors, including delivery failures by government, the failure to address crime

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and broader failings of the police, the high unemployment rate and the collapse of border controls, especially with Zimbabwe. As such, little attention was given in the media to the specific reasons for localised violence. Furthermore, by focusing on the structural causes, the media tended to portray (South African) perpetrators of violence as victims, ‘frustrated individuals’ who converted their grievances into aggression (Bekker et al. 2008, pp. 28–31). By contrast, reporting during the 2015 attacks tended to be more sympathetic to migrants, offered a more detailed and accurate account of events and included more extensive coverage of anti-xenophobia activities (Harber 2015). Like in 2008, the April 2015 violence attracted great attention, monopolising 66% of South African news media at the time (ROi Africa 2015). However, any potential nuance gained during the attacks was quickly undercut by the media’s uncritical and scant reporting on Operation Fiela, which followed closely on the xenophobic violence episode. The police-led ‘crime-busting’ operation saw a crackdown on ‘illegal’ migrants and linked them to serious crime (Harber 2015). Overall, and by no means exclusive to immigration or xenophobia, South African press coverage was largely uncritical and shallow. While it was not possible to directly connect media coverage to xenophobic attitudes or behaviour, it was clear that most reporting did little to dispel social myths about foreigners and crime, rather tending to reflect and extend discrimination. As Bourdieu (1998, p. 56) wrote, the press was ‘subject to structural pressure from the journalistic field [as a whole]’, which means that, while the media may have had some collective if partial autonomy, it tended to operate as a collective. As a form of cultural knowledge production, then, the media in South Africa in its reporting on migration and xenophobia extended stereotypes and tended to latch onto dominant (negative) narratives. Afrophobia Reporting Afrophobia is increasingly being used to explain violence against ‘foreigners’ in South Africa (Ameen et al. 2016, p. 13). While it emerged as an explanation for the troubles by the media in 2008, its use has become more prevalent since the 2015 attacks. As will be discussed below, this reflects announcements by South African government officials arguing for Afrophobia. Increasingly, a range of commentators have written opinion pieces that focus on Afrophobia.

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Government denials of xenophobia as a phenomenon in South Africa have been plentiful and repeated over time. Staunch denials of xenophobia have come from Presidents Mbeki and Zuma (Mail & Guardian 2008 and 2017; Du Plessis 2015 and 2017a; Hunter 2015), various ministers and the ad hoc committee established to assess the 2015 attacks (Evans 2015). Officials have preferred to ascribe the attacks to ‘general criminality’ or ‘township thuggery’. The media has been largely uncritical of these denials, simply reporting them and quoting announcements or speeches at length. Amid the denials of xenophobia, some officials have assigned the attacks to Afrophobia. In 2014, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) was reported as saying that violence against foreigners should be referred to as Afrophobia and not xenophobia since the attacks had affected only Africans and not Europeans (Rahlaga 2014). Then, citing the SAHRC, justice deputy minister John Jeffery and others started to argue for Afrophobia (Justice 2015). Similarly, police minister Nathi Nhleko was widely reported as arguing that the 2015 attacks should be termed Afrophobic, stating: ‘In a sense, what we are witnessing are actually Afrophobic kind of activities and attacks … and resembling all elements of self-hate …’ He added that the attacks reflected ‘African’s tragic self-hate syndrome’, claiming that South Africans were attacked because of their ‘darker skin’ (Presence 2015; Gqirana 2015; ENCA 2015). Then ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe typified the 2015 attacks in a similar way: ‘It’s Afrophobia and if you look into the content you will see that it’s Afrophobia because when African refugees walk in here … and go to townships predominantly and there’s a scramble for resources there and the tension takes the form of Afrophobia’ (Oderson 2015; Quintal 2015). Editorials and opinion columns have made up the great part of media references to Afrophobia. The Afrophobia hypothesis, van der Walt (2016) contends, is popular among ‘African nationalists’. While this may be the case, it is clear that most opinion columns are written by academics and persons currently or formerly active in politics. According to Sandwith (2010, p. 67), already in 2008 an editorial in the Sowetan claimed the attacks were acts of ‘self-hatred’; an opinion piece in The Star claimed the violence was a manifestation of Afrophobia; and Mabasa in the Sowetan represented South African perpetrators as ‘wounded’ victims of colonial and apartheid brutality.

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Since then, several strong opinions on Afrophobia have emerged in newspaper columns. First, proponents have claimed that Afrophobia is the right designation as attacks have been perpetrated by black South Africans and have targeted black Africans. This view is then often contrasted with a lack of attacks on white foreigners, with claims such as ‘in South Africa we don’t harm white foreigners’ (Mngxitama 2010). Second, several commentators have described the attacks as a moment of white assimilation for black South Africans: Today, black South Africans use, in part, the artefacts of their own absorption into white amakwerekwere culture to distinguish themselves from fellow Africans. The very fact that black South Africans reserve the term kwerekwere for fellow black Africans only is a sign of the extent to which they have bought into both the myth of white kwerekwere normalcy and the myth of black Africans as the only amakwerekwere. (Maluleke 2016)

In this way, the violence is depicted as a form of self-loathing, with the African foreigner being seen to epitomise self-hate. In displaying the racialised and colourised elements of attacks, references have been made to the ‘very dark people from Africa’ and ‘stereotypical dark-skinned African kwerekwere’ as the targets of violence (Makatse 2015; Maluleke 2016). Third, structural elements of poverty and inequality, as well as competition over scarce resources, are used to explain Afrophobia. Commentators have argued that Afrophobia is a form of victimhood for South Africans, who have been oppressed by colonialism and apartheid, which has made them ‘inferior’. Similarly, when describing the competition African foreigners pose, South Africans ‘… who risked their lives fighting for better opportunities and better standards of living might be frustrated when they perceive a threat to this’ (Mnyanda 2012). In other words, African foreigners are considered a threat to the gains made by black South Africans in the post-apartheid era. Fourth, the psychological solution to Afrophobia rests in the ‘balm of Black Consciousness’: greater self-realisation, including the realisation that (South) African borders are arbitrary and the result of colonialism (Sandwith 2010). Some take on more structural arguments, suggesting that Afrophobia will remain a feature until poverty and inequality are addressed. Mantashe (Quintal 2015) and Mangena (2017), a former cabinet minister, argue that the solution to attacks is to enforce strict

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immigration laws. Overall, there is an emerging discourse that South Africans are the victims and African foreigners are the threat (Fig. 2.1). Fifth, there has been a debate about whether Afrophobia is the correct designation or is applicable to South Africa. Seeking to deny the prevalence of Afrophobia in South Africa, Mangena (2017) argues in the Sowetan: There are many African workers employed in the media, engineering, insurance, tertiary education, hospitality, construction, banking and many other fields in SA without any ructions. There are thousands of students from the continent happily studying in almost all of our universities without any hostility from their South African brothers and sisters.

Like others, Mangena argues that ‘unmanaged competition with our own needy citizens causes the conflict’. This means, for Mangena, that it is incorrect to claim the attacks as being Afrophobic. Ncube, the Zimbabwean Mail & Guardian editor (2015), in one of the few pieces that

Fig. 2.1 Men presumed to be involved in violence are lined up and searched by members of the South African Police (Photo: Alon Skuy, 18 May 2008)

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focuses on attitudes and more general discrimination rather than just on violence, disagrees, arguing he is ‘… convinced that Afrophobia is strongest in many South African board rooms and corridors of power than in the townships and informal settlements’. In other words, according to Ncube, Afrophobia is not restricted to places of poverty, nor are its perpetrators necessarily black South Africans. Last, a few pieces have sought to interrogate the claims by some officials that Afrophobia is the correct term to use. While not fully denying Afrophobia, Mathivha (2015) argues that Nhleko’s claim for Afrophobia over xenophobia is ‘distracting’ and ‘moves dialogue away from the core of the issue to intellectual debates’. Rather, says Mathivha, ‘African nationals are uniquely vulnerable to the frustrations of local communities because of their proximity to them. It is not Afrophobia, minister Nhleko – it is the continued and systematic failure of our government to answer the demands and frustrations of the people’. In a different vein but on the same theme, Jolobe, a politics lecturer at the University of Cape Town, is quoted as arguing: ‘Calling the attacks on foreign nationals Afrophobic is government trying to keep the world from seeing us as xenophobic … I must assume that government does not want to call the attacks something with which they do not want the world to associate with South Africa, despite what we all already know’ (Bernardo 2015). Others argue that it is all just semantics, including then international relations minister Nkoana-Mashabane who, when announcing a Nigerian-South African early warning system, was reported as saying: ‘It’s on the same line whether you call it Afrophobia, xenophobia or criminality’ (Du Plessis 2017b). Meanwhile, xenophobia researcher Misago (2015) claims: ‘The “Afrophobia” hypothesis does not pass the empirical test. It is true that victims are mostly immigrants from other African countries, but also Pakistanis, Bangladeshi, Chinese are often targeted. It appears the target of the attacks are those migrants (irrespective of their nationality) perceived to represent a threat to a certain powerful interest group in a given locality’. The research in this regard will be discussed in the next section. What is clear from the media output is that there are various opinions and debates around whether Afrophobia exists and/or is the correct designation for the attacks. The related debate about why Afrophobia is being used as an explanation clearly intersects with government pronouncements, some suggesting it is a distraction technique and/or a damage-limitation strategy.

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In sum, Afrophobia has increasingly been utilised as an explanation for violence against ‘foreigners’ in the South African press. What is noteworthy about the coverage is that proponents of the Afrophobia hypothesis refer solely to large-scale attacks, with the only empirical information being presented emanating from these violent episodes (thus following general media trends where smaller-scale attacks go underreported and relatively unnoticed). It appears that Afrophobia as an explanation in the press in general is the result of government strongly denying the existence of xenophobia and officials claiming that Afrophobia is the proper designation. Does the empirical evidence support the Afrophobia hypothesis? In this section, the aim is to establish whether the best data and research available support the Afrophobia or xenophobia hypotheses. I will examine figures from attacks, findings from public opinion surveys and empirical research from sites of anti-foreigner violence. Accurate data of attacks on actual or perceived (African) outsiders is difficult to come by. In part, the reason is that in South Africa there is no category for ‘xenophobic’ or ‘Afrophobic’ crime. While nationality data is collected in standard police dockets, crime statistics and crime analyses are not codified or arranged according to nationality. Even if crime statistics were analysed according to nationality, the lack of analysis of the intent of crimes where non-South Africans or perceived ‘foreigners’ are victims means that we cannot conclude that foreign victims were victims because of their ‘foreignness’. During large-scale attacks the government-led Security Cluster collects figures on those killed and victimised. Given that most of the data that have been collected and shared are for murder, we will focus on this crime category.3 In the violence of 2008, a total of 62 people was killed. Most of the victims were non-nationals but South Africans made up a third, or 21 persons, of the official death toll (Landau 2010; Amit 2015). South Africans married to non-nationals, persons who refused to participate in the violence and ‘Shangaans’ (South Africans predominantly from Limpopo Province) were among the victims. In the spate of xenophobic violence in April 2015, seven people were murdered, according to the official figures, three of whom were South Africans (Ferreira 2015). Importantly, in both 2008 and 2015 South Africans comprised a notable proportion of those killed. The processes of how this happened are significant and undermine the Afrophobia hypothesis. During the 2008 attacks in particular, ahead of their victimisation, people were asked

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questions in ‘local’ languages. As Everatt (2011, p. 8) states: ‘Like a postmodern nightmare, life or death were determined by the capacity to answer the interrogative yini le?! – “what is this?!”, asked while pointing to body parts (such as the elbow) and requiring the correct isiZulu word in an immediate and unequivocal response’. In Gauteng (a multilingual province by nature), if respondents could not answer simple questions in the language determined to be ‘local’, they became likely victims. This suggests that not only nationality or racial but ethnic cleavages were central to informing ideas of belonging, exclusion and the claiming of urban space. Xenowatch, developed by the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS), is an important source of information about attacks on foreign nationals from 1994 onwards. Importantly, Xenowatch not only collects but also verifies data, which means we can be confident that the figures reflect crimes where anti-foreigner sentiment was part (or all) of the crime motivation. However, while the database disaggregates data according to the type of incident/crime, it is not often possible to disaggregate data according to the nationality of victims because many reports (both in the media and from people on the ground) do not include the victim’s nationality. Furthermore, many events include multiple victims, which makes identifying individual nationalities difficult (Hiropoulos 2018). Still, in 488 incidents of violence against (perceived) foreigners between 1994 and 2017, the nationality of victims was known in 51.3% of cases. The distribution is listed in Table 2.1. Table 2.1 Victim nationality in xenophobic attacks Victim nationality Somalia Zimbabwe Nigeria Ethiopia Bangladesh Congo Pakistan South Africa

Per cent (%) of total incidents 26.4 9 5 3 2.3 2 2 1.6

Source Hiropoulos, personal email correspondence 9 April 2018

Per cent (%) of instances where nationality is known 51.5 17.6 9.7 5.9 4.5 3.9 3.9 3.1

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The data in the table suggests that in cases where the nationality of victims is known, around 88.5% of incidents affected non-South African nationals, 8.4% Asians and 3.1% South Africans. Given that nationality is not known in 48.7% of cases captured by Xenowatch and the fact that the sources from which Xenowatch collects may undercount,4 it is difficult to draw firm conclusions. However, it is the best and most reliable data source we have and so it is useful to explore how the figures compare with population proportionality. The latest national census in 2011 found that 75% of international migrants were African, 4.7% Asian and 8.2% European (Statistics SA 2011). Given the Xenowatch data, this suggests that both Africans and Asians were disproportionate targets, with Europeans not facing violent manifestations of xenophobia. However, the data also suggests that Asians were more disproportionately targeted than Africans. Asians experienced 8.4% of known incidents even though only comprising 4.7% of the migrant population, while Africans experience 88.5% of known incidents with 75% of the migrant population. Africans were thus victims of anti-foreigner violence just above their migrant proportionality, whereas Asians experienced almost double the number of attacks to their migrant proportionality. Proponents of Afrophobia have tended to ignore or brush over attacks on Asians. This may, in part, be attributed to the lack of coverage of small-scale attacks. For example, ‘[c]rime against Chinese citizens … doesn’t make big news here [in South Africa]’ (Felix 2018). Nonetheless, there are important examples of mid and small-scale attacks on Asians: in Grahamstown in October 2015, attacks led to over 500 foreign nationals being displaced. Largely uncovered by the media, the attacks targeted African (mainly Ethiopians and Somalis) and Asian (mainly Bangladeshi and Pakistani) shopkeepers and displaced all groups in large numbers (Petse et al. 2018). Similarly, in January 2015 in Gauteng, looting started in Soweto and targeted Indians and Somalis, and then spread to nearby areas, affecting spaza shops run by Pakistanis, Somalis and Bangladeshis (AFP & Mail & Guardian 2015). Again, in April 2018, protests in North West Province led to the widespread looting of foreign-owned shops in Mahikeng and surrounds, displacing 600 Bangladeshis when 350 of their stores were looted, as well as hundreds of Ethiopian shopkeepers (Nicolson and Lepodise 2018). These attacks almost exclusively targeted African and Asian foreign nationals running small businesses in townships and informal settlements. Pakistani, Somali and Ethiopian traders, who are increasingly dominating

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the low-end retail consumer market in South Africa and may be seen to compete directly with South African businesses (Park and Rugunanan 2010, pp. 13–14), have tended to be the targets of violence. Attacks tend to occur during or immediately after service delivery protests or after rumours emerge that a foreign shopkeeper has wounded or killed a local resident (Misago, Freemantle and Landau 2015, p. 21). In this way, attacks on African and Asian small business owners reflect a kind of instrumental xenophobia, often with local political and community leaders offering loot as a reward for joining protests (Landau and Misago 2016). Afrophobia cannot explain the duality and instrumentality of these violent episodes. Public opinion surveys conducted in South Africa also fail to support the Afrophobia hypothesis. The data suggests high levels of anti-foreigner sentiment across population groups. According to a 2006 survey of South Africans conducted by the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) (2008), all foreign groups received significantly lower favourability ratings than fellow South Africans (see Table 2.2). Foreign groups identified in the survey, namely people from neighbouring countries, those from the rest of Africa, and those from Europe and North America, obtained an average favourability of just 22%. The survey clearly indicated that anti-foreigner sentiment was not restricted to any South African racial or in-group. If the Afrophobia, self-hate hypothesis was to uphold, we would expect to find that black South Africans tended to have the highest Table 2.2 Perceptions of various South African and foreign groups Favourable South Africans Whites South Africans Blacks South Africans Coloureds South Africans Asian/Indiana People living here from neighbouring countries People living here from the rest of Africa People living here from Europe of North America

Whites

Blacks

Coloureds

Asians/Indiana

Total

46 59 39 39

84 57 46 39

43 40 53 36

66 58 55 72

73 55 46 40

19

23

15

26

22

17

17

11

21

16

26

21

19

30

22

Source SAMP, The perfect storm, 2008, p. 30

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levels of disdain for other Africans. On the contrary, white and coloured South Africans, with 19 and 15%, respectively, gave lower favourability ratings to those from neighbouring countries than black South Africans (23%), while black South Africans (17%) had a slightly above average (16%) favourability to those from the rest of Africa. Results from the 2017 South African Reconciliation Barometer mirror the findings of the SAMP survey. As shown in Fig. 2.2, there are starkly high levels of distrust towards all non-nationals, with African foreigners (52%) being only slightly more distrusted than non-Africans (50%). Similarly, survey data finds that, rather than a binary and universally negative attitude towards African foreigners, there is significant variation in South African-held attitudes towards different African nationalities. As shown in Table 2.3, there is a clear disparity in attitudes to various groups of Africans, and these can change appreciably over time. Where public opinion surveys have asked South Africans to identify the most undesirable migrant group, they have consistently chosen Nigerians (Gordon 2015, p. 499). Some groups appear to receive a relatively low unfavourability or a high favourability. Afrophobia cannot account for these variations, nor can it ‘help us understand why citizens of Swaziland and Lesotho were left alone [during attacks] and some South Africans targeted …’ (Landau 2010, p. 215), or why Basotho and Batswana have rarely been targeted, while other Southern Africans, notably Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, have been (van der Walt 2016). Nor does Afrophobia help us understand the specific negative attitudes towards certain nationality groups. Similarly, Afrophobia cannot explain how attitudes shift over time, and even how the designation of who is a foreigner changes significantly by

Fig. 2.2 Interpersonal trust in South Africa (Source IJR, SA Reconciliation Barometer 2017 , 2018: 44)

2

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Table 2.3 Impressions of migrants by country of origin, 2006 and 2010 Unfavourable (%)

Neighbouring countries Zimbabwe Mozambique Botswana Swaziland Lesotho Other African countries Nigeria Angola DRC Somalia Ghana

Favourable (%)

2006

2010

2006

2010

52 47 28 28 27

44 40 24 23 23

12 14 32 36 38

15 15 31 33 32

66 54 54 53 50

59 48 51 50 45

7 9 8 10 11

7 9 9 9 11

Source SAMP, Soft targets, 2013, p. 24

place. Case study research from sites of xenophobic attacks has found that in different communities, different groups become ‘foreign’ while others are not similarly excluded. This is often reflected in the ability of groups to integrate, be it through language and/or culture, or the perceived utility of groups. For example, ‘Somalis’ (the blanket term often used to describe shopkeepers) are seen by many as ‘good’ foreigners as they provide a convenient service, as well as credit to their customers. West Africans are often ‘bad’ foreigners as they are perceived to be associated with drugs and the trade in stolen goods (Freedom House 2018, p. 15). Community dynamics are such that attitudes towards ‘outsiders’ can change quickly. In De Doorns, for example, Zimbabweans are at times seen as ‘foreigners’ since they take farm jobs, while at other times the ‘out’ group becomes Sothos from Lesotho, who are held responsible for causing crime (at other times they are designated as ‘South Africans’) (Pretorius and Freeman 2018). Similarly, in other communities, Asians report being called kwerekwere (Petse et al. 2018; van der Walt 2016), which undermines claims that the term is reserved for Africans only. More generally, the contingency of ‘foreignness’ found in case study research, which changes by place and over time, can include South Africans and can also differentiate ‘good’ from ‘bad’ foreigners, cannot be explained by

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the Afrophobia hypothesis. Xenophobia would appear to be a more applicable theory as it allows for a more flexible approach in the designation of ‘outsiders’. Lastly, the Afrophobia hypothesis tends to rest on poverty and inequality as the major causes for frustrations involving outsiders spilling over into violence. However, research indicates that violent manifestations of xenophobia do not occur in the poorest areas, which suggests that poverty and disadvantage alone cannot explain the violence (Landau et al. 2004). Instead, studies suggest that it is the micro-politics within a particular space that may act as a ‘tipping point’. In areas where violence is most prolific, local political groups and individuals capitalise on the negative attitudes of residents towards non-nationals to further their own influence (Landau and Misago 2009). Furthermore, violent manifestations of othering have tended to take place in areas that have received significant migration from within South Africa (Landau 2018). In other words, migration rather than immigration is a factor that fuels community tensions and frustrations. It is clearly the local politics of space, in particular, and local political leadership that tend to spark attacks on outsiders. This, once more, supports the xenophobia hypothesis. Public opinion surveys and research from sites of attacks thus undermine the Afrophobia hypothesis and support the xenophobia theory. Surveys conducted since the 1990s show high levels of negative sentiment across socio-demographic and racial markers in South Africa. These are directed at all out-groups, be they African or not. While the evidence suggests that foreign Africans may be slightly less trusted and less welcome than other groups of foreigners, the evidence does not justify the claims from some proponents of Afrophobia that ‘An unmistakable feature of xenophobia in South Africa is its racial undertones … Black migrants … are victims of violence, while whites of any nationality are welcome …’ (Dassah 2015). Similarly, case study research that indicates the contingency of who is the ‘foreigner’ suggests patterns of violence to be targeting certain groups and shows that the micro-politics of place features strongly in violence against outsiders (Misago 2017).

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Conclusion: Why Is Afrophobia so Widely Accepted? Given the complexities of identity in South Africa and the fact that it is not possible to fully know the psychological or emotional motivations for violence, firm conclusions are not possible. Rather, in this paper I have sought to question the uncontested presentation of Afrophobia (and xenophobia) as the explanations for attacks on perceived or actual (African) foreigners in the media and elsewhere. The empirical data and research, while not disproving the Afrophobia hypothesis as being part of the motivation for (some) attacks, clearly undermines the Afrophobia hypothesis in general. Given the growing evidence against the Afrophobia hypothesis but for the xenophobia hypothesis, why is Afrophobia becoming increasingly popular as a secondary explanation in the South Africa press? There are clearly various overlapping and intersecting factors that have resulted in the uncontested use of the Afrophobia hypothesis in the media. The first issue relates to the non-availability of accurate definitions. The lack of clearly defined terms and concepts when the attacks as discussed in the media (and presented by government) mean that ‘xenophobia’, ‘Afrophobia’ and ‘general criminality’ have all been presented as explanations without proper interrogation. Of course, this has happened in part because the media as a collective has not sought to define the parameters of the conversation. Relatedly, and reflecting a broader problem in the South African media, there is a clear lack of reporting of facts and figures. To add to this, there is a genuine lack of data, especially since government only releases statistics about large-scale attacks, while other data sources are largely unknown and underutilised. As such, reporters and columnists can present information, such as attacks being only against Africans, or present theories, such as attacks being a form of self-hate, with very little need for facts and evidence. Second, the media itself has shown bias against African and, to a lesser extent, Asian migrants. Reporting on crime committed by foreign nationals has tended to be racialised and has specified nationalities. A related factor is a lack of reporting about anti-foreigner attitudes in South Africa, even though public opinion surveys have found these to be consistently high across socio-demographic and race markers, with all groups tending to hold strongly negative and distrustful attitudes towards all groups of foreigners. Media reporting has focused overwhelmingly on

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violent anti-foreigner manifestations and only on large-scale attacks. It could be suggested that the South African media, through misinformation, insufficient information and biased reporting, has developed its own propensity for Afrophobia as an explanation for the attacks. Third, the media has been largely uncritical in reporting on, firstly, government denials of xenophobia and, secondly, the official use of the term Afrophobia. Reporting has tended to quote government officials; only one article that quoted an academic openly questioned the motives on the part of the government for branding the attacks as being afrophobic. To some extent, uncritical reporting may reflect a lack of capacity within the media. However, it may also indicate a lack of clear conceptual parameters or availability of facts. As a collective, the South African media thus feeds into both a narrative of ‘Afrophobia’ and a negative stereotyping of outsiders.

Notes 1. Some authors, such as Mgxitama and Gqola, use the terms Afrophobia and negrophobia interchangeably. As such, they explicitly tie attacks on foreigners to a form of black self-hate. For more, see Gqola (2009). 2. While there have been several systematic reviews of media reporting on immigration and xenophobia from 1994 onwards, there are some pertinent limitations. The reviews focused on the English print media (although some included Afrikaans reporting); there was a lack of systematic analysis of the broadcast media; and there was little analysis of the images and photographs of the attacks (Smith 2009, pp. 12–13). 3. Given the inaccuracies in crime reporting and statistics, murder is widely accepted as the most accurate crime figure in South Africa (Redpath and Nagia-Luddy 2015, p. 21). 4. For example, Xenowatch captures 118 murders from 1994 to 2018. However, we know the figure is likely to be much higher. In 2011, at least 120 foreign nationals were killed, in 2012 at least 140, and in 2013, there was an average of three major incidents a week (Landau 2014).

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Everatt, D. (2011). Xenophobia, state and society in South Africa, 2008–2010. Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 38(1), 7–36. Fanon, F. (2008). Black skins, White masks. New York: Grove Press. Felix, J. (2018). Drought and crime reduce tourism in city. Cape Argus. Available at https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/drought-and-crime-red uce-tourism-in-city-14392617. Accessed 13 April 2018. Ferreira, E. (2015). Sithole murder not xenophobic: Mahlobo. Available at https://www.iol.co.za/news/sithole-murder-not-xenophobic-mahlobo-185 1253. Accessed 29 April 2018. Fine, J., & Bird, W. (2002). Shades of prejudice: An investigation into the South African media’s coverage of racial violence and xenophobia. Available at https://csvr.org.za/docs/foreigners/shades.pdf. Accessed 17 November 2018. Freedom House. (2018). Xenophobia and outsider exclusion: Synthesis report. Available at https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/South_Afr ica_Community_Social_Cohesion_Profiles_Synthesis%20Report.pdf. Accessed 10 June 2020. Gordon, S. (2015). Xenophobia across the class divide: South African attitudes towards foreigners 2003–2012. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 33(4), 494–509. Gqirana, T. (2015). Nhleko condemns xenophobic ‘barbarity.’ News24. Available at https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/nhleko-condemns-xen ophobic-barbarity-20170307. Accessed 9 March 2018. Gqola, P. D. (2009). Brutal inheritances: Echoes, negrophobia and masculinist violence. In S. Hassim, E. Worby, & T. Kupe (Eds.), Go home or die here (pp. 209–224). Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Harber, A. (2015). South Africa: Compelling tales of Afrophobia and media selective blindness. In A. White (Ed.), Moving stories: International review of how media cover migration (pp. pp. 95–99). London: Ethical Journalism Network. Hiropoulos. (2018, April 9). Personal email correspondence with author. Hunter, Q. (2015). Zuma says ‘sister countries’ add to xenophobia. Mail & Guardian. Available at https://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-27-zuma-says-sis ter-countries-add-to-xenophobia. Accessed 28 April 2015. Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. (2017). SA Reconciliation Barometer. Available at http://www.ijr.org.za/home/wp-content/uploads/2017/ 12/IJR-Barometer-Report-2017-web.pdf. Accessed 19 March 2020. Jeffrey, J. (2015, February 11). Address by Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Hon. John Jeffery, MP, at the Annual General Meeting of the Hate Crimes Working Group. Scalabrini Cape Town. http://www.justice.gov.za/m_speeches/2015/20150211_Hat eCrimes.html. Accessed 7 March 2018.

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Landau, L. (2010). Loving the alien? Citizenship, law, and the future in South Africa’s demonic society. African Affairs, 109(435), 213–230. Landau, L. (2014, March 1). Xenophobia, a backtrack on promise of tolerance. Saturday Star. Available at https://www.pressreader.com/southafrica/saturday-star-south-africa/20140301/281998965377868. Accessed 9 November 2020. Landau, L. (2018, February 7–8). Conceptualising and countering xenophobia: Politics and rights amidst transformation. Paper presented at the SAHRC National Investigative Hearing on Migration, Xenophobia and Social Cohesion, Johannesburg. Landau, L., & Misago, J. P. (2009). Who to blame and what’s to gain? Reflections on space, state and violence in Kenya and South Africa. Africa Spectrum, 44(1), 99–110. Landau, L., & Misago, J. P. (2016). The link between public violence and xenophobia in South Africa. The Conversation. Available at https://thecon versation.com/the-link-between-public-violence-and-xenophobia-in-south-afr ica-61686. Accessed 1 July 2016. Landau, L., Ramjathan-Keogh, K., & Singh, G. (2004) Xenophobia in South Africa and problems related to it. Forced Migration Working Paper Series 13, Johannesburg. Mail & Guardian. (2008). Mbeki says attacks on foreigners not xenophobic. Available at https://mg.co.za/article/2008-07-03-mbeki-says-attacks-on-for eigners-not-xenophobia. Accessed 20 June 2018. Mail & Guardian. (2017). Mbeki critical of crime issues in APRM report. Available at https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-06-mbeki-critical-of-crime-iss ues-in-aprm-report. Accessed 20 June 2018. Makatse, M. (2015). The roots of xenophobia in South Africa. PoliticsWeb. Available at http://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-roots-of-xenophobia-insouth-africa. Accessed 8 March 2018. Maluleke, T. (2016). Look at the kwerekwere in the mirror. Available at https://mg.co.za/article/2016-06-09-look-at-the-kwerekwere-in-themirror. Accessed 8 March 2018. Mangena, M. (2017). Unfair to label South Africans as afrophobic. Available at https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017-03-01-unfair-to-labelsouth-africans-as-afrophobic. Accessed 5 March 2018. Mathivha, F. (2015). Afrophobia or xenophobia? All of the above. Available at http://livemag.co.za/real-life/opinion-afrophobia. Accessed 8 March 2018. Matsinhe, D. (2011). Africa’s fear of itself: the Ideology of makwerekwere in South Africa. Third World Quarterly, 32(2), 295–313. McDonald, D., & Jacobs, S. (2005). ‘(Re)writing xenophobia: Understanding press coverage of cross-border migration in Southern Africa. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 23(3), 295–325.

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Misago, J. P. (2015). ‘Prophets of doom’ warned of more xenophobic attacks in S. Africa Sadly they were right. Available at http://mgafrica.com/article/ 2015-03-05-prophets-of-doom-warned-of-more-xenophobic-attacks-in-s-afr ica-sadly-they-were-right. Accessed 5 March 2018. Misago, J. P. (2017). Politics by other means? The political economy of xenophobic violence in post-apartheid South Africa. The Black Scholar, 47 (2), 40–53. Misago, J. P., Freemantle I., & Landau, L. (2015). Protection from xenophobia: An evaluation of UNHRC’s Regional Office for Southern Africa’s Xenophobia Related Programmes. ACMS/UNHCR. Mngxitama, A. (2010). Xenophobia is in fact Afrophobia in disguise. SowetanLive. Available at https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/201011-30-xenophobia-is-in-fact-afrophobia-in-disguise. Accessed 8 March 2018. Mngxitama, A. (2015). Long-lasting solutions are needed to end Afrophobia scourge. Available at https://mg.co.za/article/2015-05-28-long-lasting-soluti ons-are-needed-to-end-afrophobia-scourge. Accessed 5 March 2018. Mnyanda, S. (2012). Afrophobic attacks are a threat. News24. Available at https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Afrophobic-attacks-are-a-thr eat-20120913. Accessed 8 March 2018. Mtwana, N., & Bird, W. (2006). Revealing race: An analysis of the coverage of race and xenophobia in the South African print media. Available at https://www.mediamonitoringafrica.org/images/uploads/Final_rep ort_v5_Print_final.pdf. Accessed 28 March 2020. Ncube, T. (2015). Very chilling Afrophobia in South Africa: ‘You Africans really abuse our hospitality’. Available at http://mgafrica.com/article/2015-05-05afrophobia-in-south-africa. Accessed 5 March 2018. Neocosmos, M. (2006). From ‘foreign natives’ to ‘native foreigners’: Explaining xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA Monograph Series. Nicolson, G., & Lepodise, O. (2018). For the stranded foreigner, it is nowhere to go, no way to rebuild. Daily Maverick. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/ article/2018-05-04-for-the-stranded-foreigners-it-is-nowhere-to-go-no-wayto-rebuild/#.WvHBtNN1yT9. Accessed 8 May 2018. Nyamnjoh, F. (2006). Insiders and outsiders: Citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary Southern Africa. London: CODESRIA/Zed Books. Oderson, C. (2015). South African xenophobia is ‘afrophobia’. Available at http://www.theafricareport.com/Southern-Africa/south-africa-xen ophobia-is-afrophobia.html. Accessed 9 March 2018. Park, Y. J., & Rugunanan, P. (2010). Visible and vulnerable: Asian migrant communities in South Africa. Johannesburg: Atlantic Philanthropies. Petse, N., Leandri P., Lauren O., & Freeman L. (2018). Grahamstown social cohesion community profile. Available at https://freedomhouse.org/program/ south-africa-community-social-cohesion-profiles. Accessed 20 June 2018.

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Presence, C. (2015). Afrophobia behind KZN attacks: Minister. Available at https://www.iol.co.za/news/afrophobia-behind-kzn-attacks-minister-184 4956. Accessed 9 March 2018. Pretorius, L., & Freeman, L. (2018). De Doorns social cohesion community profile. Available at https://freedomhouse.org/program/south-africacommunity-social-cohesion-profiles. Accessed 20 June 2018. Quintal, G. (2015). SA needs refugee camps—Mantashe. Available at https:// m.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/SA-needs-refugee-camps-Mantashe-201 50412. Accessed 9 March 2018. Rahlaga, M. (2014). SAHRC: Xenophobia should be changed to Afrophobia. Available at http://ewn.co.za/2014/12/08/Africans-suffer-themost-xenophobic-attacks-not-Europeans. Accessed 7 March 2018. Redpath, J., & Nagia-Luddy, F. (2015). Unconscionable and irrational: SAPS human resource allocation. South African Crime Quarterly, 53, 15–26. ROi Africa. (2015). Xenophobia: The media giant of 2015? http://www.roi africa.com/insight/content/xenophobia-media-giant-2015. Accessed 19 June 2018. ROi Africa. (2018). Sentiment of media coverage on xenophobia. http://www.roi africa.com/insight/content/sentiment-media-coverage-xenophobia. Accessed 19 June 2018. Sandwith, C. (2010). Postcolonial violence: Narrating South Africa, May 2008. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 22(2), 60–82. Southern African Migration Project (SAMP). (2008). The perfect storm: The realities of xenophobia in contemporary South Africa. Cape Town: Idasa. Southern African Migration Project (SAMP). (2013). Soft targets: Xenophobia, public violence and changing attitudes to migrants in South Africa after. Cape Town: Megadigital. Smith, M. (2009). A meta-review of the Role of the South African media’s coverage of xenophobia and the xenophobic violence prior to and including. Johannesburg: Atlantic Philanthropies. Statistics SA. (2011). Census 2011. Pretoria: Stats SA. van der Walt, L. (2016). One year after the 2015 Grahams town riots against foreign traders: attacks hurt working class and poor, only capitalists and politicians benefit. Available at https://zabalaza.net/2016/12/16/one-yearafter-the-2015-grahamstown-riots-against-foreign-traders-attacks-hurt-wor king-class-and-poor-only-capitalists-and-politicians-benefit. Accessed 5 March 2018. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR). (2011). Declaration on Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance against Migrants and Trafficked Persons. Asia Pacific NGO Meeting, Tehran, Iran.

CHAPTER 3

Talk Radio and the Mediation of Xenophobic Violence in South Africa Dumisani Moyo and Sarah Helen Chiumbu

Introduction The term ‘xenophobia’ has become something of a buzzword in South African discourse since the 2008 wave of attacks on foreign nationals that claimed the lives of 62 people and displaced tens of thousands who sought refuge in churches, mosques and even police stations. Since then, xenophobic violence has repeatedly erupted across the country, occasionally escalating to levels of the 2008 attacks, such as the attacks that took place in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in April 2015 and again in Gauteng (Johannesburg and Pretoria) in 2017. Research on xenophobia has linked its causes not only to socio-economic factors related to competition over scarce resources but also the politics of identity and belonging (e.g. Jearey-Graham and Böhmke 2013; Mosselton 2010; Nyamnjoh 2006). The contest over belonging and what it means to be South African has been a defining feature of discourses on identity and citizenship in the country. While the articulation and formulation of the

D. Moyo (B) · S. H. Chiumbu Department of Journalism, Film & Television, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_3

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politics of belonging and identity take place in many spaces and adopt various forms, the media play a central role in producing and reproducing discursive practices that remind people of the idea of nationhood and in creating a sense of identity and belonging. Several analysts have fingered the media as one of the significant contributors to xenophobia through its discourses on othering and the exclusion of African foreigners (e.g. Chiumbu and Moyo 2018; Neocosmos 2010; Nyamnjoh 2006). This study adds to the existing body of research on this subject by looking at mediated discourses of xenophobia on talk radio in South Africa. While there is a plethora of research on print media and xenophobia, radio has received little scholarly attention in this area. However, Hungbo (2012) analysed the way debates about the xenophobic violence of May 2008 were conducted on the After Eight Debate on SAfm and the Redi Direko Show1 on Radio 702. The purpose of his research was to examine how ‘identities of the self and the Other, as well as South African national identity, are discursively constructed on these two talk shows’ (Hungbo 2012, p. 120). Studies on radio and xenophobia are crucial because radio in Africa reaches far bigger audiences than print media and its influence is therefore far more significant. This study provides insights into the ways a commercial talk radio station in South Africa, Radio 702, engages with audiences who called in on xenophobia and migration following the attacks of April 2015. We pursue two broad aims. First, we seek to find out how the hosts of different shows navigate the discussions and how they interact with their callers on this contentious topic. Second, we analyse how the callers frame migrants and issues of immigration. We identify the dominant frames or discourses used by the host and the callers when discussing xenophobic violence in the country. The talk programmes examined in this paper are randomly selected from talk shows featuring the subject of xenophobia during the 2015 violence. The talk radio format has gained considerable popularity across a range of radio stations in the country since the transition to democracy in 1994. According to McNair (2002), talk radio has three broad aims, apart from the traditional role of informing the public as part of contributing towards a healthy democracy. These are ‘representation (of the people in the public sphere); interrogation (of political elites to enhance their accountability to the public); and mobilisation (of the public towards

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involvement in the political process)’ (McNair 2002, p. 409). The selection of Radio 702 provides an exciting and significant case study in the context of xenophobia since the station to a high degree embodies these broad objectives. Our choice of Radio 702 was primarily informed by the fact that this is a radio station whose target audience is mostly affluent suburban dwellers who, we assumed, would make more informed and considered contributions to the national discourse on xenophobia. Several studies on xenophobic violence and discrimination against foreigners have shown that such attacks happen mostly in marginalised and poor communities. It is therefore not surprising that most research on perceptions to foreigners, which has demonstrated that many South Africans hold negative and hostile attitudes to migrants, has also targeted population groups that are in the lower economic stratum (e.g. Haylem 2013; Pillay et al. 2008; Nyamnjoh 2006). We also assumed that Radio 702 listeners were far removed from the theatres of xenophobia, e.g. the townships where the actual acts of xenophobia are typically performed. Research by Melissa Myambo (2019), for example, has shown that working-class migrants, who work and live in socio-economically deprived spaces, experience intense xenophobia in comparison with middle-class professionals. The latter enjoy high levels of xenophilia (affection for foreigners). Radio 702 boasts of having the most educated and informed listeners, with the highest upper average household income, of all radio stations. The majority of Radio 702 listeners are believed to be on the Living Standard Measures (LSM) 9 and 10 levels.2 On the website of Radio 702’s parent company, Primedia, the station is described as ‘the premium talk brand in the country’, ‘attracting a mature and educated listenership, with the highest disposable income’. The study was informed by the theories and notions of the Habermasian public sphere, as well as by Benedict Anderson’s imagined community. Regarding the former, we are conceptualising talk radio as a public sphere that allows people to deliberate on issues of socio-economic and political importance, which in turn influence public opinion. The notion of an imagined community (Anderson 1991) was useful for this study as it points to issues of identity and belonging. We are interested in establishing how the callers and the hosts, by using the deixis of ‘we/us/our’ or ‘them/they/their’, construct multiple imagined communities and narratives of exclusion or inclusion as they engage on the contentious subject of xenophobia in South Africa.

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History and Context: Xenophobia and Migration in South Africa South Africa has a long history of labour migration from neighbouring countries, dating back to the early years of the mining boom in the mid-nineteenth century (Tati 2008). Following the transition to democracy in 1994, these migration patterns intensified, mainly owing to a mix of factors. These include perceived opportunities by people from neighbouring and other African countries to escape rising poverty, poor economic performance or violent conflict, and to make a fresh start in the new South Africa. Research over the past three decades has, however, shown that attitudes towards non-nationals, though varied across the cross-section of South African society, are increasingly negative (see, for example, Danso and McDonald 2001; Nyamnjoh 2006; Crush et al. 2008; Jearey-Graham and Böhmke 2013). Evidence abounds that ‘nonnationals living and working in South Africa face discrimination at the hands of citizens, government officials, the police and private organisations contracted to manage their detention and deportation’ (Landau et al. 2005, p. 2). Although South Africa has committed, through its 1996 Constitution, to protect all who live in the country, regardless of citizenship, nationality or country of birth, anti-migration sentiments and xenophobia continue to increase (see Chiumbu and Moyo 2018). These negative attitudes towards non-nationals are oriented mainly towards other Africans and sometimes nationals from the Indian subcontinent but rarely, if ever, towards nationals from Europe and the Americas. Although xenophobic attacks erupt at different intervals across the country, the ones that have attracted very considerable media interest are the ones in May 2008, April 2015 and April 2017. We are interested in the April 2015 attacks as their genesis is believed to lie with pronouncements by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, a prominent cultural and political figure in South Africa. A month before the 2015 xenophobic attacks, the king ordered foreigners to pack their bags and leave South Africa: We are requesting those that come from outside to please go back to their countries … The fact that there were countries that played a role in the country’s struggle for liberation should not be used as an excuse to create a situation where foreigners are allowed to inconvenience locals.

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Zwelithini’s speech unleashed a wave of xenophobic violence that soon engulfed the country, prompting the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to launch a probe into his remarks. While the SAHRC found the comments ‘hurtful and harmful’, it cleared Zwelithini of committing hate speech and established that there was no causal link between his statement and the violence that ensued. The attacks began in late March in Durban and spread to Johannesburg, resulting in the death of at least 15 people and the displacement of hundreds (Chiumbu and Moyo 2018).

Radio in South Africa South Africa boasts a rich radio culture that dates to the apartheid era. Following the transformation of public institutions and the media soon after the transition to democracy, there was an explosion in both commercial and community radio stations, and a burgeoning of listener numbers.3 The media in the country—once the bastion of Afrikaner nationalism and ideology—were transformed in line with the democratic ethos of the newly independent state. The broadcasting sector, specifically radio, witnessed the most far-reaching changes. The country adopted a threetier broadcasting system comprising public, commercial and community broadcasting that allowed for the entry of radio stations covering the country’s language, demographic and geographical complexities. Radio is the most consumed form of media in the country with more than 10 million households having radios. Listeners’ options have expanded through the introduction of digital and online radio. One of the commercial radio stations that has made its mark in Gauteng is Primedia-owned Radio 702, which was established in 1980 as a youth music station under the name Channel Radio 702, moved to adult talk in 1988. During the apartheid era it was one of the only independent sources of broadcast news and acted as a platform for free expression in an otherwise restricted environment (Wigstone 1987). Today, the station tackles a range of social, political and economic issues in the country through phone-in programmes and in-studio debates. Talk radio in Africa is known for populism and is often used as a platform for denigrating and vilifying political opponents. However, in South Africa, it is generally used for public engagement in the critical issues of the day. In many ways, radio has become a crucial platform for interaction. Hosts of South Africa’s talk radio stations are well respected and

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prominent media personalities. They wield discursive power and set the agenda. Politicians from all political parties often use Radio 702 to explain issues or reach out to ordinary South Africans, either by the invitation of talk show hosts or by calling in during discussion on pertinent topics.

Theoretical Intervention By opening up to live public engagement on-air, talk radio aspires to what Benjamin Barber (1984) has termed ‘strong democracy’, where citizens exchange ideas and interrogate public officials in a healthy public debate. Jurgen Habermas (1989) came up with the concept of the public sphere to denote a space between the state and the market where citizens come together for deliberation. Although the concept as initially conceptualised by Habermas has been criticised for its narrow articulation of inclusion, which left out whole groups such as women, people of colour and the working class (e.g. Fraser 1992), it nonetheless acts as a useful heuristic to understand the discursive space that the media offer for deliberation. Also, while Habermas’s public sphere was conceptualised in a western context, its construction of an ideal space for citizen engagement has earned it universal appeal, even in non-western societies. Stephen Coleman (1998, p. 18) finds the idea of an inclusive public sphere theoretically valuable, ‘especially when examining participative media phenomena, such as phone-in programmes [that] profess to be open for allowing citizens to enter into public discussion on an open and equal basis’. To this end, many scholars conceptualise talk radio as a public sphere (Coleman 1998; Squire 2000; Fitzgerald and Housley 2007; Mwesige 2009; Omwoha 2014; Bosch 2011) and as the platform that provides a safe space for audiences to share their opinions freely. One of the hallmarks of talk radio is the very ordinariness of the topics discussed. This creates a sense of ease and familiarity between listeners, host and callers (Fitzgerald and Housley 2007). This interaction brings about an imagined community that is created discursively. Although the callers and the host do not know each other, the discourse on radio brings them together. In his book Imagined Communities (1991), Anderson argues that in any community larger than a primordial village (where social contact is face to face), a community member would never be able to meet all the other members and must, therefore, imagine them. For Anderson, cultural forms such as newspapers and radio ‘enable the nation to be “imagined … in the minds of each [member]” as an “image of

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communion” and shared beliefs, a community that, regardless of actual inequalities, is always “conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship”’ (cited in Fuller and Sedo 2006, pp. 6–7). For example, while none of the people in Gauteng will meet all the other people who reside in their province of 13.7 million people, the majority of those who listen and call in on Radio 702 will share a common bond in their consumption of this station. The scholarship of Michael Warner (2002) on ‘publics’ adds an exciting dimension to the concept of the imagined community. He argues that a community consuming any form of text is united through nothing else but the discourse that unites them. He states that the ‘public do not exist apart from the discourse that addresses them’ (2002, p. 416). Talk radio thus facilitates the construction of a public that is joined by discourse, which creates a sense of familiarity and community between the callers (see Chiumbu and Ligaga 2013). It is within the configuration of the public sphere and the imagined community that we seek to interrogate the role of talk radio in discussing issues of xenophobia and the meanings of nation and identity attached to the discourse. By its nature, talk radio is a fast-paced genre and as such requires ‘fast-thinking’ hosts capable of handling multiple topics at the same time. The danger, as Pierre Bourdieu (2012) argues about a sister medium, television, is that the requirement for fast thinking reduces hosts to thinking ‘in clichés’ as there is not enough time to construct comprehensive arguments. Comprehensive argumentation, Bourdieu maintains, ‘takes time, since you have to set out a series of propositions connected by “therefore”, “consequently”, “that said”, “given the fact that …” and so on’ (Bourdieu 2012, p. 29). Often, talk show hosts find themselves hopping from one subject to another without exhausting any as they follow topics introduced by different callers. It is essential, however, to point out some of the limitations of talk radio concerning some of the ideals articulated above. McNair (2002, p, 408), for instance, point out that many commentators have questioned the capacity of talk radio to approximate the ideals of both a strong/deliberative democracy and a public sphere of an open and free exchange of ideas. They insist that the ‘mediated access’ that talk radio provides ‘falls short of “real” politics’, rather being is some form of ‘dumbed-down’ political infotainment, descending at times to ‘mediated mob rule’. There are also structural constraints to participation since not

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many people can afford the data and airtime to sustain long calls to a radio station.

Methodological Approach To achieve the twofold aims of this study (the manner in which hosts on Radio 702 engaged with listeners calling-in and the frames and discourses used by the hosts and the callers when discussing xenophobia), we used qualitative thematic content analysis to analyse selected excerpts chosen from the talk show data set. The data set for the study is drawn from the period of 1 April to 30 April 2015, the month when a significant wave of xenophobic violence erupted. We obtained from the station’s digital archive 390 hours of audio recordings covering the three talk shows. We listened to the clips, making notes and setting aside those that contained discussions on xenophobia. We then transcribed the relevant clips and engaged in thematic content analysis of the exchanges between the callers and the hosts. Our study involved embedded case-study research, which is a case study that contains more than one subunit of analysis (Yin 2003). The first unit of analysis was Radio 702 and the second was xenophobic violence. Case studies explore and investigate contemporary real-life phenomenon through the detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events or conditions, and their relationship (Yin 2003). Robert Stake (2005) identifies three types of case studies. An intrinsic case study is done to learn about a unique phenomenon focused on by the research. An instrumental case study is undertaken to provide a general understanding of an event using a specific case. In contrast, a collective case study provides a broad understanding using some instrumental case studies that either occur on the same site or come from multiple locations. We used the instrumental case study for this research. Our interest was not Radio 702 as such but in how talk radio engages with issues of xenophobia. Radio 702 was used only as instrument to understand mediated discourses on xenophobia on an urban commercial radio station.

Findings Talk radio as a format operates in distinct ways from print media, mainly because of its dialogical nature, and our findings reflect this. The host-caller interaction takes place in an institutional arrangement that is

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designed to make this happen. Often the interaction is primarily intended to discuss personal opinions about public issues. Therefore, the institutional space in which talk radio interactions take place is created at the interface of private and public spheres of modern society. The voices of ordinary citizens are carried into the institutional space of the radio station and are projected back into the domestic or private sphere of the audience (Hutchby 2009). This intimate interaction has implications for the discourses that emerge between the host and caller. While journalists in the print media wield enormous power in their selection of whom to interview, what to report from the interview and how to report it, in talk radio the host has a more direct and immediate gatekeeping role. The host mediates the talk in a specific direction while allowing callers to speak freely. The host occupies a very delicate space to strike a balance between allowing free expression and guarding against the violation of the rights of other listeners, such as hate speech. The views of the audience (the callers) are also captured by the radio station in a more direct way than people who are interviewed by the print media. Against this framework, we arranged our findings and analysis into two broad sections, namely host-caller interaction and discourses and frames.

Host/Caller Interaction In talk radio, there is often a sense of ease between a host and callers, and a created level of familiarity. At the same time, talk radio provides the immediacy and instantaneity of imparting, reception, mediation and response that sets it far apart from other media forms. The host, as the gatekeeper, has limited power to control the messages from his callers and is often only able to act after the message has been delivered. By that time, the genie is usually already out of the proverbial bottle and cannot be put back. This has implications for public discourse on sensitive topics such as race and xenophobia, where hate speech and insensitive comments from some callers can inadvertently enter the public space before they can be filtered out. Talk shows combine two forms of mediated interaction—the on-air interaction between the host and the callers, and the mediated interaction between various callers taking place through the discourse on air. What connects people on radio, and indeed on online spaces such as social media, is the discourse and nothing else.

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The Host as the Mediator/Gatekeeper The host of talk radio wields considerable authority as they determine the ‘rules of engagement’ on their programmes. To a high degree, he regulates or ‘orchestrates’ discussions in particular ways (see Fitzgerald and Housley 2007). A host typically manages and controls the participation and provides the structured framework (opening comments, determining the length of calls, organising the transition from one call to the next and mediating the conversation). It is important to note that a pre-screening of callers takes place off-air, usually by a producer and call screener who ‘check’ the contribution the caller wishes to make before passing the caller on to the host. This also applies to text and voice messages from listeners, which the host reads out or plays back. Further, the host often chooses the theme of discussion and channels the debate, at times away from controversy for the sake of ‘political correctness’. Sometimes he can stir controversy as well to trigger more calls and greater participation. All this has implications for what happens on air. When a conversation takes an uncomfortable turn, the host sometimes cuts off the speaker. In other cases, the host allows the caller to go on and on, notwithstanding the controversy they create. One of our findings is that while Radio 702 hosts did their best to moderate and temper discussions on non-nationals and xenophobia, they sometimes took a neutral position that betrayed a level of condonation of anti-non-national sentiment. In some instances, talk show hosts appeared to be ‘protective’ of non-nationals, often making radical interventions, such as abruptly cutting off callers who explicitly voiced hatred and violence towards non-nationals. To some degree, the talk show hosts appeared to be conscious that they were ‘role-playing’ and hence trying to stimulate debate by making controversial remarks. But this raised the question of the genuineness of some of the discussion. In some cases, hosts ‘sympathised’ with callers’ xenophobic sentiments, suggesting that they had a reason for the position taken and that it was ‘understandable’ that they should be angry at non-nationals or the government, or that they differed with the approaches taken by other callers as regards violent attacks on non-nationals. For instance, some callers who sympathised with King Goodwill Zwelithini’s call that ‘foreigners must go back where they came from’, received undeserved amounts of uninterrupted airplay. The following excerpt is illustrative of some of the points discussed here:

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Host: ‘Sikhathele, in Midrand, you want to talk about the statues4 and about foreigners. I think we know your views on foreigners very well, Sikhathele. You have made it clear more than once on this radio station that you want every foreigner to leave’. Caller: ‘We have been telling government that we are tired of these foreigners flooding into our country. And what they did was they remained silent. So, what the people of KwaZulu- Natal are doing is to assist government into realising that we are not happy about this flooding of foreigners. And I want to tell the people of KZN […] that I am not blaming any of them, because they told government and the government did not act’. Host: ‘Well, you see the thing is that the people are angry because, as you said, government is not doing anything. So, you can’t get angry with the foreigners as much as you can get angry with the government for not having the right policies in place to prevent this from happening. So why are we punishing the people?’ Caller: ‘When we eradicated the entire cabal of apartheid, we acted the same way. We burned tyres, we did all these things. This issue of asking whether this is a policy issues … Zuma is not interested in policy issues. He is busy with Nkandla and his wives, so we are assisting him. And even the king of KZN [sic] said that, though he reneged subsequently, but we know that we don’t want these people. And I’m so astonished about the fact that we are not dealing with Nigerians decisively because we must go back to Hillbrow and reclaim our Johannesburg. What the people of KZN are doing is, correctly, what I am intending to do’. Host: ‘Oh, no, no. I have to cut you off there, Sikhathele. Because that kind of violence we cannot condone. And it’s not the fault of the people who are there. If we have laws that allow people to enter the country and live here and to work here be it illegally or legally, then we cannot take it out on the people themselves. I’m sorry, Sikhathele, but I cannot continue to listen to that’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015).

The Host as the Voice of Authority The host takes centre stage by being first in the sequence of the discussion; he speaks the opening lines, introduces the speakers by name and gives their geographical location. After the caller has spoken, the host either summarises what has been said or puts a different spin on the issue, thus taking charge of the conversation. Some talk show hosts take the opportunity to ‘educate’ their listeners who make sweeping claims about the ‘influx of foreigners’ and their ‘impact’. Some, for instance, use an

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immense amount of time to challenge their callers to provide evidence, discourage stereotyping and argue the use of generalisations about ‘foreigners’, for example about Nigerians and drugs, prostitution rings and so on. The following examples are illustrative of this: Presenter: ‘One of the problems I find is that people generalise, like the whole issue of apartheid and xenophobia is when you generalise about things. People generalise about foreigners. Now there is a difference between some foreign criminal who is in the country and somebody who has come here legally and is trying to run a business. Beware of generalising. Don’t you agree?’ (Weekend Breakfast with Africa and Azania, 13 April 2019). Presenter: ‘I have a question though, there’s something President Zuma said, and I agree with him. He said that “The ANC made a mistake in post-apartheid by not changing the people’s violent psyche, but instead wrongly assumed that the constitution will solve all problems”. I don’t think this was a task for the ANC alone because South Africa had many parties during the 90s. This should have been the project for all of South Africa and not just the ANC. So did we take for granted that a rainbow nation will survive and that the Constitution will uphold the country alone? If our leaders had communicated honestly and accounted for the wrong things, then maybe people would not have been so vigilant in demonstrating how bad it is. What could we have done to change the psyche? Do we still have a chance to stop this violence and save this county? How do we do that? What do you think?’ (Open Line with Redi Tlhabi, 21 April 2019).

While talk show hosts pushed back at some of the things said by callers, they often failed to provide adequate counterarguments beyond constitutional duty and an appeal to a sense of shared humanity. For instance, little was said about the role of other African countries in the dismantling of apartheid. Where this was mentioned, it was often anecdotal in nature and without adequate detail to convince callers. In part, the explanation for this lies in the limitations of what Bourdieu called the ‘journalistic field’, which is characterised by ‘demagogic simplification’. Some journalists argue that this is in line with public expectations. The authority hosts have over the interaction gives them an agendasetting role. Hutchby (1996, p. 492) holds that argumentative resources on talk radio are distributed asymmetrically between the host and callers, with the host having power and authority on the issues discussed. He argues: ‘Distinctive interactional prerogatives are thereby available to the

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host, by which he can exert a degree of control over the boundaries of an agenda which is ostensibly set by the caller. This does not mean, however, that callers are incapable of resisting the host’s challenges’. We see this in the following examples: SMS message read by the host: ‘I don’t agree with your approach to xenophobia. It is selfish. Your approach shows that you have not experienced poverty. You have not witnessed how the influx of foreigners is affecting South Africans. They are overlooked for jobs and ignored in favour of foreigners. You say it’s Afrophobia and it’s to do with poverty but it’s not. South Africans are suffering’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). Caller: ‘We are making such claims based on what we see. We live in townships and we read reports. Let us not try to pretend as if these things are not happening. Some of them are in our jails; you can count them, those that were captured and so forth. It is happening. It is just that our government does not want to hear what is happening. But it is true. I can tell you that’ (Early Breakfast with Koketso Sechane, 14 April 2015). Caller: ‘I wanted to comment on what you said about the Zulu king and what he said. I think you are also still misleading us as a society because what he said was that those foreign nationals who are committing crimes in South Africa should pack their bags and leave. But he was speaking somewhere with a group of people in KZN, you know, ePhongola. People were not there. I am here in Gauteng, but I got the news from the media. The media chose to report about certain portions and what I feel right now is that you are still doing the same thing because after that the chairperson of Ingonyama Trust, who is representing the Zulu king, issued a statement on his behalf, clarifying what he said. But again, you are saying nothing about that statement. Yesterday he made another statement. I think he made three statements after then to clarify what he said’ (Weekend Breakfast with Africa and Azania, 12 April 2015).

These extracts make it clear that although the host has control over the interaction, the power dynamics between host and caller are always in a state of flux and keep shifting.

Caller to Caller Interaction As stated earlier, talk radio fosters a sense of ambient intimacy and familiarity between callers. In this ‘intimate’ atmosphere, callers feel free to

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share issues openly. They also pick up points raised by previous callers and we noted the distinction made between insiders (South Africans) as opposed to outsiders (foreigners), as per the following: Caller: ‘I want to agree with the points by Sikhatele that government is to blame for the scourge of foreigners. I understand his frustration. Resources are not infinite. Foreigners are draining our resources and social fabric’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). SMS read by the host: ‘I have been listening to Mashudu’s comments for some time now. He is forever bashing South Africans and pleasing Uncle Tom. If he is not happy with the country, he should leave and go elsewhere, maybe Zimbabwe’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015).

Callers thus either affirmed or disagreed with viewpoints expressed by previous callers and often sustained the thread of conversation. Such callers form what Warner (2002) calls a ‘public’, which is defined as a relationship between strangers. The only thing that brings these strangers together is that they are collectively being ‘addressed’ by the same piece of media and are united through discourse, i.e. publics are self-organised through discourse. The discourses on xenophobia and immigrants united these callers into an imagined community. Although their views differed, they appear to be united in their anti-migration sentiments.

Discourses and Frames A quick content analysis of selected audio transcripts shows that, as individuals, some of the talk radio callers express as much xenophobia as one can find in print media narratives. Most of the listeners who called in to voice their opinions on migrants and xenophobia exhibited strong xenophobic sentiments against non-nationals, who they invariably referred to as ‘those people’ who have no place in South Africa. Research by Hungbo (2012) on the xenophobia debate on SAfm and Radio 702 following the 2008 attacks also found that the callers ‘sounded angry, insisting that “foreigners must leave South Africa because their presence was making life more difficult for the indigenous population in different ways’ (Hungbo 2012, p. 124). Contrary to initial perceptions that Radio 702 audiences, because they were mostly thought to be affluent middle-class citizens, would typically

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be more liberal and tolerant of non-nationals, this study establishes that most of them were as xenophobic as the performers of violent xenophobic acts on township streets. This brought to the fore that while Radio 702 listeners are not necessarily homogenous, callers located in the diverse geographies of the city, including the townships and the suburbs, shared a strong hatred for non-nationals. In sum, the results confirmed a predominance of stereotyped interpretations of migrants as the Other, criminal, illegal and so on. We see the framing patterns of talk radio and the print media on xenophobia as very similar. The difference with the print media is that talk radio presenters intervened to tamper with the sentiments that were put forward and, in some cases, other callers stepped in to provide some moderation.

Negative Frames of African Foreigners As stated previously, existing scholarly work on how the print media has framed immigrants and xenophobia has consistently shown that African foreign nationals are negatively constructed and identified with illegality and crime. Such foreigners were often called ‘these people’ and ‘them’. In almost all the Radio 702 callers’ interventions, the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ also came out strongly. The overwhelming message was unequivocal: ‘Foreigners are not wanted in South Africa’. ‘They’ are taking our jobs and draining our resources. ‘They’ are criminals. ‘They’ are flooding ‘our’ country. An example follows below. While this may not have been a true reflection of the general mindset of Radio 702 listeners, the absence of tolerant and moderating voices made it appear so. Caller: ‘I was just thinking that these people who are here at the moment are going to have offsprings. In 15 to 20 years our South African population will be artificially increased by these offsprings. And our resources are strained. Sikhathele mentioned Nigerians. They seem to be untouchable. They literally conduct themselves as they like, where they like and how they like. We all know what they get up to. They are destroying our South African youth, which should be the future of our country: future generation leaders, teachers and academics. Our youth is being decimated’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015).

As underlined by previous research on the print media’s handling of xenophobia, the trope of criminality also came out strongly from callers on talk

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radio. They associated foreign nationals with the huge criminal problem in South Africa, as follows: Caller: ‘I echo [the] sentiments by King Zwelithini. Foreigners must go. Zimbabweans do not respect by-laws. They sell pornographic material at taxi ranks in full view of our children. They bomb our ATMs. They rob us every day. They must go’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015).

Other sentiments also resonated with findings from previous media studies, such as African migrants depicted as masses flooding into South Africa illegally. Most callers used words like ‘influx’ and ‘flooding’ quite often: SMS message read by the host: ‘Government should be blamed for the influx of foreigners. If government were to remove all foreigners in Sunnyside in Pretoria, for example, it would be empty’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). Caller: ‘I am tired of foreigners invading and flooding our country. The government is not doing anything. The host here is trying to state that we should not blame the foreigners but blame government’s lack of appropriate policies. But we don’t want these people at all’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015).

Many callers placed the blame (for xenophobia) on government inaction, which they argued had forced people to take the law into their own hands. Government was blamed for the porous borders that allowed foreigners to enter the country at will, while corporate companies were blamed for employing foreigners ahead of locals: Caller: ‘The government is doing nothing to stem the threat of foreigners. I am pleading with the government to protect us South Africans. Zuma says that South Africans are lazy. I am insulted by this. South Africans are not lazy. If government does nothing, we will take the matter in our own hands as foreigners pose a security threat’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). SMS read by host: ‘Government can bury its head in the sand but we South Africans are sick and tired of foreigners. They need to go back’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015)

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While the presenters allowed the callers to vent their anger towards African foreigners, they responded with counter-narratives and took the role of a teacher explaining issues: Presenter: ‘Desmond Tutu once said that the rainbow nation that filled the world with hope is turned to a pale shadow of itself due to these xenophobia attacks which his foundation has called a gross display of carelessness. He recalled the crimes of those who testified during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as women, children and the poor and elderly are being attacked by South Africans. He’s quoted: “The reason for the Commission shining a light on the past was precisely to contribute to the processes of a national healing to ensure that we never commit such foul deeds again. Yet here we are, less than a generation later, witnessing hate crimes on par with the worst that apartheid could offer”. Desmond Tutu has said he would pray for the perpetrators of the violence so that their eyes would be opened and they see the fault of their ways. That was a statement from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation in response to carelessness, as far the xenophobia violence that we are experiencing’ (Africa Melane Show, 19 April 2015). Presenter: ‘I wonder then what should we be demanding of the king of the Zulus at the moment. What message should we be sending to him? Whether you are a Zulu person and you bow down to him as a king or a South African whose taxpayer’s money is used to keep up his lifestyle, surely we have a say, I would imagine, in determining what comes out of that [royal] household. We need him to say something, what is that thing? What do you expect of the king? Give us a call or an SMS’. ‘I would love to see him in the space in which the displaced foreign nationals are having to call home, which is totally unsettling. I would love to see him taking care of a child and feeding them breakfast in the morning and having the media taking pictures of that and videos of him saying that this is not acceptable, not on my watch. That’s what we should be hearing from the king. Do you agree?’ ‘Why can’t King Zwelithini come out and do the right thing? Xenophobia is something that should not be existing in this country. It is the attacking of poor people by poor people. It doesn’t make sense. And unfortunately people like King Goodwill Zwelithini, ministers in various church congregations and other leaders should be coming out and saying that this is unacceptable and that it should not be allowed’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015).

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The presenters appear to be anti-xenophobic as they take a strong moral stand against xenophobia and use the platform to ‘educate’ or ‘enlighten’ the listeners and callers.

Moderate Narratives One of the assumptions of this study was that those who called into Radio 702 would exhibit less hostility to African foreigners. To repeat, xenophobic violence and negative attitudes towards African foreigners have been primarily associated with marginalised communities. Xenophobic violence in South Africa has always intersected with poverty and social exclusion. However, this research has shown that xenophobic sentiments cut across class, race and gender. However, there were a few moderate voices among the callers, although not many: Caller: ‘I believe that there is a solution to xenophobia. Create work. Foreigners should not be a threat. The government is not the boss, we are. People have agency to change their lives. People should be responsible’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). SMS read by the host: ‘It is wrong to think that foreigners don’t like their homes. My friend’s children went back to Zimbabwe after the 2008 attacks. She communicates with them and she says they are happier at home than they were here’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). Caller: ‘People who kill foreigners have blood on their hands. People keep on talking about foreigners taking over our resources, our jobs, etc. Europe is taking thousands of foreigners, especially those who are fleeing poverty and war. The pictures we see on television of migrants crossing seas are sad. Some die. South Africa doesn’t even have this kind of problem. I am sick of South Africans who are xenophobic. We should be realistic and deal with the foreigner issue responsibly’ (Sunday Early with Que Naidoo, 12 April 2015). Caller: ‘I wanted to talk about Ubuntu. You know that respect is the one that can put you where you like. Ubuntu is to say that your brother is wherever you go. That will make you understand that the foreigner is a human like other people. It matters not where they come from, whether he is sleeping on the street or whatever. Now I see the xenophobia story meaning that people are not knowing themselves as humans as they are treating others badly. That is how South Africa should stand and be one and say: this we don’t want. Even the government ministers should push to say that this should not be done. So sometimes we wait and wait for

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slow discussions until it happens so hard. We then stand up as citizens too late, showing that xenophobia is wrong … This xenophobia does show that Ubuntu is something we don’t believe in’ (Africa Melane Show, 19 April 2015).

Moderate views such as this were aligned with the opinions of the talk show hosts, who openly showed support for these temperate views, as in the exchange below: Host: ‘Sbu in Alexandra, welcome. Alex is where the gentleman was killed and where a few years ago Emmanuel Sithole was burned alive. But you have decided to do something about this. What are you and your friends doing?’ Caller: ‘Me and my few friends, because we are not working, we are busy guarding the people from outside the country and even at night we do not sleep, we patrol all areas around like from 13h00 to 21h00. At night people go there to vandalise their shops. So, since we started it, and I am not going to lie, there hasn’t been such things like vandalising and stuff’. Host: ‘You are basically protecting foreign-owned shops in your neighbourhood?’ Caller: ‘Yes’. Host: ‘And also what is the rest of the community saying, are they complimenting you? What reaction are you getting from your actions?’ Caller: ‘No, people will always have to say, some are fighting us and some are supporting us. People will stay people’. Host: ‘Why did you decide to do this? I mean, you could have stayed at home since its winter and you are hearing about the killings. What was it that made you decide that you will do something like this?’ Caller: ‘It’s unfair to see people get stabbed for no reason. If you can look what happened in 2008 and compare it to what’s happening now this one is not xenophobia. It is more like robbery. They are looting shops; they do not go to their houses’. Host: ‘I admire your sense of solidarity and your respect for other human beings, and for doing something you are not going to be paid for because nobody is actually watching. Yes, there are young people like this in South Africa’ (Open Line with Redi Tlhabi, 21 April 2015).

Such moderate voices are few and far apart in the programmes we analysed. The dominant negative sentiments about foreigners drown them

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out. While it is possible that the moderate messages could be representative of the silent majority, the danger is that a perception of strong anti-foreigner discourse is easily created when the majority of callers are against non-nationals.

Conclusion The media play an essential role in mediating issues to do with violence and conflict. Because the media (broadcast, print and online) reach massive audiences, their influence in shaping opinion becomes very significant. The media have a great potential to either incite or calm societal tensions. Our task in this study was twofold: to find out how talk radio hosts navigated discussions on xenophobia and interacted with the callers, and to analyse how the callers framed migrants and issues of immigration. Our findings illustrate that the majority of listeners who called into Radio 702 during the study period espoused xenophobic attitudes and that the talk show hosts used the space to deconstruct negative stereotypes of African foreign nationals and provide an alternative discourse about migrants. This differs from print media journalists who have been accused of fermenting and reinforcing xenophobic sentiments. Broader political and economic factors may explain these differences. Media operate within economic and political structures that constrain as well as facilitate their operations. How the media are organised and funded has implications on who gets to speak, the stories that are told, how those stories are told, and which stories are silenced. The print media in South Africa primarily serve elite interests and audiences, and often construct the marginalised communities negatively. In contrast, radio in its quest to attract a broad audience has created a ‘common’ space for national dialogue on critical socio-economic and political issues. These macro-issues have implications for the micro-dynamic structuring of the production and reception of media output. These points may explain the different framing practices that media use to report on xenophobia. This study has its limitations. First, the focus on one radio station means that our findings cannot be generalised to other contexts. Our research focused on one talk radio station with a particular target audience and ideological identity. Radio 702 is an urban radio station with a cosmopolitan outlook. Its history of being a platform for politically and socially progressive views might explain its anti-xenophobic viewpoints. A similar study involving other talk radio stations might reveal different

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findings, while comparative research could have given us a richer result and deepened our understanding of the mediation of xenophobia on talk radio. Another limiting factor was that the research design was limited. We did not, for instance, interview the presenters and producers to find out how the micro-practices in the newsroom determine what takes place on the talk shows. Despite these shortcomings, our study provides valuable and unique insights into the mediation of xenophobia on talk radio in South Africa.

Notes 1. Later to be known as the Redi Tlhabi Show after the host changed her surname. 2. The Living Standard Measure is a tool widely used in South Africa to segment the market according to living standards, on a scale of 1–10, with 1 being the poorest and 10 the most affluent. See http://res.cloudinary. com/primedia-broadcasting/image/upload/v1522161655/Station_Prof ile_-_Radio702_-_March_2018_korv9l.pdf. Accessed 2 July 2018. 3. South Africa boasts some 296 radio stations, of which 40 are commercial and 256 are community stations. Ukhozi FM, the biggest of them all, has a weekly listenership of 7.5 million. See https://businesstech.co.za/ news/media/123473/these-are-the-10-biggest-radio-stations-in-southafrica. Accessed 9 October 2018. 4. The 2015 xenophobic attacks happened during a heated debate on apartheid/colonial statutes and symbols across universities around South Africa.

References Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. New York: Verso. Bosch, T. (2011). Talk radio, democracy and the public sphere. In L. Gunner, D. Ligaga, & D. Moyo (Eds.), Radio in Africa: Publics, cultures, communities. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. (2005). The political field, the social science field, and the journalistic field. In R. Benson & E. Neveu (Eds.), Bourdieu and the journalistic field. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (2012). On television. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Chiumbu, S., & Ligaga, D. (2013). Communities of strangerhoods? Internet, mobile phones and the changing nature of radio cultures in South Africa. Telematics and Informatics, 30(3), 242–251. Chiumbu, S., & Moyo, D. (2018). South Africa belongs to all who live in it: Deconstructing media discourses of migrants during moments of xenophobic attacks. Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa, 3(1), 136–152. Coleman, S. (1998). BBC radio Ulster’s talkback phone-In: Public feedback in a divided public space. The Public, 5(2), 7–19. Crush, J., McDonald, D., Williams, V., Lefko-Everett, K., Dorey, D., Taylor, D., & la Sablonnière, R. (2008). The perfect storm: The realities of xenophobia in contemporary South Africa. Migration Policy Series 50. Cape Town: Idasa. Danso, R., & McDonald, D. A. (2001). Writing xenophobia: Immigration and the print media in post-apartheid South Africa. Africa Today, 48, 114–137. Fitzgerald, R., & Housley, W. (2007). Talkback, community, and the public sphere. Media International Australia, 122(1), 150–163. Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the public sphere (pp. 109–142). Cambridge: The MIT Press. Fuller, D., & Sedo, D. R. (2006). A reading spectacle for the nation: The CBC and Canada Reads. Journal of Canadian Studies, 40(1), 5–36. Haylem, J. (2013). From May 2008 to 2011: Xenophobic violence and national subjectivity in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 39(1), 77– 97. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hungbo, I. (2012). The public sphere and representations of the self: Radio talk shows in post-apartheid South Africa (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Hutchby, I. (1996). The power of discourse: The case of arguments in a British talk radio show. Discourse and Society, 7 (4), 481–498. Hutchby, I. (2009). Confrontation talk: Arguments, asymmetries, and power on talk radio. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Elbaum. Jearey-Graham, N., & Böhmke, W. (2013). ‘A lot of them are good buggers’: The ‘African’ foreigner as South Africa’s discursive other. PINS, 44, 21–41. Landau, L., Ramjathan-Keogh, K., & Singh, G. (2005). Xenophobia in South Africa and problems related to it. Hearing on Xenophobia and Problems Related to It; 2 November 2004, Johannesburg, South Africa. Available at https://www.academia.edu/2447383/Xenophobia_in_South_Africa_and_ problems_related_to_it. Accessed 15 May 2019. McNair, B. (2002). Journalism and democracy: An evaluation of the political public sphere. London and New York: Taylor & Francis.

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Mosselton, A. (2010). ‘There is no difference between citizens and non-citizens anymore’: Violent xenophobia, citizenship and the politics of belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 36(3), 641– 655. Mwesige, P. (2009). The democratic functions and dysfunctions of political talk radio: The case of Uganda. Journal of African Media Studies, 1(2), 221–245. Myambo, M. (2019). Class identity, xenophobia and xenophilia: Migrant experience in South Africa’s diverse cultural time zones. In E. Imafidon (Ed.), Handbook of African philosophy of difference: The othering of the other. Geneva: Springer Nature. Neocosmos, M. (2010). From ‘foreign natives’ to ‘native foreigners’: Explaining xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA. Nyamnjoh, F. (2006). Insiders and outsiders: Citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary Southern Africa. London: Zed Books/CODESRIA. Omwoha, J. (2014). Talk radio and the public sphere: Jambo Kenya’s role in democratization (PhD thesis). University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Pillay, S., Barolsky, V., Naidoo, V., Mohlakoana, N., & Hadland, A. (2008). Citizenship, violence and xenophobia in South Africa: Perceptions from South African communities. Pretoria: HSRC Research Report. Squire, C. (2000). Black talk radio: Defining community needs and identity. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 5, 73. Stake, R. (2005). Qualitative case studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 443–466). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Tati, G. (2008). The immigration issues in the post-apartheid South Africa: Discourses, policies and social repercussions. Géopolitique et Populations, 3, 423–440. Warner, M. (2002). Publics and counter-publics (abbreviated version). Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 413–425. Wigstone, D. (1987). Radio Highveld and Radio 702: A comparative analysis of their news services. South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, 13(1), 37–67. Yin, R. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

CHAPTER 4

Media, Migrants and Movement: A Comparative Study of the Coverage of Migration Between Two Pairs of Sub-Saharan Countries William Bird, Thandi Smith, and Sarah Findlay

Introduction and Contextual Framework According to the United Nations (UN), an international migrant is defined as ‘a person who is living in a country other than his or her country of birth’ (UN International Migration Report 2016, p. 4). People move largely when the opportunity structure offered in their current location or country fails to meet their aspirations or expectations (Adepoju 1998). Change is driven by a wide range of complex interacting factors that both draw people to a new location (‘pull’) and/or drive

W. Bird (B) Media Monitoring Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa T. Smith The Citizen Newspaper, Johannesburg, South Africa S. Findlay Cape Town, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_4

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them away from their current one (‘push’) (Adepoju 1998). These factors span the economic, social, political and environmental spheres and can be either real or perceived by the decision-maker. Examples of such factors include persecution, conflict, political strife, poverty, employment, natural disasters, resource supply, population pressure, ethnicity and religion, as well as local and national economics (Adepoju 1998; RMMS 2013). To obtain a better understanding of the factors, experiences and policies around the issue of migration, the media offers a critical lens through which these patterns can be understood and supported. It is critical to briefly consider the role of media in setting the agenda of the underlying theory that frames this research. McCombs (2005) maintains that it is commonly understood that the media have a huge amount of influence and power over setting a nation’s agenda. But their influence is even wider, as McCombs (2005, pp. 2–3) explains: ‘What we know about the world is largely based on what the media decide to tell us. More specifically, the result of this mediated view of the world is that the priorities of the media strongly influence the priorities of the public. Elements prominent on the media agenda become prominent in the public mind’. The media’s role as regards migration can be examined from two perspectives. The first deals with how the media influence the decisionmaking processes of people concerning migration. The quality and volume of information available to those considering migration is a key determinant in their choice of destination and whether to relocate or not. For example, according to Wood and King (2001), the manner in which destination countries (commonly the ‘West’ and the ‘North’) are framed in local and global media, particularly through imagery, can have a marked role in the decisions made by potential migrants. Recurring images of ‘free’ developed societies, whether accurate or not, can draw those from other countries to new places to live and work (Wood and King 2001). The second perspective is how the media covers issues of migration and how these shape local politics and perspectives. As with various sociopolitical issues, the media’s role in disseminating information, forming opinions and shaping narratives is significant. For example, if the media construct immigrants as ‘criminals’ and ‘job stealers’, this will not only affect the experiences of individual migrants in their host countries but also dramatically influence the types of conversations that occur at broader political levels (McDonald and Jacobs 2005; Wood and King 2001). This, then, can shape the types of programmes, regulations, laws and policies that are created and implemented. Curran (1982, p. 223) explains how

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‘the media link together different groups and provide a shared experience that promotes social solidarity. The media also emphasise collective values that bind people closer together …’ Immigrants may thus find themselves increasingly supported by local citizens and politicians in societies where a diversity of people and opinions is espoused and encouraged. Alternatively, the framing of immigrants by the media in relation to crime and race only can stimulate the exact opposite. This ‘othering’ in the media can clearly impact on the experiences of migrants and can determine the extent to which they feel excluded and potentially unsafe in their new communities (McDonald and Jacobs 2005; Wood and King 2001). The media can thus be influential not only in the decision-making process of potential migrants but also in their lived experiences once those decisions have been taken. The media is thus a critical tool of information dissemination. Unpacking how they frame issues helps us to see how they influence the public agenda, establish political priorities and develop solutions, or, on the other hand, are simply encouraging fear and xenophobia.

Coverage of Migration in the Media Extensive research shows how the public discourse in many regions of the world has become progressively reductionist, simplistic and negative towards migrants generally (Balch and Balabanova 2016). They revealed in their study of UK news coverage in 2006 and 2013 that sentiment had become significantly more cynical, dismissive and hostile towards immigrants despite the positive contributions foreign nationals made to the national economy in the years leading up to the survey. Concerns over ‘foreigners’ and their burden on the state were flagged as some of the primary motivations for UK citizens voting to leave the EU in the historic Brexit referendum in June 2016.1 Similar results have been found across European nations, including France (Marthoz 2017) and Bulgaria (Bosev and Cheresehva 2015), where racist stereotyping, hate speech and sensationalism go unchallenged and mark how the issue of migration has most commonly been reported in recent years. As indicated by Cooke and White (2015, p. 7) in their introduction to the Ethical Journalism Network’s report on how the media cover migration across the globe: Migrants are described as a threat. There is a tendency, both among many politicians and in sections of the mainstream media to lump migrants

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together and present them as a seemingly endless tide of people who will steal jobs, become a burden on the state and ultimately threaten the native way of life.

Similarly, negative representations of the illegality and criminality of migrants remain widespread in the media across the African continent. For example, Kisang (2017), in his analysis of Kenyan media coverage, found that immigrants were often represented as threats to national security because they were associated or linked to stories about terrorist attacks in mainstream reporting. In the same way, McDonald and Jacobs (2005), in their assessment of print media in South Africa and Botswana, found that local coverage in both countries perpetuated largely anti-immigrant sentiment and commonly put forward negative stereotypes, referring to migrants as ‘job stealers’ and ‘criminals’. Importantly, too, Kariithi et al. (2017) demonstrated how South African media generally continue to use broad and simplistic terms to describe migrants and migration. The lack of specificity when it comes to identifying whether foreign nationals are documented or undocumented, or whether they are refugees or asylum seekers, means that audiences simply cluster together the stories on all foreign nationals, regardless of their circumstances. The result of imprecise and vague reporting thus results in the perpetuation of stereotypes (Kariithi et al. 2017). Much of the study reported on in this chapter looks at a single country at a specific time with the aim of analysing, interrogating and comparing the quality of media coverage about migration between two neighbouring African countries with well-established and well-known migration corridors. This allows us to consider the media as an indicator of the current public agenda and compare how the issues are framed between countries that are affected by similar issues.

Making a Case for Zimbabwe–South Africa and Tanzania–Kenya Migration affects both the country that people choose to leave, as well as the place where they choose to settle. Recognising this, we have selected two pairs of countries that share significant migrant flows. While we acknowledge that the cross-border fluxes are complex, within each pair one country more readily identifies as the ‘sending’ state and the other as the ‘receiving’ state. Although data on migrants (both documented and

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undocumented) remains somewhat contested, we identified the ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ countries based on the available data and research that indicates the number of migrants living in each country. We have chosen Zimbabwe (sending) and South Africa (receiving), and Tanzania (sending) and Kenya (receiving) (Fig. 4.1). Local and international evidence confirms that South Africa continues to be a strong recipient of migrants from across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. For example, data from South Africa’s most recent census in 2011 suggests that most international migrants residing in South Africa are from other SADC countries and that almost half of these are from Zimbabwe (672,308) (Statistics South Africa 2015a). While the census does not distinguish between documented and undocumented migrants, statistical adjustments were made in the data to correct for undocumented migrants that may not have been recorded in

Fig. 4.1 Map showing the basic migration trends between the four African countries analysed. A red star indicates the country of origin and a blue star the country of destination

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the census process. In comparison, according to the UN International Migrant Stock Database (2017), there were 649,385 Zimbabweans living in South Africa and only 18,610 South Africans living in Zimbabwe. Although the data shows small discrepancies in terms of absolute migrant numbers, both datasets confirm that high volumes of Zimbabweans have moved to South Africa. In terms of the Kenya–Tanzania pairing, Kenya has a booming economy as well as a much higher poverty rating (0.229) and Human Development Index score (0.509, ranking it 143rd out of 187 countries) than most of its neighbours (RMMS 2013). Because of this, large numbers of Tanzanians and Ugandans are known to have relocated to Kenya in the hope of better socio-economic opportunities. UN data suggests that there were 39,271 Tanzanians living in Kenya and 32,472 Kenyans living in Tanzania in 2017 (UN 2017). The fact that Tanzanians living in Kenya sent home remittances worth $15 million in 2012 (World Bank 2012) also attests to the high number of Tanzanian migrants living in Kenya. Based on these estimates, Kenya was identified as the ‘receiving’ country and Tanzania as the ‘sending’ country.

Methodology The aim of this study was to compare the volume and quality of online media coverage of migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa and Tanzania and Kenya from 1 September 2016 to 28 February 2017. Between the pairs of countries, we specifically sought to analyse (1) the extent of coverage, (2) the types of stories that were covered, (3) how the issue of migration was framed in the coverage and (4) the different voices that were accessed.

How We Sourced the Stories for Analysis The monitoring was conducted over a six-month period using the Dexter online tool. Running a keyword search of the term ‘migration’, Dexter lifted all relevant content from news items found on the websites of preselected news media (see Table 4.1) and stored the articles in a database. Any false positives, e.g. a report on digital migration, were sifted out. For each story, Dexter automatically retrieved important information, including: (1) name, type and origin of publication, (2) headline and summary, (3) main topic of the story (from a preselected list—see

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Table 4.1 The media monitored for the analysis

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Media title

Website address

Country

The Chronicle

http://www.chronicle. co.zw/ https://www.newsday. co.zw/ https://www.dailynews. co.zw/ http://www.nation. co.ke/ http://www.standardm edia.co.ke/ http://www.the-star. co.ke/ http://www.theeastaf rican.co.ke/ http://dailynews.co.tz/ http://www.thecitizen. co.tz/

Zimbabwe

News Day Daily News Daily Nation Standard Digital The Star The East African Daily News The Citizen

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe Kenya Kenya Kenya Kenya Tanzania Tanzania

Table 4.2) and (4) the identity of quoted sources (name, race, gender and affiliation). With Dexter being an automated system, there is always the risk that it might fail to capture certain stories or that it might attribute quotes and affiliations inaccurately. We therefore also conducted a manual search of the selected media websites to ensure that all applicable stories were included. In addition, we sifted through every story and made sure that all the data from each story was captured correctly. Once this process was complete, the data was analysed once more in Excel.

The Media We Analysed Fourteen news media were selected for analysis (Table 4.1). Dexter is only able to source English content from online platforms, and the media were selected based on their extensive online presence. The bulk of the stories were published in English. A total of 190 stories were analysed.

What We Analysed in Each Story To gain an understanding of how migration and its issues were presented by the media, we had to extract and analyse specific elements of a story.

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Table 4.2 List of topics and description for the types of stories they describe Topic

Description

Awareness and education

Items which are awareness pieces, giving information on migration, regarding awareness campaigns/initiatives or education programmes, or outlining some of the factors involved in the issue Any item where the explicit focus is on children and youth, and issues and experiences related directly to them Items which speak to behaviours related to or incidents of murder, robbery, hijacking, theft, corruption, bribery, fraud. This can be those carried out by migrants or on migrants Items about marches, protests and demonstrations highlighting issues around migrants or migration (both for and against) Any item which relates to a tragedy or accident related to migrants and migration, i.e. earthquakes, famine, typhoons, shipwrecks Features prominent events or achievements of migrants or organisations relating to migration Any item where the explicit focus is on gender and gender-related issues of migrants Items which describe any health-related issue or incident affecting migrants. It could relate to health care or disease more generally Items that focus on access to certain fundamental human rights, including access to food, access to sanitation, access to housing, access to education etc. Depending on context of story, but generally abuse of human rights would fall under different category such as violence.

Children and youth

Crime

Demonstration and Protest

Disaster/accident

Events and achievements

Gender

Health

Human rights

(continued)

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Table 4.2 (continued) Topic

Description

Human trafficking, abduction and slavery

If the item specifies or highlights an incidence/occurrence of trafficking, kidnapping and slavery, be it for sexual or labour purposes Any item that relates to courts, judges and judgements, constitutional issues and the judicial system, specifically as it relates to migrants Any item that relates to laws, bills, policies and procedures regarding migrants and migration, on a national, regional or international scale items which explicitly/implicitly describe the push and/or pull factors involved in migration or any movement of people Any item that focuses specifically on higher-level discussions, political debates, international forums, press conferences and politicking about the issue of migrants and/or migration Any issue or intervention related to the security and protection of migrants (by individuals, organisations or governments) or the failure thereof If the item specifies or highlights an incidence/occurrence of violence, be it physical or sexual, including abuse and rape Items look at incidents of racism and discrimination based on race, ethnicity or nationality

Justice system

Law and policy

Migration

Politics

Safety and security

Violence

Xenophobia

To start, we identified the primary topic of each article. Topics were chosen from a wide-ranging pre-existing list of topics (Table 4.2). Only one topic was allocated per article. For instance, a story that explored the sale of illegal identity cards in Kenya, published by Standard Digital (5 December 2016),2 had ‘Crime’ identified as its main topic as the article specifically covered the arrest of those involved in the fraudulent transactions. We also identified other underlying messages about migration or migrants. Such ‘key messages’ were those that were implied without

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being stated outright. Each story could have more than one underlying message, and the most appropriate topics were chosen from an extensive preselected list (Table 4.3). Finally, we identified all the sources contained in the story. Sources refer to people who are directly or indirectly accessed by the media to provide information for the story, or who are clearly depicted in cartoons or images. Analysing sources is a critical component of any media analysis as it identifies those who have their voice heard the most in the media, as well as those whose voice are the most neglected. For example, given that all four countries have a history of colonialism and racial inequality, and have also had notable xenophobic tendencies, as reported by their media, it is critical that the racial issues and their representation in media is analysed. We therefore specifically identified the race of each source to see whether one population group had preferential access to the media over others. Similarly, the extent of gender bias in news coverage can be understood with relation to the ratio of male to female voices and whether these are representative of the population. For this reason, the gender of each source was also captured.

Limitations of the Methodology One of the limitations of the study was the fact that the technology available to us limited our analysis to the content published online and one language only—English. While the latter was clearly a limitation, English is an official language in all four countries and, despite its colonial links, it is often the primary medium of communication (‘lingua franca’). In addition, because the research was constrained to 14 publications, the publications selected were also not necessarily representative of the full spectrum of media available in all four countries. Television, radio and community media were not included in the analysis. The study focused on all stories related to the migration of people and not necessarily to migration occurring in Africa only; i.e. some reports about European migration were included in the analysis. This was done to understand how migration as a whole was presented in African media and to reveal the manner in which some stories (i.e. European or African) were prioritised over others. It must be mentioned that the reporting was often reactive and events based. This means that in any period, coverage on migration or on any other social issue was dependent on other events occurring at the time.

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Table 4.3 List of all key messages that could be identified in stories Black South Africans are lazy Black foreigners are criminals Differentiation of migrants Differentiation of migrants, and refugees not important refugees is important Foreign nationals sell cheap Foreigner reap the rewards fake goods of our struggle Foreigner/migrant is foreign Foreigner/migrant looks after others Foreigners are likely to be Foreigners do not belong illegal migrants here and should go Foreigners rightfully reap Foreigners should be rewards of struggle grateful for our hospitality Foreigners/migrants are Foreigners/migrants are competent and skilled criminal Foreigners/migrants are Foreigners/migrants are flooding the country greedy Foreigners/migrants are Foreigners/migrants are incompetent and unskilled intelligent/ rational Foreigners/migrants are lazy Foreigners/migrants are / idle likely to be legal in SA Foreigners/migrants are Foreigners/migrants are racist /bigoted stupid/ simple/ irrational Foreigners/migrants are Foreigners/migrants are violent welcome here Foreigners/migrants Foreigners/migrants cause/bring disease contribute to our society Foreigners/migrants create Foreigners/migrants die in more jobs large numbers Foreigners/migrants exploit Foreigners/migrants workers improve standards Foreigners/migrants live in Foreigners/migrants lower squalor/are dirty standards Foreigners/migrants sell Foreigners/migrants should unreliable merchandise have equal rights Foreigners/migrants take Foreigners/Migrants support/ engage in our houses terrorism Foreigners/migrants’ lives Government needs to take do not matter action Migrant children need Migrant feel safe in their special treatment new country

Different people cannot live together Foreign nationals are better business people Foreigner’s/migrant’s lives are very important Foreigner/migrant needs to be taken care of Foreigners do not contribute to our society Foreigners/migrant steal our jobs Foreigners/migrants are dominant and/or stubborn Foreigners/migrants are hard working Foreigners/migrants are law-abiding Foreigners/migrants are physically ugly Foreigners/migrants are submissive Foreigners/migrants cannot be trusted Foreigners/migrants controls the economy Foreigners/migrants do not deserve equal rights Foreigners/migrants live in splendour Foreigners/migrants sell reliable merchandise Foreigners/migrants steal our women Foreigners/migrants undermine wages Kenya is a better place to live Migrant integration is difficult

(continued)

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Table 4.3 (continued) Migrant tradition and culture is barbaric Migrants are most likely to be men Migrants are threat to security Migrants do not feel safe in their new country Migrants leave home countries because of violence Only black people and Muslims are migrants South Africans are not xenophobic State politicians are not doing enough The State is not doing enough to protect migrants

Migrant tradition and culture is primitive Migrants are threat to economy Migrants are vulnerable Migrants have no choice but to leave Migrants misuse grants and free health services Police target migrants State must minimise influx of foreigners Tanzania is a better place to live There are fewer opportunities in Kenya

There are fewer opportunities in Tanzania

There are fewer opportunities in my home country Third force is responsible for Undocumented migrants xenophobia are criminals Xenophobia is not a Xenophobia only affects or significant problem displaces men Xenophobic attacks are not Xenophobic violence is a more than thuggery good strategy Xenophobic violence only Zimbabwe is in crisis affects black migrants

Migrants are here temporarily Migrants are threat to health Migrants deserve to be attacked and/or killed Migrants just want a better life Migration is a human rights issue Politicians target migrants State politicians are doing enough The State is doing enough to protect migrants There are fewer opportunities in South Africa There are more opportunities in South Africa Xenophobia is confined to poor communities Xenophobia only happens in poor communities Xenophobic violence is understandable Zimbabwe is not in crisis

What we have noted during our period of research is that some news media carried a particularly low number of stories on migration, possibly because no major migration-related event occurred at that time. However, there was still enough data (>150 stories) to conduct a proper analysis of the media’s coverage of migration.

Research Findings The data analysis is described in two sections. The first looks at the media coverage of migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa, while the second considers the Kenya and Tanzania situation. Each section

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focuses on similar elements of analysis and considers the news coverage from an African perspective. Note that throughout we specifically use the broad term ‘migrant’ in line with the UN (2016) definition that includes documented and undocumented foreign nationals. The reason for this is the difficulty of distinguishing the exact type of immigrant the coverage describes (see below).

The Media’s Coverage of Migration Between Zimbabwe and South Africa It is important to highlight that the number of stories in the South African media was vastly lower than that in Zimbabwe (seven stories compared to 58), which ran counter to our assumption that migration would be a topical issue in both countries. The low level of reporting in South Africa raises some alarm bells as widespread xenophobia has been a recurring issue in recent times and has often been directed specifically at African foreign nationals living in South Africa (Mitchell and Nel 2017). What Were the Main Topics in the Migration Coverage? Stories that focused on politics, as well as on a range of laws and policies relating to migration, dominated the coverage in Zimbabwe. These types of stories specifically covered higher-level discussions, political debates, international forums, press conferences and politicking on the issue of migrants and/or migration. Politics was a recurring theme of stories in the South African media because local political parties and politicians often used community issues, such as migration, as a tool in their political campaigns. This became evident in a story that quoted Ngqabutho Mabhena, chairperson of the Zimbabwean Community in South Africa, who stated: ‘In our view, the xenophobic attacks are well coordinated and political. Opposition parties which are fighting the ANC government want to make South Africa ungovernable and they are mobilising communities to attack foreigners’.3 Articles that highlighted the push and pull factors of migration were also common in the Zimbabwean press. This, according to Mawada (2012), may stem from the fact that the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe, which has been deteriorating since 2000, continues to fuel migration. The graph in Fig. 4.2 indicates that of the total of 65 migration stories, critical issues, such as the experiences of migrants that include

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13

Number of stories

12

Zimbabwe

10

9

South Africa 8 6 6

5 4

4

3

3

3

2 2

1

3

3 2

1

1

1

1

0

Topic

Fig. 4.2 Topics covered in migration stories between Zimbabwe and South Africa

instances of human trafficking and violence, human rights generally and the rights of children and youth specifically, were barely covered. Only one story focused on children and youth. Children who migrate with their parents are exposed to even greater difficulties and threats than their parents (Bryant 2005). Some of the problems they face include discrimination in the country of settlement and difficulties with schooling and school attendance, the impact of discrimination on mental health, barriers to accessing social services, the challenge of their right to citizenship and identity documentation, and the economic insecurity of their parents (Bryant 2005). The fact that this perspective was only raised in one of the stories points to underlying biases by the news media, which choose to focus on issues that affect the powerful, such as politics and policies, over those with less power. Considering how migration has been one of the biggest issues between the two countries since the early 2000s and that migration has been closely linked to many instances of violence, demonstration and protest, as well as by South African xenophobia, it is interesting that it was so poorly covered in the South African media.

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What Were the Main Messages Put Forward in the Stories? Table 4.4 shows how the news media in Zimbabwe were highly polarised on the issue of migration. On the one hand, much of the coverage presented empathetic narratives about foreign migrants in Zimbabwe by generally suggesting that they were a vulnerable group of people and that migration was a human rights issue. This spoke to the potential helplessness in which migrants, such as asylum seekers and refugees, found themselves, an angle that might invoke a response of compassion from readers. On the other hand, migrants were also portrayed negatively. It was suggested that the Zimbabwean government needed to ‘take action’ (against migration) and that migrants were a threat to both society and the economy. These messages tend to dehumanise immigrants and stimulate belligerent rhetoric. Most of the stories thus fell into one of two camps, either being extremely empathetic towards migrants or otherwise being extremely opposed to them. Critically, though, the media failed to distinguish accurately between the different types of migrants. The terms ‘migrant’ and ‘immigrant’ were used interchangeably throughout the coverage to describe any type of foreign national, including refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants. It is difficult to analyse trends in the South African coverage given the low volume of stories available, but similar patterns of messaging emerge, with some coverage being largely supportive and sympathetic towards Table 4.4 Top ten key messages identified in migration stories between South Africa and Zimbabwe Key messages

Total

South Africa

Zimbabwe

Migrants are vulnerable Migration is a human rights issue Government needs to take action Migrants are threat to security Migrants are threat to economy Migrants just want a better life Migrants do not feel safe in their new country Foreign/migrants are criminals State/politician are not doing enough Politician target migrants

30 15 15 13 9 7 7 5 4 4

1 0 2 3 1 2 0 2 0 1

29 15 13 10 8 5 7 3 4 3

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migrants and other reports being primarily condemnatory and making them out to be a perceived threat. Which Sources Were Accessed in the Media Coverage? In the Zimbabwean media’s coverage of migration, clearly the most accessed sources were foreign governments (39%), while the secondhighest sources were representatives of the justice system (18%). Experts, citizens and migrants made up less than 10% of all sources in the stories analysed. This speaks to how the experiences, interests and concerns of the very people most affected by migration were almost completely muted in this discourse (Fig. 4.3). On the other hand, the South African media chose to source professionals (30%) and international groups, which included non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and UN bodies or donors (15%), most frequently. While it is important to access the views of professionals, they do not necessarily represent the entire social reality of migration. As in Zimbabwe, South African reporting made little effort to access the very people who were affected by migration on a daily basis. 45% 39%

Percentage of sources (%)

40% 35%

30% 30%

South Africa

Zimbabwe

25% 18%

20%

16%

15% 15%

13% 10%

10%

10%

10%

10% 5% 5%

4%

2%

1%

0%

5%

5% 2%

1%

3%

0% Foreign Interna onal Government Groups / Donors

Jus ce System

Na onal Government

Poli cal Par es

Professionals

Local Government

Migrant

Academics / Experts / Researchers

Ci zens

Source affilia on

Fig. 4.3 Affiliation group of sources accessed between South Africa and Zimbabwe

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What Was the Racial Breakdown of Those Accessed in the Coverage? In South Africa’s 2015 census data,4 80% of South Africans are identified as African, while coloured and white people make up 9% and 8%, respectively (Statistics South Africa 2015b). Indians/Asians comprise 3%. In Zimbabwe, those of African origin make up 99% of the population (Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency 2012). It is clear from Fig. 4.4 that more than 60% of all sources accessed by the media in both South Africa and Zimbabwe were identified as black. While black voices are accessed more than all other population groups, they are still underrepresented relative to the percentage of the national populations they constitute in both countries. This finding reflects the racial dynamics in both countries. In South Africa, for example, despite the coloured population constituting a greater percentage of the population than whites, they were not accessed in a single story. In contrast, white voices made up almost a quarter of all sources accessed. While this higher level of white representation may be attributed to the high number of professionals, experts and foreign 90%

Percentage of sources (%)

80% 70%

76%

63%

60%

South Africa Zimbabwe

50% 40%

33%

30%

24%

20% 10% 0%

2%

0%

1%

0%

1%

0% Black

White

Coloured

Indian

Other

Race

Fig. 4.4 Race of sources accessed between South Africa and Zimbabwe

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government affiliates who are white, it could also point to a more fundamental issue relating to race representation and power dynamics. What Was the Gender Breakdown of Those Accessed in the Coverage? Analysing the sex of sources accessed by the media is a marker of the extent of gender bias in coverage. It is clear from Fig. 4.5 that the disparity between male and female voices was significant. Females and males made up 24% and 76% of the voices accessed, respectively, which is below the global average (Macharia 2015). The media were therefor not merely reflecting the societal reality of gender inequality but were also potentially feeding into existing gender stereotypes by not representing women’s views equally. 100% 90%

89% 84%

Percentage of sources (%)

80%

South Africa

70%

Zimbabwe 60% 50% 40% 30% 20%

16% 11%

10% 0%

Male

Female Gender

Fig. 4.5 Gender of sources accessed in migration stories between South Africa and Zimbabwe

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Summary Remarks for the South African–Zimbabwean Analysis The media has been operating in a difficult environment because of increasingly limited resources. Nevertheless, issues of migration, especially in the context of South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the number of people affected, should receive equitable, accurate and balanced reportage. One of the key observations that came out of the analysis is the negligible number of stories published by the South African media on the xenophobic events in the period under review. It shows how low migration issues are on the media’s agenda in South Africa, despite the high level of regional migration and ongoing issues of xenophobia in the country. More research is needed to establish why such a fundamental issue is not a media priority. The findings also point to a failure to fully engage with migrants and investigate their experiences on the ground. This became obvious not only from how rarely the human rights side of migration was the primary topic of stories but also from how the voices of migrants were consistently underrepresented in media coverage. The media in both countries chose to focus on high-level political issues and the voices of the powerful to explain and understand migration issues. While there are exceptions to this, by and large the stories presented only a partial picture of the factors, challenges and positive expectations associated with migration. The media missed the opportunity to challenge stereotypes and more fully set out the complexity of issues associated with people moving between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The Media’s Coverage of Migration Between Kenya and Tanzania In terms of number of stories monitored in the six-month period, the Kenyan media carried substantially more stories (93) than Tanzania (32). However, although both countries could improve their levels of coverage, migration appears to be high on the media’s agenda in both Kenya and Tanzania. What Were the Main Topics in the Coverage of Migration? It is interesting to note that the type of coverage in the Kenyan and Tanzanian media was very similar. Push and pull factors, and law and

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policy issues were the most common topics in the media analysed. ‘Push’ factors refer to the reasons why people leave their country, while ‘pull’ factors refer to the reasons that entice people to migrate to a specific country. In Kenya, 25 stories explicitly discussed these factors, while in Tanzania they were covered in 10 stories (Fig. 4.6). Migration coverage in Kenya was biased towards coverage of migrants coming to the country. Since Kenya is the more stable of the two countries and has a stronger economy, it is understandable that there was a tendency in Kenyan migration stories to report on the pull factors. On the other hand, the Tanzanian media more commonly covered the push factors, while also reporting on people transiting via Tanzania to reach the destination of their choice. Either way, the fact that coverage in both countries frequently explored the reasons and circumstances around migration indicates a more nuanced approach than was the case in the Zimbabwean and South African media. In both Kenia and Tanzania, there was also a heavy focus on law and policy issues. Considering the ongoing patterns of migration worldwide and the fact that more and more countries are adjusting their migration 30

25

25

Number of stories

21 20

10

5

Kenya

15

15

Tanzania

10

5

5 3

4

5

5 3 1

1

1

2

1

2

2

2

2

2

1 1

1

0

Topic

Fig. 4.6 Number of stories with different topics between Kenya and Tanzania

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policies, it is not surprising that law and policy featured significantly. For example, the issues of border controls and migrants’ access to assistance as far as human rights were concerned, was widely covered. However, stories about politics also featured widely in both sets of media: statements by politicians and their opinions and views were almost always reported. In contrast, stories about the vulnerability of migrants hardly featured. Coverage of the experiences of migrants, including those relating to human rights, violence, safety and security, xenophobia, and children and health, was only reported in a handful of cases. What Were the Main Messages Covered in the Stories? The top three messages in Kenyan media were the vulnerability of migrants (36 reports), migrants just wanting a better life (29) and migration being a human right issue (21) (Table 4.5). This indicates the Kenyan media’s high level of empathy with the migration phenomenon. It was frequently suggested in reports that migrants should be afforded the same rights as non-migrants. In Tanzania, although many of the messages followed a similar pattern to those that appeared in Kenya, the topic of migrants being a threat to security was the second most common message (6 reports). Although the stories were mostly positive towards migrants, narratives suggesting that migrants were a threat to the economy illustrated an underlying hostility to migrants in certain instances. Furthermore, they reflected how an Table 4.5 Top 10 key messages identified in Kenyan and Tanzanian stories on migration Key messages

Total

Kenya

Tanzania

Migrants are vulnerable Migrants just want a better life Migration is a human rights issue Migrants are threat to security Migrants leave home countries because of violence Migrants do not feel safe in their new country Migrants are threat to economy Government needs to take action State must minimise influx of foreigners Foreigners/migrants die in large numbers

43 33 23 20 19 18 13 12 12 11

36 29 21 14 17 17 11 9 10 10

7 4 2 6 2 1 2 3 2 1

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unwillingness by some to accommodate migrants in their country could exist in parallel to views that were largely empathetic. Important also were themes that the state must minimise the influx of foreigners and that it must take action. In these instances, the media were challenging government’s accountability to resolve the crisis and placing pressure on it to react more effectively. Despite the potentially positive spin that this might have, these stories primarily provided a negative view of migration as an issue to be resolved, rather than to be understood and engaged in. Who Was Accessed in the Coverage? To understand how the media framed the issues in both countries, an important element for consideration is how much access was given to different groups and individuals. By analysing who the media chose to access, we can begin to see who holds the power to steer the narrative. What is immediately apparent from Fig. 4.7 is that foreign governments received by far the most coverage, representing 42% of the sources in Kenya and 28% in Tanzania. The fact that in both countries the 45%

43%

40%

Percentage of sources (%)

35% 30%

Kenya Tanzania 28%

25% 20%

18% 15%

15% 11%

11%

10%

10%

10% 8%

9% 7%

6% 5%

3%

3%

3%

8%

8% 3%

0% 0% Foreign United Ministry of Government Na ons - UN Home Affairs

Jus ce System

Poli cal Par es

Interna onal Groups / Donors

Migrant

Academics / Commissions Na onal Experts / & Government Researchers Independent Bodies

Source affilia on

Fig. 4.7 Affiliations of sources in migration stories between Tanzania and Kenya

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reporting covered the European refugee crisis extensively could be a reason for foreign governments being accessed regularly and at length. The media in both countries, as in South Africa and Zimbabwe, challenged Western countries on the financial support they should provide to developing countries to deal with migration.5 An obvious preference to access politicians and officials at relevant government departments, e.g. the Ministry of Home Affairs, as well as international organisations such as the UN and international donors, is also apparent. In contrast to this, the migrant voices accessed represented only 10% or less of all sources. What Was the Racial Breakdown of Those Accessed in the Coverage? The black and white voices accessed in the media coverage in both Kenya and Tanzania represented 89% and 85% of all sources accessed, respectively. As was the case in the South African–Zimbabwean analysis, there was an over-representation of white voices since in both Kenya and Tanzania black people comprise 99% of the population (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics 2009; Central Intelligence Agency 2018). This discrepancy was more severe in the Kenyan coverage, where white people made up more than half of the total sources accessed. Again, this finding may point to persistent societal differences when it comes to racial power dynamics. The high percentage of white sources accessed may also result from the local media’s significant coverage of the European migration crisis (Fig. 4.8). What Was the Gender Breakdown of Those Accessed in the Coverage? Figure 4.9 shows the gender breakdown of male and female sources accessed in the migration coverage. The analysis clearly indicates that men were sourced significantly more than women in both countries, although the Tanzanian media did access women more frequently (25%) than Kenya (16%). Most media analyses reveal similar media biases in their stories (Macharia 2015). Meanwhile, in 2017 women made up almost half of all international migrants (47%) in Africa (UN 2017). Our findings demonstrate that female voices continue to be underrepresented on issues that affect them, including migration. This perpetuates the view that the voices of female migrants are unimportant and can therefore go unheard.

90

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60%

55%

Percentage of sources (%)

Kenya

Tanzania

50%

40%

38% 30%

30%

20% 9%

10%

3%

3%

4% 1%

1%

0%

0%

0% Black

White

Other

Asian

Coloured

Indian

Race

Fig. 4.8 Race breakdown of sources accessed in migration stories between Tanzania and Kenya 90%

84% 75%

80%

Percentage of sources (%)

70%

Kenya

60%

Tanzania

50% 40% 25% 30% 16% 20% 10% 0% Male

Female

Gender

Fig. 4.9 Gender breakdown of sources accessed in stories in Kenya and Tanzania

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Summary Remarks for the Kenyan–Tanzanian Analysis Our monitoring reveals that although there was a high level of coverage on migration, particularly in Kenya, and that many of the stories looked at why migrants moved, many of the reports actually reflected discussion on the migration situation in Europe rather than focusing on local migration phenomena. This is a key finding as it points to how often European or American stories were being prioritised over reports on local developments. In addition, the frequent accessing of the political elite, including those from foreign governments, local politicians and other high-level government representatives, rather than the migrants themselves, indicates whose views the media choose to consider important. The fact that migrants themselves are sourced infrequently is a serious shortcoming of the coverage. On a positive note, the key messages indicated that the sentiment towards migrants was largely compassionate and empathetic, and that these views outweighed negative sentiment. Although the ongoing migration led to some expressions of concerns about possible damage to the economy, a threat to jobs and the inadequate role of government, the fact that much of the coverage emphasised that migrants should be treated the same as any other citizen, is encouraging.

Discussion There can be little doubt that migration across the world is a critical issue. Given the media’s role in shaping public discourse both nationally and internationally, our analysis of how particular issues were represented in the media is key to understanding how migration should be dealt with by those with the power to do so. Levels of Coverage It is important to comment briefly on the number of articles available to us for data analysis. First, across the two pairs of African countries monitored, there was a remarkable discrepancy between the numbers of stories on migration published. This variation was not linked to whether a country was identified as a ‘sending’ or ‘receiving’ state. It affirms that

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the media in different countries prioritise news issues differently and that issues or events that make it onto the front page in one country barely make it onto the media agenda of another. This stands to reason as countries deal with different socio-economic, political and technological issues. Having said this, it must also be stated how concerning it is that the South African media analysed by us provided such negligible coverage on migration and migration-related issues. This is extraordinary, considering the violent incidents of xenophobia that have flared up in the country in recent years, involving African foreign nationals in particular (Mitchell and Nel 2017). Where such stories were reported, they focused on political and legal issues, and framed the matter of migration in very narrow, simplistic ways. Findlay et al. (2017) found in their study on how the South African media framed the xenophobic attacks of 2016 that the news messaging largely perpetuated racial stereotypes and failed to explore, consider or explain the complexity around the anti-immigrant violence. They went on to suggest that ‘the much-needed interrogation of racism and representation of foreigners was almost entirely lacking. This type of reporting remains largely superficial and it fails to move the conversation about xenophobia beyond racial stereotypes’ (Findlay et al. 2017, p. 19). The lack of coverage is not particularly surprising as the South African media tend to focus largely on politics and events, and seldom investigate critical social challenges, such as migration and the causes and effects thereof. Similar gaps in South African media coverage have repeatedly been evinced elsewhere (MMA 2014, 2016). They are notoriously deficient in their reporting of news from southern African countries, tending to cover primarily local stories. This could be another reason why crossborder migration was so under-covered in this analysis. In as much as limited resources and the heightened political environment on South Africa may go some way to explain the low coverage of migration, such gaps hinder the public and polity from fully understanding and engaging constructively with the issues around migration. It may ultimately prevent the long-term integration of migrants into South Africa. Another interesting finding is that African media tend to cover migration issues in Europe rather than adequately focusing on similar problems locally. This follows a trend where migration and movement between African countries is seen as a normative challenge and not necessarily something that needs to be analysed in the mainstream media. On a

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more practical basis, limited local resources and the widespread availability of content from global media brands, including the BBC and Deutsche Welle, also clearly skews coverage towards Europe and nations with greater media resources. What Do We Hear in Migration Stories? The media coverage analysed in this study was dominated by political themes, rather than being presented from the perspective of human rights. With an unambiguous focus on laws, policies and regulations, there was a clear failure to explore, or even attempt to explore, the lived experiences of the migrants themselves. Stories tended to focus on the effects of migration and the impact of migrants, specifically in destination countries, and did not necessarily look at the reasons why migration occurs from a particular country, or indeed why it occurs at all. This speaks to how coverage, in line with current trends in journalism, is often more of a reaction to specific events rather than providing an in-depth analysis of the subject. This lack of investigation and context results in a narrow and superficial view of the types of issues to be considered when dealing with migration. One of the most striking aspects of the coverage across all the media monitored is the dominance of the voices of white, male politicians or politically aligned sources. While these sources are largely attributable to the coverage of Europe’s migration challenges in African media, their dominance is indicative of a core failing in the coverage of migration. To only access the political elite, including government and expert or professional sources, leaves little to no space for migrants and citizens to share their views. In line with this, coverage also followed a common trend of a maledominated discourse in which female voices, as well as those of children and the youth, tend to be forgotten. While the exclusion of these voices has been confirmed in media analyses time and time again, it is nonetheless concerning since women and children face very different challenges when they migrate (Bryant 2005), especially under circumstances of forced displacement. The poor reporting on and misrepresentation of women, specifically migrant women, can contribute to the stereotyping of women who arrive in their host countries in search of safety or opportunities. Given also that women and children make up a large proportion of migrants across the world, the media should investigate and come to

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understand the challenges of better serving these, the most vulnerable of migrant groups. Finally, too, there is the failure in the reporting of distinguishing between different types of immigrant groups. Understanding that the subject of a story is a currently undocumented foreign national who is seeking asylum in South Africa, or that the individual has lived in Kenya for 30 years with all the requisite legal documentation, changes the essence of the story. The continual clustering of all migrants as ‘immigrants’, without referencing any context, not only results in inaccurate or shallow-depth coverage but also means that the stories are left wide open to interpretation by the reader. This means that the associations between foreign nationals and criminality are often implied, if not stated outright, and this remains problematic across all the media analysed.

Conclusion The results of our study suggest that not only are some of the media in Africa under-reporting critical sociopolitical issues that impact upon millions of people across the continent, but that they are also doing so in a manner that is skewed in the interest of vested power. It seems patently perverse that the dominant voices we hear are those of white men in senior positions, when the issues so clearly impact upon people who are not in positions of power and are women, children and, commonly, people of colour. That the issues are seldom contextualised and explained means that audiences are not empowered to act or engage with these issues. They can therefore be forgiven for having little understanding or compassion for the people involved or the issue of migration itself. Given that the media tend to represent existing power dynamics, it is unlikely that changes to coverage will emerge from within the newsrooms themselves. The greatest opportunity for change, ironically, is as a result of failing news media models. Where historically commercial media tended to sell their audience to advertisers with little real concern for the full nature of the content being provided—as long as it sold—more and more media are realising that the only way for them to be sustainable is to develop and renew existing relationships with their audiences. As people have increasing access to the media and as more of them are able to produce their own content, the media need to live up to the

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ethical principles they espouse and engage all of their audiences, otherwise they risk speaking to fewer people and thereby writing themselves into irrelevance. Acknowledgements This research was undertaken by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) through partial funding provided by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES). This paper forms part of a broader research report that has been condensed for this chapter. For the full research report, please go to www.mediamonitoringafr ica.org.

Notes 1. Khan, A. Four ways the anti-immigration vote won the referendum. 7 July 2016. New Statesman. www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/ 07/four-ways-anti-immigration-vote-won-referendum-brexit. 2. http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000225850/16-foreigners-arr ested-for-acquiring-kenyan-identity-3ards-illegally. 3. http://www.polity.org.za/article/zimbabweans-in-sa-say-xenophobic-att acks-are-political-engage-anc-2017-02-27. 4. https://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0302/P03022015.pdf. 5. http://www.nation.co.ke/news/Kenya-faults-rich-nations-over-refugee-cri sis/1056-3387248-151hgnq/index.html.

References Adepoju, A. (1998). Linkages between internal and international migration: The African situation. International Social Science Journal, 50(157), 387–396. Balch, A., & Balabanova, E. (2016). Ethics, politics and migration: Public debates on the free movement of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK, 2006–2013. Politics, 36(1), 19–35. Bosev, R., & Cheresehva, M. (2015). Bulgaria: A study in media sensationalism. In A. White (Ed.), Moving stories: International review of how media cover migration (pp. 19–24). London: Ethical Journalism Network. Bryant, J. (2005). Children of international migrants in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines: A review of evidence and policies (Innocenti Working Papers No. 2005-05). Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. Central Intelligence Agency. (2018). The world factbook: Tanzania. Available at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ tz.html. Accessed 17 February 2020.

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Cooke, K., & White, A. (2015). Introduction: Moving stories. In A. White (Ed.), Moving stories: International review of how media cover migration (pp. 5–8). London: Ethical Journalism Network. Curran, J. (1982). Communications, power and social order. In M. Gurevitch, T. Bennett, J. Curran, & J. Woollacott (Eds.), Culture, society and the media: The power of the media (pp. 198–232). London and New York: Routledge. Findlay, S. J., Bird, William R., & Smith, T. (2017). The more things change, the more they stay the same: The impacts of social media and digital technology on journalism quality in South African newsrooms. Johannesburg: Media Monitoring Africa. Kariithi, N., Mawadza, A., & Carciotto, S. (2017). Media portrayal of immigration in the South African media, 2011–2015. Cape Town: The Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa. Available at https://sihma.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/SIHMA-WorkingPaper-June2017_WEB.pdf. Accessed 2 February 2020. Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. (2009). Census 2009: Summary of results. Available at https://www.knbs.or.ke/ethnic-affiliation. Accessed 3 November 2019. Kisang, A. K. (2017). The images and rights of migrants in the Kenyan media. Current Journal of Applied Science and Technology, 22(5), 1–14. Macharia, S. (2015). Who makes the news? Global media monitoring project 2015. Available at https://www.unitedmethodistwomen.org/news/gmmp2015.pdf. Accessed 28 October 2019. Mawada, A. (2012). The Zimbabwean threat: Media representative of immigration in South Africa media (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of the Western Cape, Cape Town. Marthoz, J. P. (2017). France: Politics, distorted images and why the media need to frame the migration story. How does the media on both sides of the Mediterranean report on Migration? Vienna (pp. 22–27). International Centre for Migration Policy Development: Austria. McDonald, D. A., & Jacobs, S. (2005). Understanding the press coverage of cross-border migration in southern Africa since 2000. Available at https:// www.africaportal.org/publications/understanding-press-coverage-of-cross-bor der-migration-in-southern-africa-since-2000. Accessed 28 October 2019. McCombs, M. (2005). The agenda-setting role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion. Available at https://www.infoamerica.org/documentos_pdf/ mccombs01.pdf. Accessed 10 November 2020. Media Monitoring Africa. (2016). From protest ban to biased reporting? SABC coverage of the 2016 municipal elections. Available at http://mediamonitor ingafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/n2018/02/SABC-Elections-Report-final. pdf.pdf. Accessed 27 October 2019.

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Media Monitoring Africa. (2014). Media coverage of the 2014 national & provincial elections in South Africa. Available at http://elections2014.mediamonitor ingafrica.org. Accessed 15 December 2019. Mitchell, Y., & Nel, J. A. (2017). The hate and bias crimes monitoring form project: January 2013 to September 2017 . Available at http://hcwg.org.za/ wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Report-Hate-Bias-Crimes-Monitoring-FormProject-SCREEN.pdf. Accessed 22 March 2020. Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat. (2013). Mixed migration in Kenya: The scale of movement and associated protection risks. Available at http://www. mixedmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/005_mixed-migrationkenya.pdf. Accessed 22 March 2020. Statistics South Africa. (2015a). Census 2011: Migration dynamics in South Africa. Pretoria: Stats SA, Report No. 03-01-79, p. 215. Available at http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-01-79/Report-03-01792011.pdf. Accessed 23 October 2019. Statistics South Africa. (2015b). Stats SA’s 2015 mid-year population estimates. Pretoria: Stats SA, p. 20. Available at https://www.statssa.gov.za/publicati ons/P0302/P03022015.pdf. Accessed 3 March 2020. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division. (2016). International migration report 2015: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/375). Available at https://www.un.org/en/development/ desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/Migration Report2015_Highlights.pdf. Accessed 22 March 2020. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division. (2017). Trends in international migrant stock: The 2017 revision. Available at https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/mig ration/data/estimates2/docs/MigrationStockDocumentation_2017.pdf. Accessed 22 March 2020. Wood, N., & King, R. (2001). Media and migration: An overview. In R. King & N. Wood (Eds.), Media and migration: Constructions of mobility and difference (pp. 1–22). London: Routledge. World Bank. (2012). Bilateral remittance matrix 2012. Available at http:// www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiasporaissues/brief/ migration-remittances-data. Accessed 3 March 2020. Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency. (2012). Census 2012: National report. Harare: Population Census Office. Available at http://www.zimstat.co.zw/ sites/default/files/img/National_Report.pdf. Accessed 3 March 2020.

CHAPTER 5

Knowledge, the Media and Anti-immigrant Hate Crime in South Africa: Where Are the Connections? Steven Lawrence Gordon

Introduction Immigration continues to be a critical issue in South Africa, and a number of scholars have noted that foreign nationals living in the country have been the victim of prejudice carried out in the name of autochthony (e.g. Mattes et al. 1999; Crush et al. 2013; Gordon 2017, 2018a, 2019). Scholars researching this issue tend to highlight the role of antiimmigrant stereotypes in perpetuating a climate of hostility and intolerance. Although an anti-immigrant sentiment need not necessarily manifest in prejudicial action, this nonetheless raises a question: Where do South Africans receive their information about foreign nationals? Currently not much is known about the different platforms ordinary people in the country use to inform themselves about international migration. It is often assumed that the mass media, e.g. television and newspapers, play a

S. L. Gordon (B) Human Science Research Council (HSRC) and University of Johannesburg, Pretoria/Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_5

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substantial role here but little data exists on the extent and types of media used. There is a growing level of academic interest in how the media covers immigration and xenophobia in South Africa. Various scholars (e.g. Nyamnjoh 2010; Smith 2011; Chiumbu and Moyo 2018) have looked at the role of the South African media but they have tended to focus on print media (primarily newspapers). However, it may be that other types of media (e.g. social media or radio) are more important sources of information. Moreover, many people may primarily rely on non-media sources (e.g. friends or family) for information on this subject. This study will look at the sources of information on international migrants that people trust most. Identifying the most-used sources of information will allow antixenophobia campaigners to target their interventions more effectively. From this perspective, it would be particularly useful to determine which information sources are most utilised by individuals who have strong antiimmigrant views. In addition, it would be valuable to examine which sources are used by perpetrators of anti-immigrant violence. To examine which information sources on immigration are used by people in South Africa, I will refer to recent nationally representative public opinion data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS). This data allows us to look closely at both anti-immigrant attitudes and behaviour, and how these variables are linked to different information sources. The study will first be placed into its proper context by an overview of the relevant literature on media. This will include a brief outline of the media context in South Africa and the media reaction to xenophobia during the last decade. Second, the data source will be described, and the results presented. Third, I will discuss the implications of the findings for our current understanding of anti-immigrant prejudice in South Africa. The chapter concludes with an outline of what needs to be done to reduce xenophobia in the country.

The Influence of the Media One of the most important factors driving the formation of attitudes (and, therefore, behaviour) is information. Attitudes in the present are formed by using information stored in memory. Indeed, attitudes have been categorised as knowledge structures, or what Kruglanski (1989, p. 139) called ‘a special type of knowledge, notably knowledge of which content is evaluative or affective’. Consequently, the kind and quality of information

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an individual can access should influence that person’s attitudes (also see Fazio 1990). In the absence of first-hand experience, individuals often need to acquire information from second-hand sources. In the modern era, the media are one of the main sources through which an individual can access knowledge. Of course, people tend to be biased towards information that is in agreement with their own views (Marks and Miller 1987). But the media can, nevertheless, be an important determining factor in terms of challenging or confirming existing attitude formations. The media cannot change attitudes; it can merely highlight and encourage the discussion of certain issues. But as the media devotes increasing coverage to an issue, the public is primed to think that the issue is one of national importance. Indeed, as traditional media agenda-setting theory will attest, the media helps shape the kinds of national discourse we have (for a full discussion of this thesis, see McCombs 2012). When media content is controlled by a few public and private companies, it is quite easy to set the national discourse (Iyengar and Kinder 2010). However, in the modern period the direction of any hypothesised relationship between the media and public opinion is more complex. Given the growing digital media environment in many countries, including South Africa, scholars have found that the dynamics of issue agendas are more multifaceted than traditional media agenda-setting theory would allow. In their study of online publics in the USA, for instance, Neuman et al. (2014) found that agenda setting for these issues is not a one-way pattern but a multi-layered dynamic interaction (also see Guggenheim et al. 2015). Research has shown that the news media can have a significant effect on the opinions of the general population. It would appear that the manner in which the media depict immigrants—and which immigrants are depicted—influences opinion formation. Branton et al. (2011) found that media exposure was a distinct determinant of immigration attitudes after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The authors argued that portrayals of immigration became more negative after the attacks. A more recent study by De Poli et al. (2017) showed how media coverage of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean helped shape attitudes towards international migrants in Europe. Similarly, media narratives that portray international immigration as economically and societally harmful, drive animosity towards foreigners (also see Farris and Mohamed 2018). Negative narratives of this kind prime audience attention (Gilliam and Iyengar 2000) and are, therefore, often exaggerated by the news media.

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One mechanism by which the media can drive public opinion is by acting as a mediator of elite discourse. Using data from multiple Global North countries, Lenz (2013) has demonstrated that elite cueing can have an influential effect on public opinion. Here, citizens defer to elite opinions and do not require persuasive arguments to adopt the views of the elite (also see Broockman and Butler 2017). The reason for this, at least according to democratic theorists like Bianco (1994), is that citizens believe that the information and judgement of elites is superior to their own. Scholars in the Global South have become quite interested in how elites can drive intolerance and provoke prejudicial, and sometimes violent behaviour, which is particularly evident during democratisation in the Global South. Wilkinson (2006), for instance, has demonstrated how political elites promote intergroup violence during electoral cycles. Whitaker (2005) has in addition identified elite discourse as an important factor in explaining the growth of xenophobia in African democracies (also see Whitaker and Giersch 2015). Any study of knowledge acquisition in the African context cannot ignore peer influence. Communication scholars have always indicated that person-to-person communication plays a significant role in attitude and behaviour-change processes, but Ellis (1989) has most clearly outlined its manifestation in Africa in his study of ‘pavement radio’ or radio trottoir. Unlike the mass media, ‘pavement radio’ is not regulated by any identifiable institution or body. Rather, it is the sharing of information as ordinary people meet in the course of their daily routine—an outgrowth of the oral tradition of knowledge exchange that has dominated African society for millennia. ‘Pavement radio’ develops a particular authority in communities during periods in which the state suppresses free expression in the press and other more formal forums. Even when such suppression ends, this medium of communication may continue to enjoy considerable prestige among the general public.

The South African Context When the modern South African state formed in the early twentieth century, the authorities were already regulating and censoring public speech. This can be clearly observed if we look at data from the latest VDem series on freedom of expression.1 Censorship efforts became more robust in the late 1940s as the apartheid government gained power and began to impose new restrictions on the dissemination of information

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South Africa

103

Other Southern African countries

1910 1914 1918 1922 1926 1930 1934 1938 1942 1946 1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 2018

0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

Fig. 5.1 Mean freedom of expression index scores (0–1) for Southern Africa, 1910–2018 (Sources V-Dem Database, Version 9)

(Fig. 5.1). Through increasingly aggressive media controls, state attempts to suppress information about world affairs grew. In addition, propaganda campaigns spread disinformation that undermined public knowledge of the outside world. As decolonialisation brought new freedoms, and press freedoms expanded in the rest of the region in the mid-1960s, South Africa became more authoritarian between 1975 and 1988. Agents of the ancien régime played an increasingly pervasive role in censoring and preventing information from being transmitted to the public. Most people of colour were forced to rely on ‘pavement radio’ for political news during this period. The South African media context changed dramatically following the end of the apartheid system and transition to democracy in the early 1990s. Press freedom and constitutionally enshrined rights to information in South Africa created an environment in which journalists could play a critical role in providing information to the public (Merrett 2001). In terms of freedom of expression, South Africa was leading the rest of the region by the late 1990s. Existing and new media companies quickly sought to exploit this environment to sell news content and promote a culture of news consumption. The ‘tabloid revolution’ in South Africa saw the growth of affordable and accessible newspapers, such as the Daily Sun, that regularly sensationalise the news and engage in dubious reporting practices (Wasserman 2008). The growing influence of the press in South Africa raised new questions about the role of the media in changing

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public opinion. Despite the substantial expansion of press freedoms in the country, little research has empirically tested the degree to which media influences public perceptions on important issues like immigration. The South African public is rather ill-informed about international immigration and its effects on the country. Public opinion research (e.g. Mattes et al. 1999; Crush et al. 2013; Gordon 2017, 2018a) has shown that the general public thinks that international immigration has a major negative impact on South African society. Immigration is seen by most of the adult population as a major source of unemployment, crime and disease. Scholars have long been concerned about the portrayal of foreign nationals and international migration in the South African media. Nyamnjoh (2010), for instance, has contended that foreign nationals are often depicted in an uncritical and even sensationalist fashion, and that this perpetuates negative myths about foreigners. Studies of the print media in South Africa have shown that immigrants are frequently described as ‘jobstealers’ and ‘carriers of disease’ or in other derogatory terms (for a review of this research, see Smith 2011). In addition, the incessant use of the ‘illegals’ label by the media to describe migrants seems to have promoted a close connection between crime and immigration in the country. It is essential, at this stage, to acknowledge that the media in South Africa have played an important role in making the public aware of xenophobia as a problem. In the last decade, prominent publications have pushed back against government attempts to minimise the issue. This tendency was particularly evident in the aftermath of anti-immigrant riots in 2008, 2015, 2017 and 2019. Indeed, the confrontational tone of some media outlets sparked significant criticism from the Zuma and Ramaphosa administrations. While it can be argued that media coverage of immigration has improved over the last ten years, Chiumbu and Moyo (2018), although acknowledging such improvements, have criticised the media’s continued use of narrative frames that rationalise the exclusion of foreign nationals. The use of such frames, the authors argue, reinforces public fears about the negative impact of immigrants on South African nationbuilding. This entrenches a ‘hegemonic language’ about foreign nationals that cements existing in-group and out-group distinctions.

The Data Employed The data used for my study comes from the SASAS cross-sectional survey series, which was launched by the Human Sciences Research Council

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(HSRC) in 2003. The SASAS sampling frame employs Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) 2011 Population Census data to select 500 small area layers (SALs) in the country’s nine provinces. SALs are selected based on range of geographic and demographic factors. Households within SALs are then selected randomly with probability proportional to their size, with the estimated number of dwelling units in a SAL being used as a measure. Individuals within households are drawn using the Kish Grid method. The sample is restricted to adults aged 16 years and older and is usually gathered in October and November of each year. The number of respondents in each survey round ranges from 2500 to 3500. Each SASAS round is weighted to be nationally representative, and all the data presented in this paper was weighted unless indicated otherwise.

Research Results Since its inception, SASAS has employed the following question designed to capture individuals’ perceptions of foreigners: ‘Please indicate which of the following statements applies to you? I generally welcome to South Africa … (i) All immigrants; (ii) Some immigrants; (iii) No immigrants; (iv) Don’t know’. The respondent is then asked to indicate their association with an extreme anti-immigrant position versus two options that are more conciliatory. The responses to this question can be considered an effective measure of anti-immigrant sentiment. Before these questions are asked, fieldworkers inform respondents that they are going to be asked ‘some questions about people from other countries coming to live in South Africa’. This is done to avoid confusion over the word ‘foreigner’, which could be applied to all groups the respondents believe are alien or unusual. Attitudes towards international migrants are presented for the period 2003–2018 in Fig. 5.2. In 2003, about a third (24%) of the adult population told fieldworkers that they would accept all immigrants, while the remainder indicated that they would accept either none (33%) or some immigrants (35%). The percentage of the general public that would be ready to accept foreigners fluctuated somewhat thereafter. Anti-immigrant sentiment reached a peak in 2007 when 40% of the general public reported that they rejected all immigrants. But in 2008 there was a notable rise in pro-immigrant attitudes, with more than two-fifths (43%) of the adult population telling fieldworkers that they would welcome all

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Please indicate which of the following statements applies to you? I generally welcome to South Africa… 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 2018

2017

2016

2015

Welcome None

2014

2013

2012

2011

Welcome Some

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Welcome All

(Do not know)

Fig. 5.2 Public hospitality or hostility towards international migrants in South Africa, 2003–2018 (Source South African Social Attitudes Survey 2003–2018)

foreigners. This response may be related to the widespread condemnation of xenophobia in the mass media following the May 2008 attacks.2 However, over the next ten years there was a downward trend in proimmigrant views and in 2018 only a quarter of the general public reported that they would welcome all international migrants. To understand where respondents obtained their information on foreign nationals, survey participants were asked to indicate which sources provide the best/most honest information on immigrants living in South Africa. Participants were then read a list of different sources that ranged from traditional media platforms (e.g. radio, television, newspapers, etc.) to more communal forms. Responses to the question on preferred information sources are displayed by whether an individual welcomed foreign nationals or not (Table 5.1). As can be observed, the most popular sources of information were (perhaps unsurprisingly) television and radio.3 Despite their prominence in media studies on xenophobia, newspapers were only listed by 30% of the adult public as a trusted source. In addition, Internet sources (including Twitter and Facebook) were only mentioned by 12% of the populace. Interestingly, more than a quarter (28%) of the general public identified interpersonal networks as an important source of information. This finding indicates the continued importance of person-to-person communication (i.e. ‘pavement radio’) in transmitting information on foreign nationals. Those who did not welcome immigrants were found to select, on average, fewer information sources than those who were hospitable. This

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Table 5.1 Most trusted sources for information on foreign nationals living in South Africa by hospitality or hostility towards international migrants (multiple response), 2018 Individual welcomes…

Traditional or community leaders Radio TV Newspapers Magazine Internet and other social media Personal experience Friends/family Politicians and political parties Other (specify)…. (None of the above) (Don’t know)

Total

All immigrants

Some immigrants

No immigrants

8

16

13

13

49 58 27 9 11

53 70 32 9 15

50 67 27 7 8

51 66 30 9 12

38 42 2

21 27 2

24 18 3

26 28 2

1 2 2

1 1 1

0 3 2

1 2 1

Source South African Social Attitudes Survey 2018

may be because individuals who listed multiple sources tended to report more familiarity with international migrants. In SASAS 2018, respondents were asked how knowledgeable they were about foreign nationals residing in South Africa. The results are portrayed in Fig. 5.3 by education attainment group. A sizable share (39%) of the general adult population reported to know few foreign nationals, a result that was more common among those with lower levels of education. Those that described themselves as very knowledgeable, listed, on average, three sources while those who said they had no knowledge listed only one.4 Self-reported knowledge of foreigners from other countries was found to correlate with hospitability attitudes. More than a fifth (21%) of those who did not welcome foreigners reported no knowledge of them at all, compared to eight per cent who said they welcomed all foreigners.5 A question on whether survey participants had used violence to prevent immigrants from living or working in their neighbourhood was introduced in the SASAS 2015 round. This question was repeated in the 2016–2018 rounds of SASAS. Since respondents could be reluctant to

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Overall, would you say you are knowledgeable about the foreigners from other countries that are living in South Africa? 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

(Don’t know) Not at all knowledgeable Not very knowledgeable Somewhat knowledgeable Very knowledgeable Total

Post-Matric

Complete Secondary Schooling

Incomplete Secondary Schooling

Senior Primary Schooling

Junior Primary Schooling or less

Fig. 5.3 Self-reported knowledge of foreign nationals living in South Africa by level of educational attainment, 2018 (Source South African Social Attitudes Survey 2018)

give an honest answer to this question as there is a stigma associated with such behaviour, the reader should be aware of possible under-reporting when assessing the results of the survey. Around eight per cent of the sample nevertheless stated that they had participated in such aggressive behaviour in the past (Table 5.2). This outcome is quite alarming, given the possibility that the result may be an underestimate of the level of antiimmigrant hate crime in South Africa (for further discussion of this issue, see Gordon 2019). Reviewing the data in Table 5.2, we can see that the percentage of the adult population who disclosed their past participation in violence fluctuated within a narrow band over the period 2015–2018. This could suggest the surging and ebbing of a particular kind of social desirability bias that influences how participants answer this question. Compared to those who indicated that they do not participate in violence against immigrants, participants in violence were found to be less likely to identify interpersonal networks and personal experience6 as trusted information sources.7 This suggests that obtaining information

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Table 5.2 Count (’000) of adult population who Reported participation in anti-immigrant violence, 2015–2018

Have done it in the past year Have done it in the more distant past Have not done it but might do it Have not done it and would never do it (Can’t choose)

2015

2016

2017

2018

892 (2.41) 1272 (3.44) 4869 (13.16) 29,723 (80.34) 240 (0.65)

1224 (3.24) 2052 (5.43) 3827 (10.14) 30,087 (79.69) 565 (1.50)

355 (0.90) 1673 (4.24) 4592 (11.64) 32,510 (82.43) 310 (0.79)

804 (1.99) 2966 (7.35) 4468 (11.07) 31,319 (77.58) 815 (2.02)

Note Percentage of total adult population Source South African Social Attitudes Survey 2015–2018

about foreigners from these sources reduces the likelihood that an individual will partake in anti-immigrant hate crime. The most disturbing findings to have emerged from this study involved responses concerning potential participation in violence among non-participants. Some 12% of the sample told fieldworkers that they had not been involved in violent action against foreigners in the past but would be prepared to do so in the future. Examining the sources this group trusted most for receiving information on foreign nationals, it became clear that they placed a higher trust in other media sources than those who said that they had not engaged in hate crime and maintained they would never do so, who were more likely to select television as a trusted source.8

Discussion In the light of evidence presented in this chapter, there is a need to rethink current approaches to how we study the formation of anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa. The evidence presented suggests that when trying to understand xenophobia in a post-colonial context, it is necessary to appreciate the informational context in which people make tolerance judgements. Researchers and policymakers must look more closely at where people receive their information on international migration. Such a focus could open new avenues for research and policy on the role played

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by the local and national mass media in fostering various forms of social cohesion, political community and authority. The study demonstrated that the public is reliant on conventional media platforms for information on international migrants. Despite some concerns about the role of social media, most of the populace did not list the Internet as a trusted information platform. Rather, there was an affinity for radio and television. This result demonstrates the importance of the traditional mass media in the African context. These findings have clear implications for activists and policymakers who want to employ the most effective anti-xenophobia measures. Television in particular was found to be an important information source, especially if campaigners want to target potential perpetrators of anti-immigrant hate crime. An educational component should be integral to any antixenophobia campaign. A substantial minority of the adult population was found to know little or nothing at all about the country’s foreign population. This outcome should be of concern, given the link between pro-immigrant attitudes and self-reported knowledge that was demonstrated in the study: the more familiar an individual is with the subject of international migration, the more tolerant he/she is. To improve anti-xenophobia messaging in South Africa, communication scholars must look at successful examples of anti-hate campaigns in other parts of Africa. Consider, for instance, the media-based public education campaign that was run by Radio la Benevolencija in Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which was launched in response to the inter-ethnic civil conflicts in those countries. The campaign succeeded in promoting peace and reconciliation, and also fostered greater intergroup cooperation (Staub 2014). In addition, there is also a need for more studies on how television shapes attitudes. Too much of the current scholarship in South Africa focuses on the print media. Researchers need to look more closely at how coverage by broadcast news programmes (e.g. eTV and SABC News) influences public attitudes on immigration. Future research should focus on the visual presentation of immigration control, anti-immigrant attacks and the portrayal of foreign nationals. The persons sampled tended not to list political, community or traditional leaders as sources of information on foreign nationals. However, this does not mean that they were not influenced by elite cueing on immigration. The ‘two-step flow of communication’ hypothesis developed by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) argues that ‘horizontal’ opinion leaders, such

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as politicians and traditional leaders, can help to interpret and contextualise mass media mediated messages for the public. This process is achieved through multiple and diverse group interactions in which leaders cue the right interpretation of mass media content. The method is more successful in a context in which the mass media reach wide audiences via a few channels. As far as the social media is concerned, despite its rising importance in South Africa, it is clear that the majority of adults continue to rely on conventional broadcast media sources for information on this subject. Popular opinion leaders can also exercise significant authority on how information distributed by the media should be interpreted. In the light of this, there should be further examination of how elites influence public opinion. It is evident from the study that the attitudes of individuals towards foreign nationals were influenced by the information source they trusted. It is also apparent that people who sourced data from personal experience were more open to foreign nationals than those who did not. Such persons were also found to be much more likely to have foreign nationals as friends and acquaintances. This finding builds on existing studies that suggests that contact with foreign nationals reduces antiimmigrant attitudes in South Africa (see Gordon 2018a). Sourcing data from interpersonal networks (i.e. friends and family) also seem to make an individual more tolerant towards foreign nationals, as does listening to ‘pavement radio‘. Further research should focus on why a preference for these sources is associated with pro-immigrant attitudes.

Conclusion Currently, there is quite a strong focus on law enforcement in policy discussions on anti-xenophobia strategies and a zero-tolerance policy towards anti-immigrant hate crime. It is essential that perpetrators of such crimes are punished and that the police maintain law and order. But there also needs to be recognition that xenophobia is not just a law enforcement problem and that the situation requires a greater focus on public education about international migration. Awareness campaigns need to be carefully targeted to be successful. The study reported on here has provided useful information for those working on designing and implementing anti-xenophobia education campaigns. Such campaigns will need to reach a large audience and must utilise the mass media to do so. Spending on anti-xenophobia programmes may face opposition

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in the current public opinion climate and implementation will not be easy. Activists and politicians must show courage in the face of opposition and support large-scale education and public awareness campaigns. These campaigns will promote greater social cohesion and provide long-term economic and cultural benefits for the country. Acknowledgements Guidance for this study was provided by the South African Social Attitudes Survey, a programme within the Democracy Governance and Service Delivery research programme at the Human Sciences Research Council. For their support and encouragement, special thanks are given to Benjamin J Roberts and Jarè Struwig, the coordinators of SASAS. Funding Detail This work was supported by the Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, under Grant P2018003. Opinions expressed and conclusions made are those of the author and are not to be attributed to the centre.

Notes 1. The V-Dem database is one of the largest social sciences research-oriented data collection programmes in the world. More than 2600 experts have contributed to the V-Dem database (for a thorough discussion of V-Dem and its methodology, see Coppedge et al. 2011). The Freedom of Expression Index reported here measures the extent to which government respects press and media freedom, as well as the ability of ordinary people to freely converse on political matters in the public or private spheres. The index also incorporates freedom of cultural as well as academic expression. 2. For a detailed discussion of the scale and importance of the May 2008 attacks, see Crush et al. (2013). 3. Self-reported knowledge was examined by the type of information source listed. It was apparent that individuals who listed interpersonal networks and personal experience were more likely to report high levels of knowledge. More than half (55%) of those who said they were very knowledgeable listed these information sources compared to 42% of the somewhat knowledgeable, 36% of the not very knowledgeable and 28% of the not at all knowledgeable. 4. A multivariate regression analysis, controlling for educational attainment, was conducted to see if this correlation held. The outcome of the model found that, when accounting for education level, a knowledge of foreign nationals made an individual more hospitable towards that group. This finding still held even if the model was adjusted to account for age, gender, population group and province of residence.

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5. Here, respondents said that the main source of their knowledge of international migrants was personal experience (i.e. direct contact with foreigners). Interestingly, these types of respondents are less likely to select mass media sources that those who did not answer ‘personal experience’ when asked about main sources of information. 6. A minority of past anti-immigrant hate crime participants listed friends and family (15%) and personal experience (13%) as important sources of knowledge. In contrast, a much larger share of non-participants selected friends and family (30%) and personal experience (27%). As a robustness check, a logistic regression analysis was conducted to see if this correlation held while controlling for socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, population group, educational attainment and province of residence. The outcome of the model found that, holding other variables constant, a listing of interpersonal networks as well as personal experience as a source of information, reduced the likelihood of having participated in anti-immigrant hate crime. 7. Almost three-quarters (73%) of non-participants who indicated a willingness to engage in anti-immigrant hate crime identified television as a trustworthy source of information on foreign nationals. By comparison, only 66% of non-participants with no intention to commit such a crime gave a similar answer. 8. Nearly a fifth (19%) of those with no foreign friends or acquaintances cited personal experience as an important information source, compared to 30% of individuals with foreign nationals in their social networks. An Analysis of Variance test (F (1, 2798) = 41.27, p = 0.000) confirms that this difference was statistically significant at the 0.01% level.

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Whitaker, B. E., & Giersch, J. (2015). Political competition and attitudes towards immigration in Africa. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(10), 1536– 1557. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183x.2014.996534. Wilkinson, S. I. (2006). Votes and violence: Electoral competition and ethnic riots in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 6

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of Representations of Immigrants in the South African Print Media, 2011–2015 Nixon K. Kariithi

Conceptualising Quantitative Approaches to Immigration Representation Studies This study of the representation of immigrants in the media has benefitted significantly from the inclusion of a rigorous quantitative analysis component. The component has assisted in the interrogation of trends, patterns and causality, and/or the existence of latent factors relating to these disconcerting representations. Extant studies of the South African media’s representations of immigrants and immigration have primarily employed qualitative research techniques, among them document (or textual) analyses, case studies, focus groups and policy analysis. Given the robustness of quantitative techniques, it is interesting that no systematic research of media representations in southern Africa has been noted to employ such techniques.

N. K. Kariithi (B) Tangaza Africa Media, Randburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_6

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Quantitative methodologies have been instrumental in providing unique insights into a variety of empirical questions that were premised upon qualitative research techniques in the first instance. Ample empirical evidence in extant literature answers questions relating to studies on immigration and modernisation, employment success, healthcare access, political and economic incorporation, education and social attainment, acculturation and quality of life, and social rights. Quantitative studies on immigrant issues elsewhere have successfully utilised longitudinal time series and cross-sectional and multi-country research techniques. While the bulk of these studies have been done in North America and the European Union, the topics themselves have been holistic, embracing many issues relating to Asian, Latino and even African immigrants. Against the foregoing, the utilisation of quantitative techniques deepens and enriches current knowledge and research findings on immigrant issues in South Africa. With raw data from media coverage of immigrants and immigration issues, numerous research pathways are proposed. The first is an extensive descriptive quantitative analysis examining sentiment, bias and other journalistic trends/patterns discernible by using these first-level techniques. Depending on the coding rigour and data robustness, this segment of data analysis could also include other aspects, such as sourcing/spokesperson analysis, use of immigrants to tell their own stories and consistencies/inconsistencies across different media titles. In addition, the study also utilises advanced quantitative tools of analysis to explore more nuanced issues in the media coverage. Extant literature points to the use of research methods such as cluster analyses, correlational analysis and principal-component analysis (factor analysis) to investigate the extent to which media-specific factors and/or contextual factors help to explain various strands of the social phenomena of immigrants. Such phenomena could be those already identified in qualitative studies in South Africa or others noted in global studies (e.g. nationalism, prejudice and immigrant segregation/assimilation debates). It is submitted here that using appropriate methodologies, the media coverage data could yield critical insights into understanding the antecedents of economic prejudices, the legitimacy of claims by victims, accusations of corruption/illegal activity, uncompetitive business behaviour and challenges to immigrant inclusion in South African society.

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Designing an Appropriate Quantitative Method The practice of using computer software in the analysis of large amounts of textual data to uncover patterns and characteristics that may not be apparent upon a surface reading is now commonplace (see, for example, Baker 2006; Baker et al. 2008; KhosraviNik 2009). Concerning the numerous quantitative methods that lend themselves to appropriate use with media content data, these include a simple descriptive analysis to cluster analysis, factor analysis, regression and time series/panel data analysis. The specific design and operationalisation will depend on the nature of the data available. In descriptive studies, the raw media data was the unit of analysis. When categorised in predetermined segments through rigorous coding, new units of analysis were developed that further helped illuminate the study of immigrant perceptions. The broad variety of methods and data formats significantly assisted in the analysis and interpretation of findings.

Terminology and Phraseology in Studies of the Representations of Immigrants in the Media Most studies of the representation of immigrants in the media highlight the need to carefully consider the terms, phrases and labels utilised by the media to reference immigrants. In their book on media representations, Baker et al. (2013) note that the media present information about world events to masses of individuals as ‘representations’, primarily because it is not possible to present a completely impartial, accurate and full account of an event. The representations are evident in the use of language (spoken or written) and/or images (still or moving): Such representations are often restrained by space and time limitations; journalists need to prioritise particular events, as well as certain people’s perspectives or opinions over others. Additionally, summaries of events may be coloured by the political priorities of newspapers, or the abilities of the journalists who are writing for them. (Baker et al. 2013, p. 3)

William Allen (2014) reflects on making assumptions about media content, stating that ‘when seeking to analyse press coverage, assumptions and their companions of bias and prior expectations can skew researchers’ decision-making – and potentially the resulting analysis’. This study

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adopted the RASIM (refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants or migrants) corpus linguistic approach as formulated by Paul Baker and fellow scholars from the University of Lancaster. They successfully used this approach to analyse a corpus of British news articles comprising 140 million words from UK newspapers dating between January 1996 and October 2005. While corpus linguistic approaches have grown popular among scholars over the past decade, Baker and colleagues offered a useful aspect of corpus linguistic by focusing on two conceptual notions, namely ‘keyness’ and collocation. Keyness was defined as ‘the statistically significantly higher frequency of particular words or clusters in the corpus under analysis in comparison with another corpus, either a general reference corpus, or a comparable specialised corpus’ (Baker et al. 2008, p. 278). The authors were emphatic that the purpose of keyness was ‘to point towards the “aboutness” of a text or homogeneous corpus, that is its topic and the central elements of its content’. They further added that by grouping together keywords relating to specific topics, metaphors or topoi (as ascertained through concordance analysis), it was possible to create a general impression of the presentation of RASIM in newspapers. Collocation, the above-chance frequent co-occurrence of two words within a predetermined span, investigates the occurrence of specific terms or phrases, five words or so on either side of the word under investigation, referred to as the node. Baker and colleagues argue that the statistical calculation of collocation is based on the frequency of the node, the frequency of the collocates and the frequency of the collocation. Because the collocates of a node contribute to its meaning, they can provide ‘a semantic analysis of a word’ but can also ‘convey messages implicitly’ (Sinclair 1991). Costas Gabrielatos (2006) enunciates the modus operandi of the RASIM approach as follows: The starting points for the analysis are keywords, key collocations of the terms refugee(s), asylum seeker(s), immigrant(s), migrants(s) and alien(s), as well as key n-grams containing these terms and selected key collocates. [We] make use of the notions of semantic prosody and, more significantly, the expanded notion of discourse prosody. Semantic prosodies can help create a topos without totally explicit argumentation.

This study adopted ‘refugees’, ‘asylum seekers’, ‘immigrants’ and ‘migrants’ as the keywords for the searches on media content portals. In

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keeping with extant corpus linguistic literature, the study queried media content from the Lexis Nexis portal using the search words/strings for refugee, asylum, deportation, immigration, emigration, migrant, illegal alien, illegal entry and refugee centres. Depending on the search capabilities of the media portal, the following string can also be utilised: refugee! OR asylum! OR deport! OR immigr! OR emigr! OR migrant! OR illegal alien! OR illegal entry OR leave to remain, AND NOT deportivo AND NOT deportment. Data extracted from portals using these keywords/phrases was coded for systematic quantitative analysis. The data was initially subjected to keyness and collocation tests, establishing spike patterns and correlational occurrences. Coding of the raw data was done in plain text (.txt) and Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) formats. Trained individuals coded occurrences of the above words/phrases, as well as other contextual information needed for additional empirical investigations. Such contextual information included the metadata of a particular news item (source, date, author) and the presence/absence of critical actors/institutions in the general immigrant discourse.

Data Sourcing and Initial Preparation The database on media representations of immigrants in South Africa was generated from a major media content database. The data was drawn in annual tranches, using the RASIM rubric—refugee, asylum seeker, immigrant, migrant—as the key search words. The database allowed a simultaneous RASIM search and produced results that could be exported easily to MS Word and other word processing software. The final database comprised media content for the period January 2011 to December 2015 and represented coverage from 25 daily and weekly newspapers, including all major South African print media titles. For a large volume of data such as the one prepared for this study, multiple waves of data analysis are necessary. In keeping with standard quantitative research practice, the first wave of analysis was undertaken using the full five-year data content to identify overarching themes and trends in media representations of immigrants. Use was made of T-Lab1 software, the versatility of which in data input allowed for easy ingestion after the data was appropriately readied for processing. T-Lab’s analytical strengths emanate from its versatile tools for co-occurrence analysis,

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Table 6.1 SA media use of phrases/keywords relating to immigration, 2011– 2015 Phrase/keyword

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Total

Refugee(s) Asylum Asylum seekers(s) Immigration Migrant(s) Illegal(s) Foreign Total %

276 268 225 412 77 193 171 1622 14.00

408 313 205 127 267 129 271 1720 14.85

368 133 113 101 195 148 168 1226 10.58

477 207 141 206 223 225 403 1882 16.25

906 276 231 467 481 467 2307 5135 44.32

2435 1197 915 1313 1243 1162 3320 11,585

% 21.02 10.33 7.90 11.33 10.73 10.03 28.66

thematic analysis and comparative analysis. The co-occurrence tools allow for the measuring, exploring and mapping of various types of relationships between key terms in either pairs or groups, either within the entire corpus, or within media content or other data corpora. The thematic analysis tools help find patterns of keywords within context units, while the comparative analysis tools analyse and map similarities and differences between disparate data subsets (Table 6.1). In the five-year period under review, 2015 produced the highest number of phrases/keywords relating to immigration, accounting for 44.3% of all RASIM phrases or keywords analysed in the project. The keyword mentions reflected the high media interest in immigrant issues in that year because of renewed attacks on immigrants in several parts of South Africa—KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape and Gauteng. The keyword ‘foreign’ accounted for 28.66% of the total keyword mentions. The word ‘foreign’ included references to ‘foreigners’, ‘foreign nationals’, ‘foreign traders’, ‘foreign workers’ and ‘foreign-owned businesses’. The high incidence of media mentions of these keywords points to general South Africa media interest in issues relating to immigrants.

Descriptive Statistics on Representation of Immigrants in the SA Media, 2011–2015 South Africa’s formal response to the immigration issue was driven primarily by the Department of Home Affairs and the South African

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Table 6.2 Institutional responses to SA’s immigration challenge

Institutional actor ( N = 1235) Dept of Home Affairs SAPS SA Government National Assembly SANDF StatsSA SIU SARS SA Cabinet

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% of media mentions 52.55 23.24 8.74 4.05 3.48 3.24 2.43 1.38 0.89

Police Service (SAPS). The two institutions master-minded the government’s stance through a variety of new and existing policies, as well as a variety of implementation/enforcement methods (Table 6.2). Interestingly, the resulting heavy media discourses enunciating the government’s stance borrowed heavily from government statements and media appearances. The responses also included heavy-handed security operations, as well as the involvement of the South African Defence Force and the Special Investigating Unit (Hawks). Media mentions of the National Assembly and the Cabinet provided a unique dimension to South Africa’s response to profoundly embarrassing cases of xenophobic violence and attacks. Extensive media reports detailed the activities of human rights organisations that mounted legal challenges to numerous South Africa government policies and decisions. The decisions that attracted most media interest were those involving the basic human rights of immigrants as enshrined in the Constitution and international treaties ratified by South Africa (Table 6.3). The activities of these human rights organisations undergird the judicial responses to the country’s immigration challenge (Table 6.4). The media data shows that litigation and other legal challenges were noted at all levels of the SA judiciary, with about one-third of the mentions being in appellate courts. The media’s representation of faith-based organisations was characterised by news reports about their compassionate acts and their broad engagement with municipal, provincial and national authorities on behalf of immigrant communities. Through these organisations, pertinent questions relating to the inhumane treatment of immigrants were raised and fervently debated (Table 6.5). The Central Methodist Church in central

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Table 6.3 Legal responses to SA’s immigration challenge

Table 6.4 Judicial responses to SA’s immigration issue

Table 6.5 Faith-based organisations’ responses to SA’s immigration challenge

Institutional actor ( N = 323) Lawyers for Human Rights SAHRC Human Rights Watch Institute for Security Studies Legal Resource Centre NMMU Refugee Rights Centre UCT Refugee Law Clinic Centre for Child Law

Institutional actor ( N = 106) High Court Constitutional Court Supreme Court Magistrates Court

% of media mentions 52.63 17.29 9.77 6.02 5.26 3.01 3.01 2.26

% of media mentions 58.14 18.60 12.79 10.47

Institutional actor ( N = 151)

% of media mentions

Methodist Church Anglican Church Catholic Church Cape Jewish Board Cape Muslim Congress General Religious Groups SACC Diakonia Council of Churches

47.76 14.93 11.94 5.97 5.97 5.97 2.99 1.49

Johannesburg was the epicentre of one such debate after church officials opened their doors to immigrants on humanitarian grounds. The resulting media discourses depicted faith-based organisations as South Africa’s moral compass, challenging both government and society to show more love and sensitivity to those in need. It is noteworthy that the work of the faith-based organisations was depicted as being limited to specific episodes of cruelty and space in major urban areas. Together with human rights organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) provided the grease that kept the media interest in

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Table 6.6 Refugee NGOs’ responses to SA’s immigration challenge

Institutional actor ( N = 367) Passop UNHCR CoRMSA African Centre for Migration & Society Refugee Reception Centre Amnesty International Migrant Community Board Agency for Refugee Education Bench Marks Foundation Denis Hurley Centre African Diaspora Forum IOM Somali Association of SA Gift of the Givers Refugees Appeal Board Grahamstown anti-xenophobia group

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% of media mentions 31.36 26.69 8.90 5.08 4.66 3.81 2.97 2.97 2.54 2.12 2.12 2.12 1.69 1.69 1.27 0.85

immigration alive for the five years under review. While the role of Passop (People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty) was confined to a specific time period, most of the other NGOs were active throughout the five-year period, proactively engaging the media about the need for immigrant access to shelter, food and amenities (Table 6.6). In addition, they defined numerous news frames relating to the treatment of immigrants by both government and the country’s citizens.

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of the Combined Five-Year Data, 2011–2015 Clusters 1, 3 and 5 were discursively related and placed in proximate Euclidean distance near one another. Cluster 1 tapped heavily into the issue of South Africa as the preferred destination by African immigrants. The linguistic devices feeding this perception included the country’s relatively ‘high’ level of ‘economic growth’, rising ‘difficulties’ in securing ‘visas’ to ‘Europe’ and other countries ‘internationally’, and SA’s highly porous ‘borders’ with other ‘southern’ African countries that allowed

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‘illegal’ immigrants to simply ‘cross’ into South Africa. Other texts highlighted the country’s general skills shortage, ‘unemployment’ and rising fears of political ‘persecution’ in neighbouring countries as contributing factors. Nigeria and Zimbabwe were specifically mentioned as major countries of origin for the bulk of immigrants and immigrant issues in the media during the period under review. Cluster 2 represents a broad and variegated response by progressive agencies and institutions to the ominous threat posed by immigrants because of negative perceptions. That the extensive activism, litigation and civic engagement cluster lie so uniformly together in sharp contrast to xenophobic behaviour is astounding. The cluster highlights the actions of ‘courts’, legal entities like ‘Lawyers for Human Rights’ (LHR), ‘Passop’ and the ‘SA Human Rights Commission’ (SAHRC), who intervene on behalf of ‘asylum seekers’, including seeking legal redress and instituting litigation. ‘Judgements’ and other legal actions against the ‘Department of Home Affairs’ define this cluster’s unique characteristic as being the battleground for aggressive contestation. Media reports reference terse linguistic devices such as ‘court orders’, ‘applications’, ‘cases’, ‘judgement’ and ‘appeals’. The key actors—‘officials’, ‘judges’ and ‘ministers’—are placed alongside ‘refugees’, ‘applicants’, ‘asylum seekers’ and ‘detainees’. One discursive conflict and contestation was the ‘Lindela Refugee Centre’, where ‘illegal immigrants’ netted in police ‘raids’ were held indefinitely before ‘deportation’. The emerging picture is completed by the prominence of hierarchical judicial institutions, namely the SA High Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court. In a significant way, the linguistic significance of the entire breadth of South Africa’s judiciary underscores both the high stakes ensconced in the immigration debate (for both locals and foreign nationals) and the extent to which immigration has become one of the most visible defining features of the post-apartheid South African state. Cluster 3 encapsulated ‘economic’ factors driving migration and focused on work opportunities in South Africa’s ‘mines’ and on commercial ‘farms’. Media reports specifically cited the ‘gold’ and ‘platinum’ mining sectors, as well as ‘wine-growing’ farms. Media discourses strongly delved into the ‘living wage’ debate that dominated much of the coverage pertaining to both labour-intensive sectors. The media representations further covered family-focused debates about the quality of housing and the availability of schooling opportunities. Interestingly, this cluster

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included media discourses relating to the Marikana massacre, probably because numerous discussions reviewed the outcry over low wages and poor living conditions in the platinum belt by trade unions. Cluster 4 encapsulated ‘violence’ factors against immigrants in South Africa. The coverage also reviewed media discourses on police involvement in fighting anti-immigrant violence. Among the evident factors was coverage focusing on ‘xenophobic’, ‘attacks’ and the ‘looting’ of ‘shops’ owned by ‘foreigners’. Coverage even included ‘murder’ of ‘Somali’ nationals. The police discourses covered the ‘arrest’ of ‘suspected criminals’ concerning xenophobic attacks. Media reports focused on comments by spokespersons about police ‘operations’ in the ‘Isipingo area’ of ‘Durban’, where violence had intensified and ‘criminals’ had been arrested. ‘Foreign nationals’ were also attacked in ‘townships’ in ‘Soweto’ and ‘Chatsworth’. Comment by Zulu King Zwelithini bore strong statistical significance alongside factors that mentioned ‘mobs’ of ‘residents’, ‘march’, ‘raid’, ‘target’, ‘foreign-owned’, ‘displaced’ and ‘night’. Some ‘violent’ ‘incidents’ were in reaction to the ‘shooting’ and ‘killing’ of a local resident by a shopkeeper during an attempted robbery. Cluster 5 consisted of ‘Government response’ to the xenophobic violence on immigrants by black South Africans. Factors identified in media reports as causes included the need to review SA’s ‘migration policy’ and deal with ‘problems’ inherited from ‘apartheid’. Numerous factors focused on developing a ‘social policy’ to combat xenophobia, raise ‘cohesion’ and promote ‘political freedom’ in African countries. Other reports pointed to ‘cultural’ and ‘economic development’ as vehicles to promote ‘dignity’ among ‘black South Africans’. Such initiatives could ‘unite’ all people against racism in South Africa and ‘globally’. A discourse worth noting was the African National Congress’ (ANC’s) own stance on the issue, as enunciated at its policy and elective conference in ‘Mangaung’. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 show T-Lab’s superiority in displaying the spatial relational contexts discernible from media content representations of immigrants. The lemmas (keywords identified systemically in media texts) define the clusters definitively in terms of their discursive constructions as significant issues facing society. For example, Cluster 4 enunciates the extent to which some media discourses espoused the ‘violent exclusion’ dimension as opposed to the ‘peaceful coexistence’ dimension promoted by factors in Clusters 1 and 5. At the same time, Cluster 2 factors highlighted ‘litigation’ as a contrasting notion to the ‘negotiation’ element

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Fig. 6.1 Cluster analysis of the 2011–2015 media content data

Fig. 6.2 Lemmas analysis of the 2011–2015 media content data

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evident in Cluster 3. The broader spatial spread or issue location seen among Cluster 2 factors suggests the voluminous five-year data may be combining numerous unique factors from the annual data series.

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of 2011 Media Content Data T-Lab statistics produced five thematic clusters from the 2011 media data. Cluster 1 comprised ‘pragmatic issues’ confounding the daily lives of immigrants living in South Africa. The issues appeared to fall into two categories, namely systemic and contextual issues. The systemic issues related to the availability of ‘schools’ for immigrants’ children, housing (‘settlement’), access to health (‘treatment’) and availability of job opportunities (‘labour’). The contextual dimensional factors included concerns about ‘drugs’, ‘dealers’ and ‘crime’. Notably, refugee agencies like Human Rights Watch and Consortium on Refugees and Migrants in South Africa were discursively shown to have been actively engaging government to resolve immigrant issues. As shown in the cluster analysis in Fig. 6.3, Cluster 2 focused on legislative discourses emanating from a new immigration bill brought before parliament. While the bill reportedly sought to streamline SA’s

Fig. 6.3 Cluster analysis of the 2011 media content data

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immigration policies in line with global standards, the ANC and the Democratic Alliance tussled over the issue of using immigration to close South Africa’s ‘skills’ gap. Among the statistically significant factors noted was ‘skilled’ immigrants being accorded a warm reception. Media reports also highlighted tensions relating to entry into South Africa and the consequences of ‘unlawful’ entry. The ‘Department of Home Affairs’ was discursively portrayed supporting the position of the ‘detention’ of immigrants found in the country illegally. Cluster 3 encapsulated the debate about including immigrants in South Africa’s 2011 national population census. The debate drew extensive comments from Statistics SA (Stats SA) on ‘census’ methodology and the ‘rationale’ for including foreign nationals in the population count. Stats SA ‘reassured’ immigrants that participating in the census would not result in the state capturing ‘sensitive information’ about them. The agency said foreign nationals would be treated with ‘respect’, like all other participants in the census. Cluster 4 included media discourses relating to contemporaneous challenges facing immigrants as they battled to earn a living in South Africa’s harsh economic context. Reports reiterated broadly held stereotypes regarding immigrants from disparate backgrounds. The reports discussed the worsening ‘political freedoms’ in the ‘Democratic Republic of Congo’ (DRC) that resulted in ‘Congolese’ moving to South Africa and taking up menial tasks like ‘car guards’ to survive. ‘Somali’, ‘Ethiopian’ and ‘Pakistani’ immigrants reportedly escaped political strife in their countries and often operated ‘spaza shops’. Cluster 5 captured rising anxieties among ‘Zimbabweans’ as ‘deadlines’ loomed for the submission of ‘documentation’ under Project Zim. Media reports discursively constructed the issue in the bureaucratic terms represented by senior officials, saying that the government considered ‘extending’ the ‘application’ deadlines to ease ‘long queues’ of Zimbabweans applying to renew their special dispensation permits. Reports said the ‘reprieve’ meant that those who had applied would not face ‘deportation’. A contextual thematic analysis of media content in 2011 showed lemma spatial mapping forming a Y-shape, which is representative of placement patterns for typical issues in extant literature. The pattern is shown in Fig. 6.4. The emerging issues for the X-axis fell under a Necessity–Justification continuum, with the coverage of economic activities by immigrants serving as a positive justification. The Y-axis adopted

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Fig. 6.4 Lemmas analysis of the 2011 media content data

a Processual–Procedural continuum, with the bureaucratic processes of the Department of Home Affairs fitting the former and the census issues fitting the latter. The spatial gap between Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 for the issues covered was not statistically significant.

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of 2012 Media Content Data Media coverage of RASIM issues covered four thematic clusters, as computed according to rhetorical contexts (Figs. 6.5 and 6.6). Thematic issues relate to asylum seekers. Their quest for stability in terms of their documents and legality to stay in South Africa make up Cluster 1. The elements captured here include ‘queues’ to ‘apply’ for the ‘renewal’ of ‘permits’ at ‘reception’ ‘centres’, ‘refugee’ interaction with ‘refugee centres’ and other ‘refugee offices’. Media reports also capture concerns over the closure of the ‘Maitland centre’ in ‘Cape Town’. Two other concerns also emerged, namely backlog pressure and changing paperwork requirements relating to the consequences of expired permits. Cape Town and Port Elizabeth were noted as the major sources of tensions and

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Fig. 6.5 Cluster analysis of the 2012 media content data

Fig. 6.6 Lemmas analysis of the 2012 media content data

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general issues relating to the processing of applications by asylum seekers and other refugees. Cluster 2 combines two broad but related themes: workers in ‘mines’ and on ‘farms’ or in agriculture-related activities. As expected, the core issue tying the two activities together is ‘wages’. Other issues identified as general elements of this factor include strikes, health, provinces, employer issues, contract issues and migrant labour issues. Mining-specific issues include Marikana, unions, miners and minerals. Agriculture-specific elements include farms, farm work, farming areas and actual crops (e.g. grapes). The thematic issues captured in Cluster 3 concern violence on foreign nationals in South Africa. This cluster specifically identifies violence against those running ‘spaza shops’ with Ethiopian, Bangladeshi and Somali nationals shown as the most likely targets. Indeed, Ethiopian small businesses were shown to be twice more likely to be attacked than Bangladeshi and Somali-owned businesses. Aside from ownership, the SAPS features dominantly and appears to be linked to comments on ‘attacks’, ‘loot’, ‘beat’, ‘assault’ and ‘general violence’ on foreign nationals. Other police-related subthemes include ‘arrests’ of ‘suspects’ and ‘charges’ against those arrested for ‘criminal’ activities, including ‘possession’ of ‘firearms’. The data refers to ‘raids’ and ‘sting’ operations, presumably conducted by the police. Worth noting is that the attacks included ‘killing’, which appears to have happened in the Free State and Limpopo. Cluster 4 taps into the economic survival element of immigrants in southern Africa. Basic issues include ‘food’, ‘shelter’, ‘childcare’ and ‘remittance’ of funds to countries of origin to cater for families. These subthemes appear to relate to immigrants from Zimbabwe in the main and the DRC to a lesser extent. This cluster explores the social dynamics of black Africans living and working in South Africa, and how they service financial obligations to families either back home or living with them. Cluster 5 captures the legal misfortunes of foreign nationals, concentrating on the role of the Department of Home Affairs. Among the highlighted departmental activities are the ‘detention’ and ‘deportation’ of ‘detainees’. The department’s practice of detaining immigrants at the ‘Lindela Centre’ is also highlighted. Media reports in 2012 chronicled numerous attempts by affected immigrants to use South Africa’s High Court to seek redress. The SAHRC, Passop and LHR are identified as institutions that are significantly involved in legal and other ways to

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protect the rights of immigrants. The organisations also appeared to spotlight the suffering and oppression of immigrants. The litigation targeted senior Department of Home Affairs officials, including the minister, and cases ranged from unlawful detention, appeals against prior judgements and failure by officials to comply with court rulings.

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of 2013 Media Content Data Media data from 2013 presented 3235 contexts and 9631 lemmas from 120,022 words. The data produced three clusters, as represented in Figs. 6.7 and 6.8. Cluster 1 comprised critical ‘accusative’ discourses against immigrants with little justification advanced in the media reports. Reports alluded to a ‘police operation’ targeting ‘unlicensed’ immigrant traders, foreign nationals selling ‘drugs’ and any ‘foreigners’ involved in ‘crime’. We were unable to delineate the discursive construction of illegal ‘shops’ and ‘businesses’ to show only those owned by foreigners. Interestingly, ‘raids’, ‘investigations’ and ‘criminal charges’ referred to in media reports as the activities of illegal immigrants were used without any further details or elaboration. Immigrants involved in ‘informal trade’

Fig. 6.7 Cluster analysis of the 2013 media content data

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Fig. 6.8 Lemmas analysis of the 2013 media content data

were also targeted, even though the reports gave no details of the legal provisions such businesspeople had violated. Cluster 3 involved unique media discourses on an immigrant child with special music skills and the narrow options available to advance the child’s music dream. The reports discussed the likely course of the child’s progress, given the unique context of special skills, language difficulties and financial challenges. It generated interesting narratives about further education, passport control and regulations, all everyday issues for immigrants living in South Africa. Cluster 3 represented issues that faced both locals and immigrants working in the South African mining industry. The issues surrounded tensions between platinum miners and mining company Lonmin that led to the fateful shooting at Marikana. The discourses captured under this cluster pertain to labour issues in the country’s platinum industry, migrant issues in the mining industry, the dilemma of corporate welfare support to transient or migrant labour, and the changing business dynamic for South African mines as social responsibility emerges as a new priority.

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In spatial mapping, the 2013 data presents a fairly linear pattern in which the key issues present themselves on the X-Y plane. All three clusters are placed on incongruent Euclidean positions, with each tapping well into its own independent factors.

Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of 2014 Media Content Data The 2014 media data represented 4262 contexts that generated 10,838 lemmas from 13,702 words. Under analysis with T-Lab, the data generated five clusters as shown in Figs. 6.9 and 6.10. Cluster 1 captured unique discursive threads of ‘Somali’ ‘shop-owners’ in South African ‘townships’ who fell victims of ‘xenophobic’ ‘attacks’. The discourses appeared to chronicle incidents that occurred in ‘Steinberg’, ‘Yeoville’ and ‘Diepsloot’, where immigrants were robbed and killed and spaza shops operated by immigrants, were looted. An observation is the conspicuous absence of specific factors or devices linking the attacks to any perpetrators. The analysis only mentions ‘people’ living in the three areas mentioned. Quite clearly, media narratives of attacks on immigrants appear to exclude critical actors such as perpetrators and law enforcement,

Fig. 6.9 Cluster analysis of the 2014 media content data

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Fig. 6.10 Lemmas analysis of the 2014 media content data

resulting in the partial deletion and attenuation of the oft-heinous acts of deadly violence on immigrants. The highlighting of ‘xenophobia’ as a discursive term appears to be a euphemistic device that allows authors to skirt over more insidious details. In so doing, the media texts presuppose some shared understanding of the meaning of ‘xenophobia’. Instead of unpacking its meaning further, significant ‘shop’ discourses are left to polysemic interpretations. Cluster 2 encapsulates media discourses relating to ‘refugee’ rights and issues. These focused on a variety of rights, including ‘child rights’ and rights to ‘medical attention’, ‘education’ and ‘constitutional protection’. The cluster also captured ‘asylum seekers’ and related refugee issues in the context of refugee rights. There were significant discursive references to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and LHR, and to a lesser extent ‘courts’, creating a sense that the two agencies utilised numerous engagement initiatives aside from litigation in their quest to find solutions to immigrant rights. Asylum seekers from the DRC and Somalia were highlighted in media texts relating to ‘denial’ of medical attention. Cluster 3 focused on the coverage of immigration legislative issues, with particular attention to government pronouncements and actions.

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The factors included South African ‘visa’ rules, ‘enforcement’ of valid entry papers and the emergence of the ‘detention’ of immigrants as a major refugee issue. The detention discourse included debates about the ‘Lindela Centre’, the stance adopted by the ‘UNHCR’ on refugee detention and ‘living conditions’ at the detention ‘facility’. The ‘SA government’ was discursively portrayed as being concerned about the use of ‘tourist’ visas by immigrants seeking to ‘extend’ their stay as refugees. The government sought to introduce an ‘amendment’ to ‘regulations’ that would ‘tighten’ entry guidelines and introduce new ‘strict’ rules for acceptance as refugees. The ‘draft’ provisions attracted extensive comment from the ‘SAHRC’ following appeals about whether the new rules were constitutional. Cluster 4 captured media discourses on ‘migrant labour’, which appeared to affect both South African nationals and immigrants. Unlike in previous years, these 2014 discourses focused on migrant ‘workers’ in the ‘mining sector’. The discourses suggested that immigrant labour was attracted to the country because of ‘higher wages’, ‘employer incentives’ and ‘high economic growth rates’ compared to other countries in the region. The media discourses also identified aspects of ‘xenophobia’ by the ‘domestic population’ against foreign nationals working in the mines and a related perception of ‘low’ opportunities because of increased competition. Stats SA was mentioned to be investigating ‘skill levels’ in the industry. Cluster 5 encapsulated media debates surrounding the ‘special dispensation permits’ accorded to ‘Zimbabwean’ citizens fleeing economic meltdown and repression during 2014. Media discourses placed the ‘Department of Home Affairs’ at the epicentre of the raucous debate over ‘application’ processes for ‘ZPS permits’ (Zimbabwean Special Permits) and the ‘issuing’ of ‘extensions’. The role of ‘VFS Ltd’ (Visa Facilitation Services), an independent intermediary appointed by the government to receive and process all visa applications, was also noted in media conversations, particularly the company’s new ‘fee’ structure. Other discourses detailed the warnings by ‘government’ ‘officials’ that all Zimbabwean immigrants needed to maintain ‘valid’ permits and that violators would be ‘repatriated’ and asked to ‘reapply’ for permits. Media reports also highlighted the confusion precipitated by the new rules, especially the government’s insistence that holders of ‘expired’ permits would be ‘detained’, ‘fined’, ‘repatriated’ or even declared ‘undesirable’. Agencies representing the Zimbabwean immigrants also secured a ‘court order’ that required the government to allow those awaiting permit renewals to stay in the country.

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Quantitative Linguistic Analysis of 2015 Media Content Data The 2015 media data represented 10,357 contexts that generated 16,499 lemmas from 20,657 words. The data generated five clusters, as shown in Fig. 6.11. Cluster 1 encapsulated discourses on a ‘call’ by ‘Zulu King Zwelithini’ that ‘foreign nationals’ needed to ‘leave’ South Africa. Implicit links between the ‘King’s statement’ and ‘xenophobic attacks’ and ‘violence’ on African immigrants in ‘KwaZulu-Natal’ were found in media reports that pointed to the king as a ‘traditional leader’ whose ‘speech’ ‘caused’ a ‘wave’ of ‘violence’ against immigrants. Numerous media discourses said that ‘President Jacob Zuma’ failed to ‘condemn’ the king’s statement. Others said the king should have ‘apologised’ for statements that ‘incited’ violence and ‘hate’ speech. Cluster 2 captured the intense legal tussles over asylum issues that characterised media coverage of ‘refugees’ in 2015. The litigation discourses pitted ‘LHR’ against the ‘Department of Home Affairs’ on issues relating to ‘permits’ for ‘asylum seekers’, ‘processing’ of ‘refugee applications’ and protection of the ‘rights’ of ‘immigrant children’. The matter was heard at both the ‘Supreme Court of Appeal’ and the ‘Constitutional Court’.

Fig. 6.11 Cluster analysis of the 2014 media content data

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The discourses captured the highly-agitated environment, characterised by ‘applications’, ‘hearings’, ‘appeals’, ‘orders’ and ‘decisions’. Cluster 3 focused on the damage and destruction of ‘shops’ and other ‘businesses’ owned by immigrants during xenophobic attacks, as well as reports of reactions by immigrants to the violence and mayhem. The ‘shop’ discourses also featured ‘police’ activities in various contexts, including promoting the rule of law, protecting victims and pursuing perpetrators of violence. From the outset, media discourses placed the ‘shop’ as the core narrative device and the object of substantial social action by both ‘local residents’ and ‘foreign owners’. The ‘foreign-owned’ ‘spaza’ shops ‘looted’ in ‘Soweto ‘townships’ were mainly those owned by ‘Somali’ and ‘Ethiopian’ ‘traders’. ‘Police’ mounted an ‘operation’ to ‘arrest’ ‘local residents’ suspected of these crimes. The police conducted ‘night’ ‘raids’ in affected areas and arrested ‘suspects’. They also ‘dispersed’ residents to diffuse ‘tensions’ sparked by the alleged ‘murder’ of a local resident by an immigrant ‘store’ owner. Cluster 4 ensconced general causes of migration in southern Africa. The discourses included ‘economic’ reasons (‘growth’ and ‘employment’) for ‘labour movement’, the lure of ‘mining jobs’ and the ‘skills’ imbalance as ‘migration causes’. The ‘contextual’ discourses also covered historical factors (‘apartheid’), as well as social factors such as ‘education’, ‘culture’, ‘health’ and political stability (‘law’ and ‘democracy’). Finally, Cluster 5 captured media discourses relating to the ‘displacement’ of ‘immigrants’ in the ‘eThekwini’ and ‘Chatsworth’ municipalities of ‘KwaZulu-Natal’. Media narratives represented displacement through to the relocation of fleeing immigrants in ‘churches’ that offered ‘help’, ‘safety’ and ‘shelter’. The emerging picture of ‘refugee camps’ was characterised by ‘tents’ for people in ‘transit’ to their countries of origin (‘Malawi’) by ‘bus’. The immigrants received ‘food’, ‘clothes’, ‘blankets’ and ‘donations’, presumably from well-wishers. Minor reports discussed prospects of immigrants ‘returning’ to the municipalities to be ‘reintegrated’ into the South African societies.

Interpreting Quantitative Media Representations of Immigrants in South Africa, 2011–2015 As Allen (2014) argues, corpus linguistics enables researchers to handle large data sets with relative ease, while preserving the qualitative richness present in texts. The quantitative analysis of media texts in this study

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allowed us to analyse large amounts of data that had significant advantages over qualitative methodologies that would have utilised only a limited corpus and presumably over shorter time periods. Furthermore, as Allen (2014) points out, the quantitative insights and patterns observed in these texts could easily be supplemented with a qualitative analysis, especially if the subsequent research focuses on factors identified in specific clusters or time periods. This study establishes the efficacy of quantitative methodologies in delivering solutions that for a long time have been the preserve of qualitative approaches. That quantitative procedures yielded robust findings that previously only emerged from extensive critical human observation or argumentation is testimony of advances made in data automation, as well as in conceptualising qualitative research methods. As observed in numerous studies handling ‘big’ data, there is still a need for these findings to be complemented with qualitative insights, such as a discourse and thematic analysis of specific trends and patterns identified in this study. The representation of immigrants in the South African media reveals four broad quantitative trends. The first relates to violence/victim discourses, primarily characterised by narratives of senseless and unprovoked attacks on immigrants, as well as the looting of or damage to immigrants’ property. The second trend is about the economic discourses underpinning perceptions of immigrants by local communities. The third relates to legal trends that are primarily driven by the litigation efforts of a variety of agencies. The fourth trend involves sociopolitical forces shaping the immigration landscape in South Africa. This empirical study analysed the linguistic character of South African news content pertaining to immigrants and immigration from 2011 to 2015. We have identified significant patterns that are consistent with extant literature on how the media constructed immigrants and the migration debate. A critical finding is the strong negative association of immigrants with ‘illegality’, ‘undesirability’ and even ‘crime’. Media discourses link immigrants to irregular or criminal behaviour, and in some instances appear to call on authorities to take action on ‘errant’ immigrants. As established in related studies in countries such as the USA and UK, this study supports the thesis of the existence of a relationship between media reporting and public attitudes on immigrants. Regardless of the veracity of their information and sources, news media appear to construct notions of immigration and immigrants that then shape and

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define public understanding. Ongoing research on the effects of media coverage points to significant media culpability in shaping public opinion. This study confirms the existence in the South African media of perception patterns that are consistent with those found in the UK and the USA, supporting arguments of universal media perspectives on news gathering and reporting. The emergence of new contextual explanatory variables demonstrates this study’s unique contribution to scholarship on the media and immigrant societies. The study establishes the significant benefits to social research that can be derived from paying attention to contextual issues. The finding of ‘foreigner’ as an alternative label in media discourses should encourage researchers to focus on rich local contexts with a view to disabusing social research or the tendency to generalise. The findings relating to shop and trade references offer further evidence of the complex and at times contradictory nature of public discourses. The strong association of immigrant businesspeople to smallscale trade [spaza shops and tuck shops] does not appear to enjoy media support. To the contrary, media discourses go as far as to suggest the shops are facades that conceal drug dealing and other illegal activities. Yet the news reports also allege that immigrant business owners have ‘secrets’ that they need to share with local communities. No reasons are advanced on why businesspeople should make available their intellectual property, or even why local communities cannot find answers to entrepreneurial questions. It is clear that the South African news media propagate the absurd notion that South African communities could be disadvantaged in business by foreign Africans. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges, with thanks, the support of the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) for its financial support to this project. The author also thanks SIHMA for authorising the use of the data for this paper. While the data and direction of the overall project were guided by SIHMA, the author bears all responsibility for analysis and interpretation in this paper.

Note 1. T-LAB software is an all-in-one set of linguistic, statistical and graphical tools for text analysis. For information, see www.t-lab.it.

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References Allen, W. (2014). Does comprehensiveness matter? Reflections on analysing and visualising UK press portrayals of migrant groups. Paper presented at the Computation Journalism Symposium, Columbia University, New York. Baker, P. (2006). Using corpora in discourse analysis. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, A. (2013). Discourse analysis and media attitudes: The representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baker, P., Majid, K., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK Press. Discourse & Society, 19(3), 273–306. Gabrielatos, C. (2006). Towards quantifying quality in the press: Comparing the stance of UK broadsheets and tabloids towards refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants. Paper presented at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, UK. KhosraviNik, M. (2009). The representation of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in British newspapers during the Balkan conflict (1999) and the British general election (2005). Discourse & Society, 20(4), 477–498. Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PART II

Framing the Other—From Outside Looking In

CHAPTER 7

Xenophobia, the Media and the West African Integration Agenda Adeoye O. Akinola

Introduction Over the decades, West Africa has experienced incessant inter-and intrastate conflict, which has stunted the region’s quest for sustainable security and economic development. In addition to conventional threats like civil wars, ethnic conflicts, electoral violence and, more recently, terrorism, violent manifestation of xenophobia has become a recurrent threat to peace and development in Africa. While South Africa has been viewed as ‘a poster-child of this problem in Africa’ (Romola 2015, p. 253), xenophobic attitudes and attacks are not restricted to its citizens. Other African countries have had their share of anti-immigration sentiment. In the last decade, the continent has experienced recurrent hostilities against foreign nationals, especially those of African descent (Akinola 2018b). But even worldwide, as indicated by international literature, the resurgence of extreme nationalism manifesting itself as xenophobia has become a phenomenon.

A. O. Akinola (B) Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesberg, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_7

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The media has directly played a complicit role in the xenophobia onslaught. Although they do not initiate or sponsor xenophobia, there are compelling reasons to hold that xenophobia is often fuelled by what Parsley (2003) has attributed to ‘misinformed media coverage’. For instance, the Ghanaian media has been accused of inflaming public sentiment against immigrants (Africa is a Country 2019). According to Mogekwu (2017), the media has an ‘agenda-setting function’, whether intentionally or inadvertently, that engenders xenophobic sentiments, attitudes and violence. Conflict between local populations and immigrants, especially in fragile societies in Africa, has the propensity to reverse the appreciable peace and political stability experienced by many African states, including Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa. As I argue elsewhere, in the absence of political, legal and socio-economic mechanisms to ensure mutual respect and mediate relations between divergent groups, xenophobia becomes manifest (Akinola 2018a, p. 53). World-over, regional integration initiatives have made considerable progress in the development of frameworks, legislation and mechanisms for increased economic and social integration among states. In the case of West Africa, however, non-tolerance of foreign nationals by local populations has continued to impede any serious attempt at integration. Despite the efforts of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to enhance regional integration, the resurgence of nationalism and anti-immigration violence ‘has been a clog in the wheel of regional integration’ (Akinola 2018c, p. 169). Before the formation of ECOWAS, tides of economic nationalism sweeping across Africa explained the implementation of indigenisation policies by West African states to initiate locally driven economic development. States also began to adopt policies aimed at protecting employment opportunities for citizens, expelling foreign nationals and introducing stricter border controls. This placed a constrained on the inter-state movement of people and capital (Akinola 2018c). One of the characteristics of the new international economic order is global interconnectedness. This has elevated migration to the top of the international political agenda, and regional and national policies are dominated by migration issues. Both the national and international media have intensified their coverage of migration issues. Globalisation and its tenet of open borders have led to an intensification of the inter-state movement of people. Furthermore, the close-knit societies that, under colonialism,

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were divided and grouped into separate states have made the interstate movement of people in West Africa a reoccurring phenomenon. In consideration of this, ECOWAS has taken up the challenge of removing every impediment to the free movement of people, labour and capital within the region. In this chapter, I interrogate ECOWAS’s free movement policy, examine the trends of xenophobia in West Africa and explore the place of the media in the spread of the anti-immigration sentiment. I delve into the roots of xenophobia in West Africa, as well as the introduction of anti-immigration policies by selected ECOWAS member states. Emphasis is placed on Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire because of their consistent manifestation of xenophobia and their position as regional powers. The chapter is divided into various sections, with this introduction being followed by a discussion on the concept of xenophobia. Section three reviews the status of the ECOWAS protocol on free migration and section four engages with the reality of xenophobia within the framework of West African regionalism. This is followed by an exposition of the role of the media in the coverage of migration issues and the conclusion.

Xenophobia: An Overview Xenophobia has been interpreted differently owing to its diverse nature and manifestations. In a broad sense, it stands for the display of hatred, hostility and violence against those people categorised as ‘Others’, ‘outsiders’, ‘immigrants’, ‘non-locals’ and ‘foreigners’. Xenophobia should not just be understood as a feeling of hatred and hostility or be viewed as a negative attitudinal disposition towards immigrants. The term captures both subtle and violent acts of intolerance and hostility directed against identifiable non-nationals or those conceived as ‘outsiders’ (Akinola 2018a). In summary, xenophobia can be described as: All forms of intolerance and hostility towards those regarded as “foreigners”, “non-nationals” or “Others”. It could manifest [itself] in the form of “racephobia” (racism), “genophobia” (genocide), “ethnophobia” (ethnic conflict), “afrophobia” (hostilities among Africans of different nationalities) or “foreignphobia” (intolerance of anything foreign). (Akinola 2018b, p. 2) Based on the perspectives of Crush and Ramachandran (cited in Dassah 2015), xenophobia relates to ‘highly negative perceptions and practices that discriminate against non-citizen groups based on their

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foreign origin or nationality’. Heribert and Moodley (2003, p. 15) categorised xenophobia as a crisis of moral panic, illusionary fear and identity disputation. Literature posits that xenophobia relates to perceived or irrational fear (Romola 2015; Heribert and Moodley 2003). I have argued that xenophobia should also be seen as a demonstration of the ‘fear of the known’ (Akinola 2018a, p. 63). According to this hypothesis, a xenophobichappy local population identifies the negative influence of foreigners on themselves and their socio-economic environment. In most cases, foreigners are accused of and made responsible for the social ills and other socio-economic dysfunctions in their host countries. For instance, in Zambia, foreigners have been accused of recurrent kidnapping. In Ghana, foreigners have been stereotyped as kidnappers and fraudsters. In South Africa, infrastructural decay, rising unemployment, dwindling economic benefits and social ills have been attributed to the presence of foreigners. In the early 1980s, foreigners, particularly those from Ghana, were held responsible for the austerity (economic hardship) experienced by Nigerians. As recorded in past and more recent history, ‘if a majority group is in a perilous economic position, they are more likely to feel threatened by minorities, especially if they are foreign’ (Morris 1998, p. 1125). In addition, a local population will be aware of the political and economic hardships of the home countries of immigrants and fear the importation of that social disorder (Akinola 2018a). Immigrants thus become scapegoats and the butt of aggression from a frustrated local population and the host state, as has been witnessed in Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. In these societies, immigrants have been accused of putting immense pressure on meagre national resources and infrastructural capacities to the detriment of citizens. The dwindling economic fortunes of nationals in the host countries constitute valid fears. However, it can be argued that the object of confrontation should not be immigrants but the governments that have failed to meet local expectations through effective governance. Clearly, the media do not see it this way. In a bid to disseminate news and present it—knowingly or otherwise—in a catchy manner, they continue to reinforce xenophobic sentiments in the public sphere. Aside from the media, scholars like Romola (2015, p. 253) are conditioned to the use of the term ‘influx of foreign population’ to describe rising immigration. The employment of such phrases is derogatory and is frequently applied in newspaper headings. For example, Nigerians coined the phrase

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‘Ghana-Must-Go’ when they launched a campaign to expel Ghanaians in the 1980s; South Africans regard foreign nationals from other African countries as makwerekwere (an offensive word that is used to refer to black Africans that are non-South Africans—the term tries to imitate what locals perceive as the ‘unintelligible language’ of foreign Africans); and Côte d’Ivoire embraced the word ‘Ivoirité’ to raise consciousness for differentiating the locals from those regarded as ‘outsiders’. Scholars have tried to explain the factors responsible for growing xenophobia in Africa. Some attribute xenophobia to struggles over inadequate economic resources and restricted opportunities, others hold that the incessant violent attacks are products of narrow nationalism and deliberate efforts by state actors to divert the anger of frustrated citizens, and many locate it on the crisis of identity formation and a lack of understanding of the tenets of Pan-Africanism (Nyamnjoh 2006; Akinola 2018b; Oloruntoba 2018). Indeed, xenophobia is a higher degree of nationalism. It could even be termed extreme nationalism based on the politics of exclusion, identity formation and the exploitation of a national cleavage for the political ends of individuals or groups.

The ECOWAS Integration Project on the Free Movement of Persons ECOWAS was created in 1975 to foster socio-economic cooperation within the West African region. The ultimate goal was for ECOWAS to evolve into a regional economic bloc. Regional political leaders also recognised the need to dismantle what remained of the divisive tactics by colonial powers to enhance their ‘divide and rule’ strategies. The most obvious of these was introduction of state borders, which separated hitherto homogenous societies and further demarcate heterogeneous ones. A respondent recalled: Once upon a time humanity used to roam the planet unhindered. There were no borders to prevent [people] from making contact with other cultures. The only obstacles were flooded rivers. Until colonialism and racism came, humanity did not have any fears in making contact with people of other cultures. Then borders were drawn, and racism became the human quality. I expect civilisation where humanity will not see each other in terms of which country they come from. (Parsley 2003)

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Shortly after the establishment of ECOWAS, political leaders and other drivers of the ECOWAS integration process realised the need to create a borderless West Africa. The Commissioner for Trade, Customs and Free Movement of the ECOWAS Commission, Tèi Konzi, pointed out the impossibility of achieving successful regional integration without the free movement of citizens of member states (ECOWAS 2018). Thus, the 1979 ECOWAS Protocol (Protocol A/P.1/5/79) provided for the Free Movement of Persons and the Right of Residence and Establishment of Businesses (ICMPD and IOM 2015, p. 16). According to ECOWAS, the signing of the protocol was testimony to the determination of member countries to position the free intra-regional movement of persons as the core of the West African integration process (ECOWAS Commission 2007). The 1979 Protocol represented a watershed in the efforts of ECOWAS to promote regionalism (Jimam 2007). Two supplementary protocols were signed in July 1985 and May 1990 to enhance mobility within the region. However, the free movement of people and the successful implementation of the protocols were hampered by anti-migration feelings and acts, and the fact that institutional xenophobia is prevalent in some West African states (Akinola 2018c). This has brought about internal conflict and humanitarian crises in the region. Three major powers in West Africa, namely Nigeria, Ghana and Côte D’Ivoire, have at one time or another experienced xenophobia. It was considered that migration in the ECOWAS region would contribute to regional integration and development, while also strengthening the regional body. ECOWAS established a direct convergence between migration and development (ECOWAS Commission 2007) but this raised a contradiction since the organisation did not have the ability to carry out the protocol’s intent by means of an effective policy instrument. As explained by Akinola (2018c, p. 177): The West African political leadership recognises the danger regional insecurity poses to sustainable development, and the place of immigration in the developmental agenda, yet, ECOWAS is not significantly empowered to guarantee the security of lives and property in the region, especially with regard to combating immigration-related violence.

To close the policy gaps in the free movement project, ECOWAS in 2001 inspired the establishment of the Migration Dialogue for West Africa (MIDWA) ‘as a platform to encourage the member states to discuss in

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a regional context such common migration issues and concerns for which immediate solutions may not be forthcoming on a national level’ (IOM 2019). The report noted that ‘while the right of entry and the abolition of visa requirements for a 90-day stay have been implemented in all countries, less progress can be noted as regards the Right of Residence, the Right of Establishment and Access to Employment’ (IOM 2019). Although the policy provisions having come into effect, member states have breached the provisions.

Regionalism and the Reality of Xenophobia in West Africa The ECOWAS Commission, which envisaged that the regional policy decisions on migration and a regional passport would only be implemented ineffectively, attempted to establish a monitoring and evaluation system to assess information flow and the region’s migration policies. Initially, this initiative was not very successful because of a lack of political will by local political elites to move away from extreme nationalism (Adepoju 2005). Although some societies are resistant to xenophobia, ‘political mobilisation against ethnic minorities and new immigrants have re-entered public spheres. Since the mid-1980s, especially immigration has once again become a salient issue among voters and parties almost on a global scale’ (Rensmann and Miller 2018, p. 2). ECOWAS eventually set up ‘a system for monitoring migration and migration policies’ (ECOWAS Commission 2007, p. 8) but member states brazenly continued to violate the regional policies on migration through state-sponsored xenophobia, as recorded in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in recent years. Artificially created colonial borders continue to define politics and policies in postcolonial Africa. Regional blocks like West Africa, which are noted for socio-economic convergence, have become a playground for anti-immigration sentiments and attitudes. The xenophobic attacks in Ghana on foreign traders and businesses, and the persecution of citizens of other nations in the region, have provoked anger and threatened the ECOWAS protocol on the free movement of people and the rights to trade and residency (Iroegbu-Chikezie 2018). Migration within West Africa is seen as a way of life dating back to precolonial times (Adepoju 2000). In 2007, inter-regional migration involved about 7.5 million people, a figure estimated to represent three per cent of the region’s total population (ECOWAS Commission 2007).

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By 2015, 84% of total migration flows were interregional (ICMPD and IOM 2015, p. 4). Historically, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana were the main destinations of immigrants but by the 1970s, in association with its oil boom and the expansion of its labour base, Nigeria joined these two countries as a receiver of migrant labour (Adepoju 2005). In the contemporary era, ‘there has been significant migration of people in the region in response to demographic, political and economic factors’ (Akinola 2018c, p. 170). The introduction of the ECOWAS passport, which allows citizens of member states to travel across state borders without restrictions or an entry visa, has promoted migration in West Africa. As noted by Akinola (2018a, p. 170), ‘this generated conflict between nationals and foreigners, which continues to jeopardise attempts to foster regionalism in West Africa and Africa at large’. The processes leading up to unrestricted border crossings and a visafree programme within West Africa were divided into many phases. The first phase of the ECOWAS Protocol of 1979 provided for the free movement of West African citizens between the countries of the block without a visa for 90 days. Ratified in 1980, this led to the enactment of the second phase, namely the right of residence, which became operational in July 1986. Upon approval by member states, the rate of labour and other migration within the region increased dramatically. The need to manage migration between states led to the establishment of a regional consultative process (RCP) in December 2000, the main objective of which was to rapidly enhance economic regionalism and combat various problems confronting member states with regard to migration (MIDWA 2012). ECOWAS was assisted in this by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). According to the RCP document, the main goal was to support ECOWAS member states to address common migration issues at the regional level because of the difficulty of tacking the issues at national level. In Africa, the origin of state-sponsored xenophobia can be traced to the sociopolitical and economic crisis that occasioned the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, in 1969 and the appointment of Kofi Busia as prime minister following a short period of military intervention (Suhuyini 2012). The Busia-led administration implemented the Aliens Compliance Order, which initiated the abrupt and compulsory expulsion of immigrants, popularly regarded as ‘aliens’ originating from Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Nigeria. Nigeria retaliated in the early 1980s, by expelling more than two million foreigners, of which

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about half were Ghanaians (Romola 2015). Much later, as reported by the BBC (2002), several Nigerian-owned businesses in Freetown, Sierra Leone, were attacked during mass protests led by rampaging youths who sought to avenge the death of a businessman allegedly killed by Nigerian ‘swindlers’ in July 2002. In Côte d’Ivoire, xenophobia was used as a political tool. Ivorians became hostile to non-nationals and attacked and looted shops belonging to ‘outsiders’. Adepoju (2005, p. 4) summarised other incidents of the reality of xenophobia in West Africa as follows: Senegal expelled Guineans in 1967; Ivory Coast expelled about 16 000 Beninoise in 1964; Sierra Leone, and later Guinea and Ivory Coast, expelled Ghanaian fishermen in 1968. Earlier on, Ivory Coast had expelled over 1 000 Benin and Togo nationals in 1958. Chad expelled thousands of Benin nationals who were “illegal migrants” and not “law abiding”. In early 1979 Togolese farmers were expelled from Ghana and Ivory Coast. Ghana expelled all illegal aliens without valid residence permit as from 2 December 1969 … Nigerian traders were once expelled from Cameroon, Zaire and Ivory Coast.

Xenophobia has led to a drop in intra-state migration in the region. Ghana’s foreign population dropped from eight per cent of the country’s total population in 2000 to 6.5% in 2010 (ICMPD and IOM 2015, p. 165). By 2006, only about 0.7 per cent of West Africa’s intra-regional migrants were residing in Nigeria (ICMPD and IOM 2015, p. 257). Xenophobia in Ghana Shortly after independence, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah’s PanAfricanist posture resulted in the opening of Ghana’s borders to African immigrants. However, the high rate of immigration did not match the country’s labour requirements. When the economy came under pressure, resulting in rising unemployment, a dilapidated infrastructure and growing crime (Damoa 2013), widespread sentiment arose against foreign nationals, accusing them of stealing jobs meant for Ghanaians and of being responsible for Ghana’s economic crisis. The introduction of the Aliens Compliance Order (popularly called the Aliens Order) followed. At the same time, a perception of migrants being ‘aliens’ was fuelled by the Ghanaian media. As reported by Gocking (2005, p. 156), ‘The Aliens

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Order required aliens who lacked work permits [to] get them within a period of two weeks or leave the country’. During the mayhem that followed the order, few were able to obtain the permit and most foreigners were expelled on the expiration of the order (Damoa 2013). The main motivation for the enactment of the order was to give Ghanaians total control over the local market and business, which the authorities claimed had been taken over by foreigners. The nationalistic Ghanaian Business Promotion policy was established subsequently to protect local labour by reserving specific businesses for Ghanaian employees. Foreigners were only allowed to do business based on the availability of predetermined assets or capital (Romola 2015). In 2013, the Ghanaian government activated the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act (Act 865) to discriminate against non-natives (Republic of Ghana 2013). Section 27 (1a) of the Act states that ‘A person, who is not a citizen or an enterprise, which is not wholly owned by a citizen, shall not invest or participate in the sale of goods or provision of services in a market, petty trading, hawking or selling of goods in a stall at any place’. This Act contravenes the ECOWAS Protocol that clearly stipulates that West African citizens shall enjoy the same rights with the citizens of their host country in relation to the registration of businesses and payment of tax (Iroegbu-Chikezie 2018). Government officials acknowledged the closure of about 117 shops owing to non-compliance with work permits and company registration. They held that the government had a responsibility to prevent foreigners from selling fake products and engaging in businesses reserved for Ghanaians (Iroegbu-Chikezie 2018). Since the expulsion of foreigners from Ghana and retaliatory xenophobia by the Nigerian state, the media in both countries have continued to use provocative headings to capture the infamous occurrences. Inciting article headings, such as ‘Ghana owes no apology to anybody for Aliens Compliance Order’ (Damoa 2013), have the potential of triggering antiGhanaian sentiment in the neighbouring countries. The use of ‘Aliens’ to describe immigrants speaks of a deep-seated resentment of the ‘Others’. Xenophobia in Côte d’Ivoire In Côte d’Ivoire, xenophobia has become an instrument of mass mobilisation during general elections. In 2000, the reinforcement of national identity among Ivorians led to the exodus of about 12,000 Burkina Faso

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nationals (Human Rights Watch 2001), resulting mainly from hostilities between local and Burkinabé farmers residing in the country. In 1998, about 29% of the population of Côte D’Ivoire had its origin in Burkina Faso and they comprised 56% of the entire population of foreigners (ICMPD and IOM 2015, p. 133). The Ivorian xenophobic question is centred around the belief that: The country’s troubles lay in the pollution of true Ivorian identity and its future would be reliant upon liberating the country’s autochthonous citizens who had suffered from decades of excessive immigration. First, second and even third generation migrants and settlers began to face increasing discrimination as they were made the scapegoat for the country’s stagnation. (Meehan 2011)

The term ‘Ivoirité’ (meaning Ivorianness) was employed by President Gbagbo in 2000 to distort the political base of his opponent, HouphouëtBoigny, who drew his support largely from immigrants considered to be ‘allogènes’ (Abatan 2015; Meehan 2011). While the introduction of the word ‘Ivoirité’ was a political tool aimed at redefining an independent Ivorian culture, its main objective was to unite locals against ‘foreigners’ for electoral purposes and the allocation of resources. Already in 1994, a law had come into effect that restricted the rights of persons categorised as foreigners by removing their right to vote and to stand for elections. It discriminated against those ‘foreigners’ who had attained Ivorian citizenships owing to their long years of residence in the country. As in 2000, the restriction was specifically introduced to deny President Gbagbo’s opposition candidate, Alassane Ouattara (whose parents allegedly came from Burkina Faso), the right to stand for the presidential election (Abatan 2015). The issue of xenophobia in the country is thus shrouded in the politics of electioneering. Although, the term, ‘Ivoirité’ reinforces xenophobia, it should be understood as a reaction and symptom, not the cause of a protracted conflict in the country in the 1990s and early 2000s (Meehan 2011). During Laurent Gbagbo’s sponsored xenophobic onslaught against Quattara’s electoral base, an official of Human Right Watch, Matt Wells, noted that ‘the targeted and often gruesome violence … against immigrants and northern Ivorians is the culmination of more than a decade of xenophobic statements distinguishing “real” from “other” Ivorians’ (news24 2011). Accusing the media of complicity on the issue, Salvatore

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Sagues of Amnesty International reported that ‘the whole ideology of “Ivoirité” is key in the current crisis. Behind the political fight there have been 15 years of this ideology … it has been broadcast by radio, news and television [that] foreigners are a threat to Ivorian identity’ (news24 2011). Because of the wider reach of the media since the development of information, communication and technology (ICT), coverage of migration issues has become more sensitive and has the potential of expanding the orbit of xenophobia.

Xenophobia and the Place of the Media The media are important to the discourse on xenophobia because they reach large audiences through the press, radio and television. Readers, listeners and viewers can contribute their views by writing letters or participating in hosted programmes. As noted by Smith (2010, p. 2): Contemporary research shows that the media do not just transmit information to the public, but rather, they also reproduce certain ideologies and discourses that support specific relations of power. It is therefore important not only to look at the media as a means to gauge public perceptions of foreigners, but also the manner in which perceptions are created.

In the last decade, the interplay between the media, public opinion and immigration has become part of the rhetoric, policymaking and public debate that influences decision-making at the national, regional and global levels. Indeed, there has been a growing public awareness of the media’s influence on people’s perceptions. It is increasingly becoming clear that negative and biased media reports on issues involving foreign nationals exacerbate xenophobia (Mogekwu 2017). In some cases, the media have strategically positioned themselves, through agenda setting, as an instrument of mobilisation against immigrants. The resurgence of extreme nationalism, ethnic assertiveness, cultural superiority, economic protectionism or an unfounded fear of foreigners could explain the predisposition of the media towards immigration. Touwen (2009) reported that: Theory on representation is essential to analyse media images. Media images are constructed through language, sounds and images. Moreover, they are constructed by the meanings that language, sound and image

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represent. Language is not just the sum of a series of words, it is words constructed into sentences, made into stories, told in a certain tone of voice, placed and published in a specific setting. All these different elements of language signify meaning and relate to frameworks that are socially constructed.

In Europe, the Twitter hashtag ‘#refugeesNOTwelcome’ has appeared. This stereotypes male Syrian immigrants as rapist and/or potential terrorist (Rettberg and Gajjala 2016), while in South Africa, the term makwerekwere has been used to depict immigrants (Akinola 2014). A study in selected European countries found that salient media coverage of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean reduced xenophobic attitudes (De Ploi et al. 2017). But the study also found a high degree of stereotypic attitudes about foreigners because of what the authors called ‘overwhelmingly negatively biased media reporting’. These contrasting findings show that the media has the influence and power to increase xenophobia or to reduce negative attitudes towards foreigners, depending on whether immigrants are portrayed as a threat or as victims. Some believe that governments sincerely have not recognised the fact that xenophobia is behind most attacks on foreigners (Fabricius 2019), while others hold that governments continue to show pretext. Based on their reporting, the conservative media have aligned to the former and absolved the state of any wrongdoing. The enactment of many antiimmigration laws by the state and rhetoric by government officials has fostered this. Negative stereotyping of immigrants is mostly initiated and popularised by the state-owned media to divert attention from the ‘real’ challenge facing societies. State-sponsored xenophobia by Nigeria is a case in point. Despite the identifiable factors responsible for Nigeria’s economic crisis in the early 1980s, i.e. the global crash of crude oil prices, mismanagement of the country’s oil-wealth and high-scale political corruption, immigrants were at the receiving end of hostility by the media and government. During the 1983 general elections, politicians employed xenophobic comments to mobilise the masses, e.g. use of the word ‘aliens’ in their manifestos to depict foreign nationals of African ancestry (Lawal 2019). They also castigated West African migrants, especially Ghanaians, for the dwindling fortunes of the Nigerian economy: Ghanaians had stolen all the available jobs and were responsible for rising criminality in the country.

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Subsequently, the Nigerian government expelled over two million undocumented foreigners, of which more than half were Ghanaians, and the media took it upon themselves to popularise the slogan ‘Ghana-Must-Go’ (Lawal 2019). In what have generally been considered as continuing reprisal attacks on Nigeria, 723 Nigerians have been expelled from Ghana since 2018 for prostitution and cybercrime (Lawal 2019). The Nigerian media seem not to be very concerned about Ghana’s anti-Nigerian stance since the manifestation of xenophobia in Ghana has not been characterised by a high degree of violence and they are more focused on South African acts of violent xenophobia against Nigerian nationals that has led to loss of life and property. In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, xenophobia has taken a central place in political discourse, especially during elections. The media, especially the international media, tend to misinterpret issues and events in Côte d’Ivoire. They portray political statements through the lens of xenophobia and national identity formation, even though other divisive factors, such as ethnicity, have been responsible for insecurity and political instability in the country (Meehan 2011). In South Africa, the Deputy Police Minister, Maggie Sotyu, condemned local media for the way in which they covered the attacks. He said, ‘What the media is showing to the world about South Africa … There are worse things happening in other countries, but you will never see them in the media. The media is part of the community, so please, it must be biased when it comes to South Africa’ (City Press 2015). Her speech raised many issues. She directly called upon the media to become unprofessional and become involved in subtle xenophobia or extreme nationalism by giving skewed reports on the violence against foreigners. In fact, the media is aware that the more violence it depicts, the more fear this creates in the minds of immigrants. Its coverage of violence is also an incentive to locals to ‘roll out the drums of war’ against foreigners. In general, xenophobia has received very sparse media coverage in South Africa (Misago 2017), unlike in West Africa. During the most recent xenophobic incident in Ghana, which resulted from the alleged kidnapping of three Ghanaians by a Nigerian in December 2018, a Ghanaian radio station commented that the incident could easily be mistaken for a call to hostility against Nigerians in Ghana. As reported by Africa is a Country (2019), a guest on the radio programme stereotyped Nigerians as criminals. In response, the coordinator of the programme distancing himself from the xenophobic

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comments, ‘only’ advising the Ghanaian government to closely monitor Nigerians because of what he called their ‘criminal tendencies’. Expanding on the role of the media in perpetuating xenophobic attacks, Mogekwu (2017) proposed that: When people see the reported influx of foreigners as a threat to their cultural identity or as a disturbance to their cultural homogeneity, it engenders resentment and hatred. These events are newsworthy in their own right, but when such stories dominate the media, resentment grows, animosity follows, and the end point is often violent.

The media have learnt how to manipulate or present news in a provocative manner. They could suggest an ‘intrusion’ into or an ‘invasion’ by outsiders into the labour market, which would be interpreted as depriving ‘legitimate’ business owners access to their source of livelihood (Mogekwu 2017). In instances of xenophobia, the mass media do not necessarily initiate it but become a major instrument in aggravating anti-immigration sentiments. Media misrepresentation of aspects of migration has attracted the attention of ECOWAS and member states, which have decided to ‘ensure media coverage of this initiative [in] establishing the complementarity between combating clandestine migration and combating irregular fishing’ (ECOWAS Commission 2007, pp. 8–9). The organisation decided to ‘broaden the capacities of mechanisms for monitoring and combating irregular migration by sea to include the protection and conservation of fisheries resources in West African territorial waters’ (ECOWAS Commission 2007, p. 8). ECOWAS has been non-committal about its partnership with the media. The effect has been a lack of knowledge by the media about the workings of ECOWAS’s integration project. Media involvement in this project and ECOWAS’s policies on migration would be a step forward to curtailing incorrect presentation of news on migration that reinforces xenophobia.

Conclusion A review of the activities of regional and international political organisations has revealed their focus on states and institutions as regards

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migration but ignored the decisive roles of the people (both local populations and immigrants) and non-state actors. One of the deficiencies of ECOWAS’s integration project is the non-involvement of West African citizens in the processes. Unlike Europe, where the people determine the course of the European Union, the largely uneducated citizens of West Africa have little knowledge about and are uninvolved in the processes of regionalisation. The result is a resurgence of extreme nationalism and intolerance towards foreign nationals. Ghana’s xenophobic expulsion of foreign nationals under the Aliens Act occurred before the formation of ECOWAS. This infamous experience has lurked in the memories of regional leaders and could have informed their commitment to the ECOWAS Protocol on free migration and the institutionalisation of other pro-migration legislation. However, this commitment has not been reflected in the institutionalised xenophobia displayed consistently by Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Ghana’s media should be conscious of the status of Ghana as one of the political leaders of Africa because of Kwame Nkrumah’s battles against the legacies of colonialism and his efforts to realise a United States of Africa. The West African supranational body, ECOWAS, should make a committed attempt to reignite the ethos of Pan-Africanism within the region. Furthermore, the ECOWAS Commission has a responsibility to enhance the management of migration through the implementation of protocols on the free movement of people within the region. It is imperative for media professionals to be familiar with the provisions of ECOWAS’s policies on migration and citizenship. West Africans that have migrated to other countries in the region should be accorded the same rights and privileges as any other ECOWAS citizen. The stakeholders in the peace, development and regionalisation agenda of West Africa should engage with the media on their coverage of sensitive and inflammable issues like xenophobia. Indeed, media practitioners should be involved in the ECOWAS’s integration conversation. It is important that they become more knowledgeable about the workings of the regional integration processes. This will enhance their understandings of the heterogenic nature of modern society and the pro-immigration policies that have been put in place by global, regional and national institutions. In South Africa, workshops have been organised to sensitise the media to the diverse issues confronting refugees, asylum seekers and other categories of foreign nationals to enhance their coverage of migration issues (Parsley 2003). Similar interactive and educative workshops

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could be organised in West Africa to provide informed understanding of the precolonial and colonial history of the region, and of ECOWAS’s efforts to downplay nationalistic attachments and sentiments through its citizenship project. Apart from the reach of printed media, the development of ICT has demonstrated the importance of the media in disseminating information more widely and at a faster pace. The media has utilised the opportunities presented by ICT to set and impose their agenda on the people. They have the ability to affect the opinion of their readers, listeners and viewers, and the extent of such influence should be the focus of further research.

References Abatan, E. J. A. (2015). Responding to Xenophobia: What can South Africa learn from Côte d’Ivoire? Available at https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/ 85/News%20PDFs/ella-abatan-article-on-xenophobia.zp56715.pdf. Adepoju, A. (2000). Issues and recent trends in international migration in SubSaharan Africa. UNESCO: Blackwell. Adepoju, A. (2005). Migration in West Africa. Paper prepared for the Policy Analysis and Research Programme of the Global Commission on International Migration. Available at http://iom.ch/jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/sha red/shared/mainsite/policy_and_research/gcim/rs/RS8.pdf. Africa is a Country. (2019). The burden of being Nigerian in Ghana. https://afr icasacountry.com/2019/02/the-burden-of-being-nigerian-in-ghana. Akinola, A. O. (2014). South Africa and the two faces of xenophobia: A critical reflection. Africa Peace and Conflict Journal, 7 (1), 56–67. Akinola, A. O. (2018a). The South African xenophobic question: A reflection of the complicity of state actors. Ubuntu: Journal of Conflict Transformation 7(1), 53–79. Akinola, A. O. (2018b). Introduction: Understanding xenophobia in Africa. In A. Akinola (Ed.), The political economy of Xenophobia in Africa. Cham: Springer. Akinola, A. O. (2018c). Xenophobia and the paradox of regionalism in Africa: The West African experience. In A. Akinola (Ed.), The political economy of Xenophobia in Africa. Cham: Springer. BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). (2002). Anti-Nigerian riot rocks Freetown. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2137303.stm. Accessed 4 January 2020. City Press. (2015). SA media in firing line for xenophobia coverage. Available at https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/SA-media-in-fir ing-line-for-xenophobia-coverage-20150424. Accessed 4 January 2020.

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Damoa, A. K. A. (2013). Ghana owes no apology to anybody for Aliens Compliance Order. Available at https://www.newsghana.com.gh/ghana-owes-noapology-to-anybody-for-aliens-compliance-order. Accessed 5 January 2020. Dassah, M. O. (2015). Naming and exploring the causes of collective violence against African migrants in post-apartheid South Africa: Whither Ubuntu? The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa, 11(4), 127–142. De Poli, S., Jakobsson, N., & Schüller, S. (2017). The drowning-refugee effect: Media silence and xenophobic attitudes’. Applied Economics Letters, 24(16), 1167–1172. ECOWAS Commission. (2007). Meeting of ministers on ECOWAS common approach on migration. Abuja: ECOWAS. Available at https://www.oecd. org/swac/publications/41400366.pdf. Accessed 5 January 2020. ECOWAS. (2018). ECOWAS moves to address migration challenges in the region. Available at https://www.ecowas.int/ecowas-moves-to-address-migration-cha llenges-in-the-region. Fabricius, P. (2019) Xenophobia? What xenophobia, we love foreigners! Institute of Security Studies, Pretoria, South Africa. Available at https://issafrica.org/ iss-today/xenophobia-what-xenophobia-we-love-foreigners. Gocking, R. (2005). The history of Ghana. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. Heribert, A., & Moodley, K. (2003). Imagined liberation: Xenophobia, citizenship and identity in South Africa, Germany and Canada. Stellenbosch, South Africa: Sun Press. Human Rights Watch. (2001). The new racism: The political manipulation of ethnicity in Côte d’Ivoire. New York: Human Rights Watch Publications. ICMPD (International Centre for Migration Policy Development) and IOM (International Organisation for Migration). (2015). A survey on migration policies in West Africa. Available at https://publications.iom.int/system/ files/pdf/survey_west_africa_en.pdf. Accessed 5 January 2020. IOM. (2019). Migration dialogue for West Africa. Available at https://www. iom.int/midwa. Accessed 5 January 2020. Iroegbu-Chikezie, O. (2018). ECOWAS protocol under xenophobia threat. Available at https://thenationonlineng.net/ecowas-protocol-under-xenophobiathreat. Accessed 5 January 2020. Jimam, L. T. (2007). Free movement, migration and xenophobia in ECOWAS: A call for more attention in HFP. In Perspectives on West Africa’s future conflict security and development: Humanitarian futures programme. London: King’s College. Lawal, S. (2019). Ghana must go: The ugly history of Africa’s most famous bag. Available at http://atavist.mg.co.za/ghana-must-go-the-ugly-history-ofafricas-most-famous-bag. Accessed 5 January 2020.

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Meehan, P. (2011). The ‘problem’ with Côte d’Ivoire: how the media misrepresent the causes of conflict. Available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ope nsecurity/problem-with-cote-divoire-how-media-misrepresent-causes-of-con flict. Accessed 5 January 2020. Misago, J. P. (2017). Xenophobic violence in the ‘Rainbow’ nation. Available at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/03/xenophobicviolence-rainbow-nation-170301075103169.html. Accessed 5 January 2020. MIDWA. (2012). Migration dialogue for West Africa. Mission with Regional Functions for West and Central Africa, Dakar-Fann, Senegal. Mogekwu, M. (2017). The media’s role in stoking xenophobia. Available at https://worldpolicy.org/2017/04/26/the-medias-role-in-stoking-xenoph obia. Accessed 5 January 2020. Morris, A. (1998). ‘Our fellow Africans make our lives hell’: The lives of Congolese and Nigerians living in Johannesburg. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21(6): 1116–1136. news24. (2011). Xenophobia at heart of I Coast’s crisis. Available at https:// www.news24.com/Africa/News/Xenophobia-at-heart-of-I-Coasts-crisis-201 10316. Accessed 5 January 2020. Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2006). Insiders and outsiders—Citizenship and xenophobia in contemporary southern Africa. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA. Oloruntoba, S. (2018). Crisis of identity and xenophobia in Africa: The imperative of a pan-African thought liberation. In A. Akinola (Ed), The political economy of xenophobia in Africa. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG. Parsley, J. (2003) ‘We are not treated like people’: The roll back xenophobia campaign in South Africa. Humanitarian Practice Method. Available at https://odihpn.org/magazine/we-are-not-treated-like-peoplethe-roll-back-xenophobia-campaign-in-south-africa. Accessed 5 January 2020. Rensmann, L., & Miller, J. (2018). Xenophobia and anti-immigrant politics. International Studies Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/978 0190846626.013.368. Republic of Ghana. (2013). Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, 2013. Available at https://www.gipcghana.com/press-and-media/downlo ads/promotional-materials/3-gipc-act-2013-act-865/file.html. Accessed 17 May 2020. Rettberg, J. W., & Radhika, G. (2016). Terrorists or cowards: Negative portrayals of male Syrian refugees in social media. Feminist Media Studies, 16(1), 178– 181. Romola, A. (2015). Preventing xenophobia in Africa: What must the African Union do? AHMR, 1(3), 253–272.

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Smith, M. J. (2010). Synthesis report: The media’s coverage of xenophobia and the xenophobic violence prior to and including May 2008. Available at http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/ 07/7_Media_c.pdf. Accessed 17 January 2020. Suhuyini. (2012). The causes of xenophobia. The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Available at http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/causes-xenoph obia. Accessed 17 January 2020. Touwen, C. J. (2009). Reporting on xenophobia in South Africa: Ernesto burning: An analyses of Dutch print media coverage on the 2008 xenophobic violence. Available at https://carienjtouwen.wordpress.com/essays/reporting-on-xen ophobia-in-south-africa. Accessed 17 January 2020.

CHAPTER 8

National Identity and Representation of Xenophobia in Mozambican Private and Public Television Tânia Machonisse

Introduction Africa and the world have witnessed, through the media, worrying episodes of violence in South Africa. The perpetrators were black South Africans who mainly, but not exclusively, attacked African migrants, mostly from Mozambique, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The attacks, which were largely confined to the metropoles and surrounding areas of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, also affected black South Africans from other parts of the country. The incidents of xenophobic violence in 2008 and 2015 are a sad but pertinent example of the extremism that may arise when citizens feel threatened and attribute the causes of their own social and economic problems to migrants (Vidal 2008; Mungoi 2010; Bastos 2016). The diverse and rich literature on the role of media in triggering sentiments of revolt against (supposedly illegal) migrants helps to explain the historic, social, political and cultural factors that led to the violence

T. Machonisse (B) University Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_8

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(Saleh 2015; Mbetga 2014; Hågensen and de Jager 2016; Mpofu and Barnabas 2017). This study is premised on the assumption that the media have considerable capacity to build national and transnational perceptions on key global issues, such as migration and xenophobia. I have used textual analysis to dig into the framing process by which journalistic norms such as news values, agenda setting and priming create an intersectionality with the symbolic elements of patriotism, culture and ideology that prevail in the home countries of the victims of xenophobia. This research is also informed by theoretical discussions related to cultural studies that explain the ideological processes that lead to the construction and representation of reality by the media, according to the political, social and cultural forces involved in a given social context (Threadgold 2003). In addition, the research uses textual analysis or critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand how the media construct public knowledge and perceptions about the reality out there, using the meanings and ideological symbols embedded in the language and/or discourses of political, social and economic actors and their reception by the audience. Structurally, this chapter is organised linearly. A literature review lays out the theoretical discussion within the context in which the phenomenon of xenophobia finds its roots in South Africa, and the challenges that the media face in providing fair and inclusive coverage of this issue. This is followed by a brief methodology section where I explain the various approaches used, including CDA of the coverage of the 2015 xenophobic events by Mozambique’s private television station, Miramar TV (MTV), and the public television station, Television of Mozambique (TVM). The chapter ends with a brief discussion and the conclusion.

Media and Prevailing Negative Narratives Against Migrants in South Africa Public perceptions about xenophobia in South Africa are largely influenced by media coverage and its power to reproduce discourses. These are linked to the historical and political legacies of the apartheid system, which are embedded in the psyche of South African citizens. However, it is also important to recognise that media organisations and journalists operate and work inside a specific political, economic, social and cultural context that defines the kind of content that they produce and

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distribute. A report by the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) in South Africa indicates that: Many stereotypes of foreign migrants to South Africa tend to be reflected in the South African print and broadcast media. The media contribute to xenophobia when [they] support negative public perceptions of migrants, particularly African migrants, as illegal, criminal and threats to social and economic prosperity, or carriers of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. (Mtwana and Bird 2006, p. 12)

Acknowledging that media organisations are, in fact, ‘social organisations’, enables us to see the importance of cultural studies to understand how the media is crucial for visualising the political, social and cultural symbols embedded in our daily life through ideologies and language that may conceal or reveal relations of power, inequalities and social (in)justice. According to Threadgold (2003), the realm of critical or cultural studies is devoted to analysing the dynamics between language and the social processes that lead to the construction of meaning. The media play a crucial role in this regard. As Simon Cottle (2000, p. 2) argues: It is in and through representations, for example, that members of the media audience are variously invited to construct a sense of who “we” are in relation to who “we” are not, whether as “us” and “them”, “insider” and “outsider”, “coloniser” and “colonised”, “citizen” and “foreigner”, “normal” and “deviant”, “friend” and “foe”, “the West” and “the rest”.

‘Moral Panic’ and Social Representations Theory (SRT) Matar (2017) and Mbetga (2014) bring to their studies the concept of ‘moral panic’, which is the general perception of a situation that threatens the social norm and social peace of a given society that needs to be acted against, although such acts may be considered socially, morally and legally incorrect. According to Mbetga (2014, p. 31): In the context of moral panic … there is the feeling held by a considerable and extensive number of the members of the specific society that evildoers or wrongdoers pose a threat to the community or the society. There is a need here that “something should be done” about these members and about the way they behave.

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Furthermore, according to Hågensen and de Jager (2016), even the authorities and legal institutions that could reprimand perpetrators of violence against migrants are submissive to the ‘moral panic’ ideology that leads to inertia and passivity by these guardians of the law. ‘In this context of impunity, the authorities implicitly condone the actions of the perpetrators, the police do not act against them and the perpetrators do not fear reprisals from the targets of the violence’ (Hågensen and de Jager 2016, p. 109). To understand the origins of social beliefs and embedded perceptions that lead to ‘moral panic’ in South Africa, it is necessary to discuss the SRT. According to Höijer (2011, p. 6): Social representations refer to cognitions stamping the collective thinking of society. Of special interest are phenomena that in different ways diverge from traditional views, create tensions in society and challenge [the] everyday life of citizens, groups and institutions.

The communicative process that guides SRT relies on anchoring and objectifying elements. ‘Anchoring happens at the private domain of comparisons, interpretations and categorisations’ (Marchiori et al. 2014, p. 30). There are two important anchoring elements in SRT that are relevant to this study. The first is naming or labelling and the second is emotional anchoring. The latter is related to the emotions constructed around a social event or phenomenon. Höijer (2011) asserts that naming a social event leads to stereotyping and labelling, which eases and intermediates the cognitive accommodation process of the new phenomenon by the audience. At the same time, it generates bias about how the event will be perceived. On the other hand, emotional anchoring deals with the way the media work towards associating elements of pity, fear, threat, joy or pleasure, which are important for interpreting and generating elements of judgement into a given phenomenon. ‘The mass media willingly exploit this … Emotional anchoring may be embedded in the language used and/or in the photographic pictures or illustrations’ (Höijer 2011, p. 9). Through anchoring and objectification, which are both communicative processes that lead to the construction of social knowledge, one can understand that the phenomenon of xenophobia relies upon biased historical/colonial, cultural, ethnic, economic and political factors that are consolidated and spread by the media.

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Xenophobia and National Identity As Misago et al. (2009, p. 8) point out, ‘Much of the published literature points to a “culture of violence“, where violence is endorsed and accepted as a socially legitimate means of solving problems and achieving both “justice” and material goals’. Likewise, Rivenburgh (2000) argues that the self-concept of membership of a given community is driven by the values and prevailing beliefs shared in a given community and that all members of that community will fight to protect and maintain those identity symbols. In addition, identity is always related to perceptions of who we are in relation to who they are (Herbert 2013). National identity, in particular, is similarly constructed upon a self and collective awareness of those who have similitudes and those from whom we are different, depending on geographic, ethnic, racial, linguistic, economic and legal status. ‘Identity is a “relational concept” that draws distinctions “between us and them” and fulfils emotional functions’ (Herbert 2013 p. 3). Ironically, the national identity sentiments rooted within South African society that trigger xenophobic attacks against foreigners are based on similar values upon which non-South African nationals build their own sense of belonging.

Alternative Theories and Inclusive Media Narratives According to Hall (1996), forces of resistance demand the incorporation of new inclusive values that should be inserted in the way language will represent and narrate these new values. ‘… historical conjunctures insist on theories: they are real moments in the evolution of theory’ (Hall 1996, p. 269). This evolution, claims Hall (1996), will have a significant impact on how new symbols and meanings will create a variety of interpretations, representation and inclusion of all social and cultural interests of a given society. Thus, the critical theory allows ‘the acknowledgment of textuality and cultural power, of representation itself, as a site of power and regulation; of the symbolic as a source of identity’ (Hall 1996, p. 270). In this context, Horsti and Nikunen (2013) bring the concept of hospitality into the media, as well as normativity, through which the media and journalists are sensitive, aware and critical about the principle of migration as a human right. Relying on Derrida (2001) and Silverstone

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(2007) to address the concept of hospitality into the media, Horsti and Nikunen (2013, p. 3) explain that: The theory of hospitality does not simply criticise media over its lack of just reporting but aims at finding ways to enhance democracy. It calls for fair and responsible reporting in a cosmopolitan society where audiences increasingly have different cultural backgrounds and are [at] risk of being marginalised as members of the society.

This is linked to the Mtwana and Bird (2006, p. 4) argument that: The media also play a key role in communicating, informing and educating the public at large. In this regard, and especially in the context of a democratic, human rights-orientated framework, the media has a responsibility to ensure that the information it communicates about race and racial identities is transparent, accurate and ethical.

Moreover, there is an understanding that media content lacks inclusive narratives that may be important for contextualising the challenges and the motivations that migrants have to leave their native lands. These alternative narratives are also important for building new meanings and values associated with migration, such as human rights, multiculturalism and respect for cultural and religious diversities (Mpofu and Barnabas 2017; Cottle 2000; Flückiger 2006; Mtwana and Bird 2006; Smith 2010). In doing so, in order to engage in a process of self-criticism, transformation and inclusion of a comprehensive discourse of hospitality, it is important that media outlets have access to and an interest in alternative narratives that may help to include the voices, context and stance of those who are classified as foreigners. Unfortunately, in Mozambique there is a deficiency of studies devoted to exploring the perspectives of the victims of xenophobia in the media. Furthermore, the available research reports are written in Portuguese, which may be an important barrier to South African journalists. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Mozambican researchers have a different perception of the migration of Mozambicans to South Africa than their South African counterparts. This is explained by the generalised and normalised perceptions Mozambican society has concerning the circumstances in which decisions are taken to migrate. For instance, Mungoi’s (2010) ethnographic study seeks to explain the cultural and historical processes that

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lead to the decision by Mozambicans to migrate. It is interesting to understand that migration to South Africa for the majority of rural males and families in Mozambique is a symbol of bravery that reinforces positive values associated with masculinity, represents hope for prosperity and is an important way to gain social status and money to finance the lobolo (bride price) for a traditional wedding. There is thus a migration dynamic in which real-life contexts, such as culture, poverty and symbolic patterns of individual status, need to be considered as push factors for mainly rural Mozambicans to migrate. Furthermore, Mungoi (2010) shows that there are historical factors that explain the current phenomenon of migration. For instance, the agreements between the British and the Portuguese colonial administrations aimed at guaranteeing cheap Mozambican labour for the South African mining industry (starting in 1850 but intensifying from 1886 onwards following the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand) initiated a pattern of constant migration. This can be viewed as a push factor informed by the world systems theory, which posits that new industrialising and capitalistic dynamic forces in emerging economies can lead to ‘a disruption in traditional work structures’ and may trigger people to migrate in a globalising and interdependent world (Kurekova 2011, p. 8). The pattern of migration has persisted in post-apartheid South Africa, despite the restrictive migration policies imposed by South Africa. All these years of migration have created cultural, economic and social dynamics, and values that will be difficult to break now or in future.

Methodology Comparative CDA of news broadcasts on xenophobic violence in South Africa carried in 2015 by two Mozambican television stations—one private and the other public—is presented in this chapter. The selected news broadcasts were freely accessible online through YouTube. Four news bulletins each were analysed from MTV (miramar.co.mz/tv-online) and TVM, both of which broadcast in Portuguese. MTV was founded in 1998 and is owned by the Universal Church of Kingdom of God. It was selected for this study based on a public perception that its news reports on xenophobia were not politicised. The channel generally avoids political elites as sources of information. In the newscasts reviewed, MTV not only interviewed victims of South African xenophobia but also commentators who could help to explain the phenomenon of

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xenophobia in a neutral manner. TVM was founded in 1981 during the presidency of Samora Machel, who had strong socialist beliefs and sought to use the station for advancing socialist ideals. Since then, TVM has generally been perceived as a pro-government channel. CDA allowed me to extract meanings embedded in the verbal and visual narratives used in the bulletins under analysis. These meanings were critically analysed in accordance with the theoretical frames discussed above, mainly symbolic representations of reality through concepts such as ‘moral panics’, ‘framing’, ‘schemata of interpretation’, ‘hospitality’ and the ‘ethics’ of media outlets. Excerpts of the bulletins were retrieved and analysed, taking into account such things as language use and the repetition of certain terms and words by the presenters and commentators. By means of this exercise, I created categories of analysis and interpretation of the data from the selected texts.

Mozambican Media Coverage of Xenophobic Events in South Africa This section presents brief summaries of the eight video clips from the two television channels. It starts with a description of the television news from MTV and then moves onto TVM. MTV Video 1: Xenophobia, Broadcast on 15 April 20151 This piece of reportage begins with a strong graphic and shocking image of a naked man being attacked by a group of unidentified black men. A child participates in the torture. The images of violence continued to be shown during all news broadcasts. The journalist interviews a wellknown political analyst in Mozambique, Paulo Wache, who explains that the violence in South Africa had its roots in the apartheid system that normalised the use of violence over many years in that society. He goes on to say that the end of apartheid has not brought an end to the culture of violence and that the positive expectations created following the introduction of democracy have remained unfulfilled. MTV Video 2: Victims of Xenophobia, Broadcast on 17 April 20152 In this news clip, the journalist contextualises the difficult situation that many Mozambican migrants are facing in South Africa in the wake

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of xenophobic violence. He emphasises that Mozambicans who have migrated to South Africa in search of a better life are ‘forced to return to the motherland’ because South African nationals are attacking them. The narration is accompanied by the same shocking images that were shown in MTV Video 1. This is followed by a series of interviews with victims of xenophobia who were able to escape with the support of the Mozambican authorities. The migrants—both male and female—describe the brutality of the attacks and their first reaction after the attacks. The migrants tend to describe South Africa as a place where they work and make money. As one woman pointed out: ‘Here [in Mozambique] I do not visualise any opportunity to work. That is why I migrated. There [in South Africa] I used to work, and I have children to raise. I do not know what will happen now’. MTV Video 3: Survivors of the Xenophobia, Broadcast on 20 April 20153 This news clip shows Mozambican migrants on buses returning to Mozambique. The journalist narrates the moment, saying that because of the violence and lack of safety being faced by Mozambican migrants, many of them are taking the decision to return to their homeland and that they intend to stay [in Mozambique] and not take the risk again. The interviewees on the buses describe their fear and the poverty in which they are living in South Africa. ‘I am returning today to Mozambique. There, [in South Africa] we are being attacked and killed. There is a huge confusion in South Africa’, says a male migrant. ‘Zulu people do not want Machangana people there with them’, adds another. The journalist then points out that the South African police are being accused of not assisting the victims of the violence, which is why ‘this compatriot’ does not want to return to South Africa. ‘I will never go back again. I prefer to stay here [in Mozambique]. I prefer to tell my family and my friends that there is no life in South Africa, they should stay here’, says a male migrant. Ironically, in the same news clip, Mozambicans are shown on their way back to South Africa. They argue that they must get back their jobs in South Africa and have no choice but to take the risk to secure their jobs.

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MTV Video 4: Victims of Xenophobia, Broadcast on 22 April 20154 This news clip starts with the journalist commenting that after a bitter experience in South Africa, Mozambican migrants who can return home are no longer interested in returning to South Africa. Two interviewees describe their sentiments regarding the way they were treated by the perpetrators of the violence against migrants. One male migrant says: ‘I will have to find a new way to start my life. They treated us like animals. I do not want to go back there’. Another says: ‘I cannot return to the RSA [Republic of South Africa]. I saw it; no one told me; I saw it. I cannot experience death twice. I cannot go back again’. The same news clip shows the role of the Mozambican government in providing humanitarian assistance to the victims of xenophobia. TVM Video 1: President of Mozambique Shocked by Xenophobic Events, Broadcast on 20 April 20155 This video starts with the journalist introducing the lead story: ‘The President of Mozambique is shocked by the xenophobic events’. The image of the Mozambican President, Filipe Nyusi, is the only one featured during the whole news clip. In general, the president condemns the xenophobic events in South Africa and appeals to the South African authorities to do everything possible to end the violence and provide support for the victims. TVM Video 2: Parliament Demands Action on Xenophobic Events in SA, Broadcast on 8 May 20156 This news video shows a meeting between members of Parliament’s International Affairs Commission with the former minister of international affairs of Mozambique, Oldemiro Baloi. The members of parliament demand answers regarding the role of the Mozambican government in supporting their compatriots in South Africa. The former minister provides reassurance that his ministry is playing its role in engaging the South African authorities on the matter.

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TVM Video 3: Conference About Xenophobia, Broadcast on 31 May 2015 This report is about a conference organised by the Pedagogical University (a public institution in Mozambique) to discuss the root causes of xenophobia in South Africa. The keynote speaker is the former executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and a former minister of finance in Mozambique, Tomaz Salomão. Salomão linked the xenophobic violence to the inequality, poverty and misery in South African communities. This had embittered the poor and turned them violent. He also stressed that the post-apartheid dream of a democratic society with equal opportunities for all had fallen apart and that the country still faced difficulties in providing essential services to all. TVM Video 4: Mozambicans Apprehensive After Looting and Destruction of Property, Broadcast on 4 February 20157 In this news video, Mozambican migrants are interviewed. They say that they are worried about the eruption of xenophobic violence in South Africa. A female Mozambican migrant says that she does not understand why the South African people are so angry with foreigners. She argues that all foreigners have the right to seek better opportunities in South Africa and insists that the Mozambican government should talk to the South African authorities to find a solution to the problem of xenophobic violence and to ensure that all people live together peacefully. A male migrant argues that South Africa remained a better choice for him, despite the violence. He gives examples of what he was able to achieve by migrating to South Africa, including being able to buy a residential stand and build a house for his family back in Mozambique. In addition, he had opened a hair salon for his unemployed wife. For these reasons, he chooses to stay in South Africa.

Discussion From the brief descriptions of these eight news items from the two television stations, a number of themes or categories of analysis emerge that will anchor this discussion. It incorporates some of the theoretical frames presented earlier. The discussion centres mainly around three themes,

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namely the media as an opportunity to promote understanding of transnational crises; the media as platform to advance narratives of pacification and hope in moments of crisis; and private and public media as potential sites for anchoring official support in moments of crisis. Media as an Opportunity to Promote Inclusive Understanding of Transnational Crises The media as ‘a social organisation’ (Mbetga 2014) can choose to be prudent and responsible when providing public information and debate in moments of crisis. Such prudence and responsibility result in the creation of a social space in which viewers are exposed to an unbiased perspective of the crisis. In the first MTV video clip, the primary source of information, Paulo Wache, frames his explanations based on academic knowledge to provide a balanced interpretation of the phenomenon of xenophobia, contextualising the events in the historical and political environment of South Africa. The concept of ‘competing frames’ by Chong and Druckman (2007) fits well with this news report: symbols of apartheid and the frustration of black nationals who are still suffering after the end of racial segregation are used to build meaning and clarification about the brutality that Mozambican migrants are facing in South Africa. By choosing a political analyst as a source of information, MTV aims to present information in an impartial and ethical fashion (Mpofu and Barnabas 2017; Cottle 2000; Flückiger 2006; Mtwana and Bird 2006; Smith 2010). The motivation is to expose the audience to information and/or narrative that provides reasons and possible explanations for the attacks and influence the viewers to think about the situation from a more informed position. Media as a Platform to Advance Narratives of Pacification and Hope in Moments of Crisis News produced in a moment of crisis may contain pain and drama. However, it is also possible to explore sentiments that may induce national reflection on the new opportunities that the crisis may present. By digging into the stories and experiences of Mozambican migrants who were victims of xenophobia in South Africa and were able to return home safely, MTV brings into the public domain the opportunities that these migrants may have in starting a new life in their own homeland. On the other hand,

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by incorporating perspectives of resilience and resistance against xenophobia by showing migrants who are willing to return to a place they describe as ‘a work place’, the television channels offer the public two positive discourses that rest on the concept of ‘media hospitality’ (Horsti and Nikunen 2013). The first discourse and ideology (Hall 1996) that may be extracted from the news texts is pacification, in which all the victims of xenophobia describe their pain and suffering but do not indicate a willingness to retaliate. Rather, they understand that South Africa is not their land and that they do not belong there as a result. They seem to understand the ‘moral panic’ (Mbetga 2014) involved in these incidents of violence and, knowing that the South African authorities will not provide the safety and protection they need, decide to return to a place where they belong and have protection. Narratives such as those in the fourth MTV video clip provide an understanding of the dimension or conscience of hope and protection that some migrants seem to have acquired after the brutalities that they faced in what they value as a ‘place of work’. The second discourse that MTV brings connects to the concept of taking risks, in which the ‘place of work’ is highly valued as against the place where they find protection. These migrants are not returning to South Africa for retaliation or revenge. Rather, the narratives bring to the fore the difficult decision these migrants need to make between a new life in the place that provides them protection or perpetual risk in the ‘place of work’. Both narratives convey a willingness to keep fighting for a better life. Private and Public Media: Anchoring of Official Support in Moments of Crisis Both the public and private television stations explore different frames to build a sense of national support that will drive the concept of national identity in Mozambican society, and to represent the Mozambican citizens who are facing violence in South Africa. From the data collected from TVM, it is evident that this public station relies on government sources to frame news about xenophobia in South Africa. The source’s interpretation of the phenomenon is superficial and is informed by the Mozambican government’s political, historic and economic interests in South Africa. In general, the political rhetoric is used to condemn the xenophobia, request the South African government’s intervention and

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promise to help Mozambican citizens in South Africa. Official sources emphasise the support that Mozambique is giving to compatriot victims of xenophobia in South Africa. Likewise, the images selected by TVM to promote a sense of solidarity and national identity with the victims rely on statements by politicians about preliminary contacts with South African authorities to address the problem. It is important to note that no personal or institutional commitments are made. For instance, the regular use of the term ‘RSA authorities’ by Mozambican politicians plays a role in the naming/labelling process, creating a sense that concrete intervention by the Mozambican government in the xenophobic events is lacking. By exploring graphic images, as well as non-official sources of information, MTV provides an alternative discourse in comparison with TVM. It also gives a broader and deeper interpretation of the events, identifying the victims as compatriots who went to South Africa to find work and better opportunities but lost everything, but who are still willing to start their lives all over again, either in South Africa or in their homeland. Through MTV’s news reports, the presence or absence of official support is clearly expressed by the attitudes of the migrants and the solutions that they suggest—whether to escape the violence or to return to their place of work when the violence subsides. By using the word ‘victims of xenophobia’, MTV effectively engages in the process of naming/labelling and identifying the Mozambican migrants as a passive and victimised people in violent xenophobic events. Through such framing, MTV reinforces Mozambican national identity. In addition, it reinforces the appeal of emotional anchoring among its viewers by consistently using frames that evoke sentiments of fear (returning to the place of work), uncertainty (staying or leaving the place of work vs homeland) and victimisation (hard workers who have lost everything in their place of work).

Conclusion The media contribute to the knowledge and perceptions people have about reality. While they have the power to influence the values that people attribute to other people, cultures, races, religions and places of residence, it cannot be ignored that journalists and media organisations belong to or support specific social cultures and have worldviews that are informed by ideologies and symbols that define the patterns of that belonging. While xenophobic violence reflects the negative perceptions

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that the locals of a receiving country have of migrants, it is equally important to understand that the migrants who are socially attacked, rejected and excluded construct a social capital that allows them to navigate in the receiving countries on the basis who they are and who they are not. In this chapter, I hope to have illustrated that television stations in Mozambique, regardless of their ideological position or whether they are privately or publicly owned, play an important role in promoting a sense of Mozambican national identity and solidarity with the victims of xenophobia abroad by means of an emotional anchoring process.

Notes 1. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGxNgPJ6SOk. Accessed on 13 January 2020. 2. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOUfbSfMFe8. Accessed on 13 January 2020. 3. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GuDpoarQ9k. Accessed on 13 January 2020. 4. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRLN0MyiCDA. Accessed 13 January 2020. 5. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5gTwfjtjug. Accessed 13 January 2020. 6. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5gTwfjtjug. Accessed 13 January 2020. 7. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83ndmZK3qSo. Accessed 13 January 2020.

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CHAPTER 9

‘They Are Vampires, Unlike Us’: Framing of South African Xenophobia by the Nigerian Press Allen Munoriyarwa and Chisom Jennifer Okoye

Introduction The public lynching of the Mozambican national Alfabeto Nhamuave on 18 May 2008 marked the brutal and horrific culmination of an entrenched xenophobic culture in post-apartheid South Africa. High levels of migration into South Africa by both documented and undocumented Africans strengthened the perception among South Africa’s black population that the newcomers were ‘crowding them out’ of scarce jobs. Nowhere were xenophobic attacks more intense than in informal urban settlements and high-density shack towns burgeoning in and around the country’s major cities. Here, South Africans vented their frustrations with poor service delivery, unemployment, crime and other social vices by blaming the conditions on migrants. This resulted in death and injury, the destruction of property and the widespread displacement of migrants.

A. Munoriyarwa (B) · C. J. Okoye Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_9

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Since 2008, when post-apartheid South Africa’s worst wave of xenophobic attacks occurred, there have been calls for the implementation of an early warning system and greater surveillance and policing in volatile areas to minimise or even eliminate the impact of xenophobic violence (Landau et al. 2005; Neocosmos 2008; Harris 2002). Xenophobic attacks have shown the South African state and its law and order institutions to be morally and organisationally weak, lacking in determination and unwilling or unable to address the scourge. South Africans accuse the law enforcement agencies of being either hopelessly inadequate or sympathetic to migrants, thus preventing them from effectively controlling the influx of migrants (Mbetga 2014). The police and political leaders, such as local councillors, are being accused of engaging in ‘secret alliances’ with migrant groups for personal gain. Xenophobic attacks in post-apartheid South Africa can thus be viewed as a sad indictment of the ability of the state security apparatus to maintain law and order. Our study explored the framing by Nigerian press of the February and March 2017 xenophobic attacks that took place in South Africa’s capital Pretoria in. It is a qualitative framing analysis of the xenophobic attacks in sampled mainstream newspapers in Nigeria. We utilised Sivanandan’s (2001), definition of xenophobia as the hatred of and discrimination against people perceived to be foreign or strange intruders. In 2009, the African Diaspora Forum (2009) estimated that about 800,000 Nigerians lived in South Africa. Like most other African migrants in the country, Nigerian nationals have been victims of xenophobia. They are often accused of leading the traffic in narcotics and headingup crime syndicates and are thus viewed through a negative stereotypical lens as transnational criminals. Their involvement in economic activities, like shop-owning in townships and informal settlements, has led to new economic configurations that exclude locals, thereby hardening antimigrant feelings. South Africans allege that the involvement by Nigerians and other migrants in economic activities has resulted in a significant shift of local economic power from locals to foreigners (African Diaspora Forum 2009). Locals allege that these developments close off economic spaces that are meant for them. The Nigerian government has reacted to xenophobic attacks on its citizens by a mixture of threats and diplomacy. In March 2017, it sent a fact-finding mission to South Africa to try and ascertain the true state of affairs regarding Nigerians living in South Africa (Nigerian GRT Bulletin,

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2 March 2017). The mission was led by Nigeria’s deputy president of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu. Delegation members, Nnenna Ukeje, House Committee chairperson on foreign affairs, and Henry Nwawuba, warned South African officials that the Nigerian government could retaliate if the attacks continued (The Daily Independent, 12 March 2017). In the same month, the Nigerian government requested the African Union (AU) to intervene in the crisis. The presidential aide on foreign affairs Abike Abiri Ewere warned that the treatment of Nigerians in South Africa was unacceptable to the government and people of Nigeria. The chapter is organised as follows: a literature review is followed by a theoretical framework section and sections on methodology and data analysis. The chapter closes with a discussion and the conclusions.

The Construction of ‘the Intruder Migrant’ Since we are not aware of any literature that covers xenophobia in the Nigerian press, we have reviewed other literature on how migrants have been constructed in the press. Significant scholarship on press coverage of migration has focused on framing cross-border migration and asylum seekers as unwelcome intruders (Greenslade 2005; McDonald and Jacobs 2005; Van Gorp 2005; Danso and McDonald 2001). The prevalence of xenophobia has been attributed to ethnic and ‘tribal’ identities actively having been fostered by colonial regimes (Oloruntoba 2018). Postindependent African leaders have failed to move beyond the artificially and arbitrarily contrived boundaries designed by colonial rulers in the past. This has rubbed off on the mass of the people, many of whom are at the forefront of the ‘foreigners-must-go’ campaign, as witnessed in South Africa. Service delivery has been noted by several researchers as being central to frequent outbreaks of xenophobia. Wilson and Magam (2018, p. 68) point out that ‘Political domination and complacency, economic ineptitude, lack of adequate service delivery and high levels of corruption have compounded the plight of poor South Africans’. Shippers (2015) notes that anti-migrant sentiments in South Africa have increased since 2000, possibly as a result of dwindling economic opportunities and a decline in the quality of service delivery. Chaskalsan (2017) concurs, noting that economic stagnation, a rise in unemployment and poor service delivery have become triggers of anti-migration sentiment. Akinola (2018, p. 111) notes that ‘Although foreigners have been blamed for spiralling crime

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and other social ills … dwindling economic opportunities and challenging economic realities, political discontent and poor service delivery continue to aggravate social tension and reinforce xenophobia in the Southern African region …’. Other researchers have attempted to compare the prevalence of xenophobia in different countries. Oni and Okunade (2018) compare xenophobia in Nigeria and South Africa. They observe that ‘Xenophobia in Nigeria was mild, subtle, non-violent and driven by the ruling class and politically motivated’ (p. 123), while ‘…the historical trajectory of xenophobia in South Africa is situated within the rhetoric of apartheid which predisposes South African nationals to violently attack foreigners whom they see as agents of neo-apartheid … the motivating factor … is an attempt to reduce competition with nationals over socio-economic benefits …’ (p. 124). The few studies that have focused on the role of the media suggest that coverage of xenophobia has generally been unanalytical and antimigrant (Danso and McDonald 2001; McDonald and Jacobs 2005; Mbetga 2014). According to Danso and McDonald (2001), newspapers tend to employ sensational frames when covering xenophobic violence: ‘The press’ language was largely anti-migrant and uncritically reproduced problematic statistics and assumptions about migration in the region … Coverage of migrant-related issues is polarised…’ (McDonald and Jacobs 2005: 17). Research on regions outside southern Africa, especially countries like Nigeria, is still emerging (Oni and Okunade 2018; Akinola 2018). Danso and McDonald (2001, p. 12) argue that research on xenophobic coverage in the press has ‘…largely been anecdotal and impressionistic, providing only a qualitative analysis of a small non-scientific sampling of press clippings…’. This is an admission that there is need for rigorous in-depth quantitative and qualitative assessment of xenophobic coverage in the press. This chapter makes a contribution to literature on xenophobia from a non-South Africa perspective. It widens the debate on the coverage of xenophobia in the press beyond the South African media.

Theoretical Framework Framing theory has been attributed to the fundamental work of Goffman (1974) and Entman (1992). According to Jansen (2010, p. 23), frames are ‘deeply rooted in every society’s culture’. Frames may be more overt

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in some cultures than others depending on how their social world is constructed. Tuchman (1972, p. 2) refers to a frame as a component that ‘…organises everyday reality’. The press makes salient efforts to create meaning through the frames it chooses to include and exclude content. Jansen (2010, p. 21) explains that ‘A frame specifies the relationship between several connected elements in a text’. By using frames, media texts are open to a range of interpretations depending on the society in which they are produced and how the receivers construct their reality around the framed texts. According to Chong and Druckman (2007, p. 109), frames in communication are an important aspect in social construction as ‘… they affect the attitudes and behaviours of their audiences’. Jansen (2010, p. 23) adds that since frames are ‘deeply rooted’ in culture, the analysis on frames should take place within that specific culture. Using framing theory allows the researcher to single out those frames that are specific to a society. Jansen (2010, p. 45) explains that this way of analysing media texts is a powerful tool to ‘… find out how people perceive certain messages. It helps the researcher to grasp the fears and pains of a class, community or a nation, and then to crystallise their understanding of a problem’. Chong and Druckman (2007) argue that identifying frames enable the researcher to realise the power of the media to (re)frame topics in order to make an old ‘traditional’ issue seem new and relevant. They go on to say that ‘… the major premise of framing theory is that an issue can be viewed from a variety of perspectives and be construed as having implications for multiple values and considerations’ (p. 104). This places emphasis on the creation of meaning that is culturebound and dependent on what people consider and understand as reality in a particular society. Frames act as boundaries or parameters around which a specific issue like xenophobia can be discussed. Thus, according to Tankard (2001), frames work as foregrounding and backgrounding devices in news construction, including the ‘angle’ of a particular story. In our study we adopted a heuristic process where the kind of frames identified are informed by our familiarity with African news media and xenophobia within South Africa. Hertz and McLeod (2011, p. 152) proffer that in qualitative frame research ‘… researchers must apply their cultural expertise to induce the meaning of texts’.

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Methodology We follow a broadly social constructivist approach to communications research. This approach emphasises the persuasive influence and power that media texts have in society. The mass media actively select and construct the frames of reference and arguably set the agenda of framing (Bicket 2006; Entman 1997). Qualitative frame analysis is employed to understand the construction of news on xenophobia in selected Nigerian newspapers. We sampled news stories from The Daily Independent and The Punch, two of Nigeria’s most popular mainstream newspapers. The Daily Independent was established in 1997 and is owned by a Nigerian politician, a former governor of Delta State, James Onanefe Ibori. The Punch was established in 1971 by Nigerians, James Aboderin and Sam Amuka. The newspapers were chosen as they both have high circulation figures of between 60,000 and 100,000 copies a day (Olutokun and Seteolu 2001) and are considered by their readers to have credible sources of information and to be independent and objective (Agwaziam 2012). In addition, they are the only two Nigerian newspapers whose websites contain a substantial amount of coverage on xenophobia. We searched their online archives for stories on xenophobia published in February and March 2017 when South Africa suffered a significant wave of xenophobic attacks. We limited our selection to hard news stories to narrow down our sample. The search yielded about 87 stories, which were then purposefully narrowed down to 24 stories because of space constraints in this chapter. Bicket’s (2006) frame topology was adopted to identify the frames from the sampled texts. The researchers analysed how phrases and exemplars were used to frame xenophobia. Other framing devices, such as stereotype referencing, lexical choices, source selection, and dramatic events and characters, were also included in the analysis. Images were excluded as they would constitute an entire research project unto themselves. By identifying the framing devices used in the selected texts, a clear understanding was obtained of how the two newspapers saliently selected frames to report on the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. We organised the frames into overarching themes. An inductive framing approach was adopted since it allowed us to capture emerging frames rather than limiting us to established frames.

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Dominant Frames of Xenophobia in the Nigerian Press We noted three broad and dominant frames. These were the victim, demonising and confrontational frames. Within these dominant frames, there was a frequent occurrence of frames of anger, frustration and irritation with xenophobic attacks in South Africa. Both newspapers framed Nigerians as victims and sufferers at the hands of South Africa’s barbarism, hate and cruelty. The victim frame was juxtaposed with the suffering of individual Nigerians and reported both graphically and sensationally. The frame focused on the here and now of individual suffering. The Punch included headlines such as: • Nigerians left wounded in brutal attacks in the Hartbeespoort attacks (The Punch, 16 February 2017). This news report began as follows: ‘The Nigerian Union in South Africa Secretary General in Gauteng Province, Mr Collin Mgbo, arrived at the scene of attack and saw that a Nigerian migrant was almost dead, his house was looted and burnt …’. As if to reinforce the ‘fact’ that Nigerians were victims of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, a report quoted the Secretary General as saying: ‘They left the wounded Nigerian and faced me. They destroyed my car, but I managed to escape and ran to a police station …’. South African citizens bear the brunt of blame for the attacks and the destruction of property and life. They are demonised by the repeated use of words and phrases that depict them as inhuman. The Daily Independent had the following demonising headlines in the wake of the Pretoria attacks: • Xenophobia: South Africa street urchins attack and loot Nigerian citizens’ property in Atteridgeville (8 March 2017). • Vicious youth gangsters rampage Nigerian citizens (17 February 2017). South Africans were, without exception, portrayed as devilish and demonic. Their depiction as rapacious bullies thriving on predation (looting Nigerian households) became an overarching motif in news frames. The use of words and phrases like ‘rampaging’ and ‘rampaging

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gangs’ was common. The Punch of 12 February 2017 ran the headline: ‘South Africa youth unleashes an orgy of violence’, while The Daily Independent ran a story in almost equivalent frames of victimhood and demonisation. The paper’s 20 February 2017 edition had the headline: ‘Nigerian citizens hunted and killed by marauding gangs in Mamelodi’. In the process of othering the perpetrator, the victim is framed as innocent, helpless, hapless and harmless. More so, in this case, Nigerians were referred to as ‘citizens’ and South Africans as ‘marauding gangs’ and ‘street urchins’. This is a clear case of positive self-presentation and negative othering that demeans South Africans and elevates Nigerians to levels of humanity that South Africans cannot reach. The ‘newsification’ of victimhood, to use Waisbord’s (2013) concept, was saturated with frames that sought to draw readers’ sympathy for Nigerians while accentuating the callousness of the South African ‘villains’ and tormentors. In a riveting and emotional news article, The Punch of 12 February 2017 reported that: ‘Nigerians living in South Africa are hiding in fear as hordes of South African youths maraud the streets destroying Nigerian businesses and houses … That many Nigerians have been making it big in that country has led to jealousy … they attack thriving Nigerian businesses, loot, maim and set these businesses on fire … they kill Nigerians whose only crime is that they live and do business in that country ….’ On the other hand, South Africans themselves have a less charitable view of Nigerians, perceiving them as rogue criminals responsible for crime and drugs.

The ubiquity of frames of victimisation and demonisation is further affirmed by narratives that vividly expound the suffering Nigerian. The cruelty of the South African tormentors is emphasised by lexical word choices such as ‘hordes’ and ‘maraud’, which are often associated with hungry wild animals like lions roaming for prey. By running extraordinary stories of barbaric attacks, predation and the dramatic escape of victims, the Nigerian press creates the impression of a lawless polity. An example is The Punch, which on 16 February 2017 carried an ‘extraordinary story of escape and survival’ (p. 2). In sensational language, it reported that: Headline: Nigerian couple in narrow escape The story: A Nigerian family living in Mamelodi, Pretoria narrowly escaped death by a whisker when a mob [our emphasis] of South Africans attacked their home. The mother narrated the horrific story: ‘I had to

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smear my child with mud, and I lay him on the ground face down. When they arrived, they thought he was dead. As soon as they left, I gathered my child and escaped …’ The juxtaposition of ‘mob’ and ‘family’ highlights the paper’s perceived difference between the (Nigerian) victims and their (South African) victimisers.

Both newspapers frequently resorted to an emotive style of reporting. This had the effect of banishing all pretence to rationality, in the process generating intense negative feelings towards South Africans. Gamson and Modigliani (1989) and Entman (1999) argue that news framing is also about what is excluded from news reports. Both newspapers excluded from their news coverage possible narratives of the underlying causes of the xenophobia and xenophobic attacks, such as migrants’ contribution to the violence and the inherent culture of brutality among South Africans. The victim is pitied, and the survivor is framed as a hero and celebrated for his/her survival instincts in the face of gross violence. The focus on victims and survivors closes off other potential narratives that could widen and enrich the debate on xenophobia. The frequent charges that Nigerian men traffic in drugs, wreck marriages by having relationships with married women and partner local gangsters have not been probed by the Nigerian press. If this had been the case, the public debate on xenophobia could possibly have become more informed. Berns (1999, p. 8) supports this view, arguing, ‘By identifying what the problems are about, and what their causes are, frames [would have] at least implied, if not stated outright, what should be done to solve [the problems]’. The framing of xenophobia in South Africa by the Nigerian press has failed to highlight the deep and varied causes of the phenomenon. By dogmatically sticking to victim and suffering frames, the press made xenophobia a problem of the perpetrators, failing to place it in its broader political and law and order contexts. For example, the often-reported complicity of local police in the attacks was not questioned (Mbetga 2014). Victim frames were therefore a dramaturgic technique exploited to highlight that Nigerians were caught in a (xenophobic) situation beyond their own making and responsibility. They were being threatened by the ‘Other’ who maliciously envy them and their hard-won wealth. Dominant victim frames were buttressed by humanistic frames. To sustain the rhetoric of South African wickedness, the Nigerian press accentuated the human-interest dimension. Examples include the following:

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• Nigerian widow escapes xenophobic mob attacks in Hartbeespoort (The Punch, 10 February 2017). • South African youth fatally stabs Nigerian woman in xenophobic attacks (The Daily Independent, 2 March 2017). Women and children, because of their presumed innocence and vulnerability in society, were generally reported more frequently in humanistic and victim frames. By making use of humanistic frames, the press evoked compassion towards Nigerian victims. Harvey (2009) notes that such frames, by design and default, cause readers to sympathise with the victims and to be outraged by the actions of the perpetrators. The victim becomes what Herman and Chomsky (1988, p. 86) call ‘worthy victims’. However, Chari (unpublished) notes that humanistic frames have the serious disadvantage of captivating the emotions of readers, in the process blighting reason or all appeals to it. Furthermore, as a narrative, the humanistic frame is parasitic, with a tendency to ‘commodify’ the weak and vulnerable through the construction of untested binaries of the good and the bad. Thus, frames of victimisation and demonisation, coated in humanistic narratives adopted by both newspapers, did not widen and deepen discourses around xenophobia, thus failing to illuminate the oft-narrated victim-perpetrator frames.

Nigerian Government Reaction to Xenophobia: Juxtaposing Diplomacy with Confrontation Both newspapers reported on how the Federal Government of Nigeria (FNG) reacted to the attacks. The xenophobic attacks elicited the Federal Government of Nigeria’s (FGN’s) response in that it adopted a varied approach, vacillating between diplomatic engagement and confrontation with the South African authorities. The newspapers framed these approaches as a sign of concern on the part of the FGN. The confrontation frame was visible in many news stories and headlines, for example: • Xenophobia: TUC [Trade Union Congress] asks FG [Federal Government] to recall envoy from South Africa (The Daily Independent, 28 February 2017).

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• Xenophobia: Reps want compensation for Nigerians in South Africa (The Punch, 8 March 2017). • Xenophobia: Angry Nigeria summons South Africa envoy over attacks (The Punch, 23 February 2017). • Obasanjo condemns xenophobia, berates South African leaders (The Daily Independent, 1 March 2017). • Xenophobia: Gbajabiamila heads Reps team to South Africa (The Punch, 1 March 2017). • Xenophobia: Senate visit to South Africa will aid campaign against xenophobia (The Daily Independent, 8 March 2017). • Nigeria and South Africa agree on action against xenophobia (The Daily Independent, 26 February 2017). In both the frames of concern and confrontation, the FGN is framed as bold and decisive. It is not only ready to engage its South African counterpart on the safety of Nigerians in that country but also able to confront Pretoria on the matter whenever it is necessary. The Punch’s Stanley Opara reported: ‘The Nigerian government is leading Africa’s efforts to meet with South Africa and warn it against attacks on African migrants … the Junior Minister for Foreign Affairs in the FG, Bukar Ibrahim, has asked the African Union to take action … “There is no clear signal from South Africa that something is being done to stop these attacks …”’

The dispatch of a Senatorial delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Geoffrey Onyeama and the Minister of the Interior Lt Gen Abduralhim Dambazau (retired) to discuss with the South African government Nigerian concern over its citizens is widely covered by both newspapers. It is presented as an act of resolve and action against xenophobia. The Punch reported that, ‘The Nigerian government is ready to act if the South African authorities do not intervene to stop the carnage of Nigerians’ (16 February 2017). On 24 February 2017, The Daily Independent wrote that, ‘South Africa has failed to show leadership mettle by intervening decisively …’. The newspaper did not elaborate on the nature and extent of the intervention, but the point is that the frames became more and more confrontational as attacks worsened in and around Pretoria up to the end of March 2017.

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In furtherance of the confrontational frame, the two newspapers quoted elite government officials who openly expressed the necessity for a hard-line approach against the South African government because of its alleged failure to reign in on xenophobic attacks. The Punch (9 March 2017) quoted the former vice-chancellor of Ekiti State University, Professor Dipo Kolawole, as saying: ‘Countries treating Nigerians shabbily should realise that there will be grave consequences for their actions … Nigerians should not and cannot be insulted and assaulted at will as is happening in South Africa …’. The Daily Independent (28 February 2017) quoted the leader of the Nigerian Trade Union Congress, Mr Bala Kaigama, as follows: ‘South Africa has billions of dollars in investments on our soil. This killing dehumanisation [sic] of Nigerians must stop. Not anymore, this must stop … Otherwise we will act …’. In a related news report, that contained equally confrontational language, The Punch (1 March 2017) quoted the former President of Nigeria, Rt Gen Olusegun Obasanjo, as saying: ‘The South African government is not sincere … I will blame the leaders of that country that allow xenophobic attacks against fellow Africans for whatever reasons … South Africa needs to be asked in hard ways about this …’. Admittedly, these voices are not official FGN voices but they echo what senior FGN officials said during the attacks. Thus, both frames of concern and confrontation served one major purpose, that is, to present the Nigerian government as being actively involved in solution-seeking. The frames cannot be read independently of each other. The response of the Nigerian government could have been instigated by long-standing tension between the two countries emanating from debates around which one has the largest economy in Africa. Nigeria claims to be the biggest economy with a gross domestic product of about $397.269 billion, compared to South Africa’s $368.288 billion, as reflected in the World Bank’s 2018 Report.1 Nigeria also disputes South Africa’s representation of Africa in the G20, arguing that on the basis of GDP, this honour should fall to Nigeria. We argue that these battles for geopolitical supremacy may have played a role in the discourse on xenophobia.

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Frames of Hatred: Framing the Xenophobic Attitude of South Africans Towards Nigerians South Africa was portrayed in the Nigerian press as a country of perpetual xenophobic violence. This explains headlines like ‘Nigerians attacked again in South Africa’ (The Daily Independent, 7 February 2017). In this kind of frame, South Africa has morphed into a form of ‘vampirism’ that thrives on the blood of other African people. When analysing the frames of hatred used by the Nigerian press, it is important to note the depiction of South Africans as angry, irrational and impulsive people. This can be seen from the way South Africans were always framed in media texts as people whose main aim it was to attack the vulnerable migrant minority in the country in a violent way, with the focus being on Nigerian citizens. Headlines such as ‘Xenophobia: five Nigerians attacked in South Africa again’ (Punch, 17 February 2017) and ‘Xenophobia: Nigerians under attack again in South Africa’ (The Daily Independent, 10 March 2017), and sentences such as ‘fears about a fresh wave of violence against immigrants’ (The Punch, 3 February 2017) make the point. It is also important to note the salient use of language, style and words in the Nigeria press when xenophobia was reported on. Both newspapers used particularly negative words and phrases to refer to the actions of South Africans. Examples are: ‘scuffle’, ‘soaring tensions’, ‘migrant crime’, ‘violent clashes’, ‘hostilities’, ‘irritants’, ‘disrespect and assault’, ‘mindless and vicious’, ‘unsavoury’ and ‘upsurge’. These words were aimed at inculcating a negative perception of South Africans as tormenters of Nigerian immigrants. In addition, South Africans were referred to in an impersonal manner. For example, the constant references to them simply as ‘South African locals’ by both newspapers show that they did not care to provide more information on the dynamics of the group as a social entity. In doing this, the reports not only lessened the relevance of the locals as a respectable and significant part of South African society but also gave the impression that they were just a group of bullies, eager to harm their next, often Nigerian, victim. In the Nigerian press, South Africans were anarchists seeking to achieve material wealth through the primitive accumulation of fellow Africans’ wealth, a rapacious form of plunder and gain with no parallel in modern civilisations.

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Frames of Anger: Framing the Nigerian Public’s Infuriation and Frustration with Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa The Nigerian public was framed as being angry, outraged and willing to exercise revenge if the xenophobic attacks were not stopped. An example is a headline in The Punch on 1 March 2017: ‘Xenophobia: Niger Delta militants threaten to bomb South African investments’, or in The Daily Independent of 23 February 2017: ‘Xenophobia: protesters attack MTN office in Abuja’. Words and phrases such as ‘one-month ultimatum’, ‘disrespect and assault’, ‘consequences’, ‘torch South Africa’s flag’ and ‘mobilise students’ demonstrate this anger and vengeance. The Punch (1 March 2017) quoted a militant group as saying: ‘We shall strike any property and persons from South Africa within our reach’. This framing gave the impression of immense danger looming for South Africans residing in Nigeria. The extent to which the anger was framed varied. The Punch offered the reactions of elite leaders, quoting trade union leaders and academics. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) was quoted as saying that the attacks were ‘a grand conspiracy by the government and state security to continue to mindlessly waste of lives and take over properties of innocent and harmless fellow Africans’ (The Punch, 28 February 2017). By quoting these sources, the Nigerian press was trying to create the impression that the Nigerian public’s vengeful attitude was justifiable. This was achieved by using the aggressive opinions of respected Nigerian leaders.

Discussion: The Use of Frames Over Time The tone of frames from February to March became extremely negative towards South Africa and its citizens. By the end of March 2017, when our study ended, the tone had become militant and threatening, as did the frames of reference to South Africa and its government. Space was accorded to militant voices like the TUC and the Niger Delta militants, which is, in fact, a designated terrorist group in Nigeria. These militants were afforded space on two occasions to express their chillingly threatening messages. In one of the messages, covered by both The Punch and The Daily Independent, they threatened to bomb Multichoice (DSTV), MTN, Shoprite and other South African entities operating in Nigeria. As the attacks worsened in Atteridgeville, Hartbeespoort, Mamelodi and

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central Pretoria, the two newspapers expanded their news sourcing to include more non-elite voices of victims to capture their experiences and encounters with xenophobia. We argue that the victim and confrontation frames discussed contributed to a media-driven hype around xenophobia, a hype that did remarkably well in clouding over and nullifying debate on the deep-seated issues around xenophobia. Actually, the press could have articulated these issues and possibly be lenses through which xenophobia could be understood. For instance, the failure of post-apartheid governments to transform the townships, former Bantustans and other predominantly black locations and informal settlements into effectively governed and policed environments is central to the mounting anger and frustration resulting in xenophobic outbreaks (Danso and McDonald 2001). These areas do not attract meaningful investments to cater for the unemployed and less educated ‘apartheid generation’ and this factor can, arguably, be a great cause of xenophobia. The absence of proper service delivery structures and other shortcomings in these communities can also exert real triggers for xenophobia. Analytical and dispassionate reporting in the Nigerian press would have meant asking questions such as why immigrants from as far away as Nigeria migrate to South Africa in the first place. If these questions had been asked, the press would have engaged with issues of leadership, economic management and governance not only in Nigeria but also in countries across Africa from which people migrate to South Africa. We further argue that the ‘anti-xenophobia mood’ that gripped the media in Nigeria as the attacks worsened made it acceptable by default for the press to adopt victim frames. Journalists made victims and confrontation frames their starting points for news coverage, seeking stories that fitted these frames. Our observation lends credence to our finding that the press’ adoption of episodic frames rather than thematic frames closed off more meaningful coverage that questioned xenophobic issues at a deeper level. The episodic frames preferred by the Nigerian press led to the coverage of xenophobia as a series of events that were isolated from each other. If a complex issue like xenophobia is framed in this manner, it becomes ‘a passing parade of specific events, a context and no context …’ (Iyengar 1991, p. 12). Episodic framing distorted the portrayal of xenophobia, as if it was just an incidental flow of events, and thus prevented the Nigerian public from accumulating knowledge about the deep-rooted causes of the attacks. Iyengar (1991) notes that this is a problem when the

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press prefers episodic framing: complex events are simplified to the level of anecdotal evidence. It encourages reasoning by resemblance—people settle upon causes and treatments that ‘fitted’ observed problems (Iyengar 1991). Thematic framing would have afforded the Nigerian press a chance to place xenophobia in context and, would have given readers the opportunity to make informed decisions about causes and solutions, while also making it clear that some causes are beyond the control of victims and perpetrators.

Conclusion By our definition, frames are meta-communicative messages that give meaning and coherence to a news story by specifying connected elements to the story. We identified victim, confrontation and demonising frames, and frames of anger, as dominating Nigerian press coverage of xenophobic events in South Africa. When assessing framing techniques in the Nigerian press over time, we noted an increment in confrontational frames and an even greater increase in victim frames as the xenophobic attacks worsened in and around Pretoria. The framing of public debate on xenophobia was often fraught with divisive narratives. Future research would perhaps benefit from ascertaining how other media platforms like radio and television outside South Africa, and social media platforms like Twitter, framed xenophobia. Xenophobia is a postcolonial African challenge and a negation of the ‘open border policy’ that early African nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah clamoured for. Press frames remain central heuristic tools and a fruitful way to understand and engage with a scourge like xenophobia and how a greater public understanding of a problem can be brought about.

Note 1. See https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locati ons=ZA. Accessed 14 June 2020.

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Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world (pp. 95–106). London: Taylor & Farancis. The Daily Independent. (2017, February 20). Nigeria demands AU auction over renewed South Africa xenophobia. Available at https://independent.ng/nig eria-demands-au-action-over-renewed-south-africa-xenophobia. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Daily Independent [online]. (2017, February 23). NANS uncovers plans to use students for anti-xenophobia protests. Available at https://independent.ng/ nans-uncovers-plans-to-use-students-for-anti-xenophobia-protests. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Daily Independent [online]. (2017, February 24). Nelson Mandela should be blamed for xenophobia in South Africa—Seun Kuti. Available at https://independent.ng/nelson-mandela-should-be-blamed-for-xen ophobia-in-south-africa-seun-kuti. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Daily Independent [online]. (2017, March 2). Threat to Nigeria-South Africa trade relationship. Available at https://independent.ng/xenophobia-threatto-nigeria-south-africa-trade-relationship. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Daily Independent [online]. (2017, March 4). Nigerians under attack again in South Africa. Available at https://independent.ng/xenophobia-nigeriansunder-attack-again-in-south-africa. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Daily Independent [online]. (2017, March 13). South Africa agree on action on xenophobia. Available at https://independent.ng/nigeria-south-afr ica-agree-action-on-xenophobia. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Daily Independent [online]. (2017, March 23). South African scuffle not xenophobia. Available at https://independent.ng/nigerian-south-african-scu ffle-not-xenophobia-ministry. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, February 9). TUC asks FG to recall from South Africa. Available at http://punchng.com/xenophobia-tuc-asks-fg-to-recallenvoy-from-safrica. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, February 26). ‘Street urchins’ looted South African firms, not our members—NANS. Available at http://punchng.com/streeturchins-looted-south-african-firms-not-our-members-nans/amp/undefined. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, March 1). Niger Delta militants threaten to bomb South African investments. Available at http://punchng.com/xenophobianiger-delta-militants-threaten-to-bomb-south-african-investments. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, March 1). Senate’s visit will aid campaign against xenophobia—Nigerian community. Available at http://punchng.com/ south-africa-senates-visit-will-aid-campaign-against-xenophobia-nigerian-com munity. Accessed 12 November 2017.

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The Punch [online]. (2017, March 8). Reps want compensation for Nigerians in South Africa. Available at http://punchng.com/xenophobia-reps-want-com pensation-for-nigerians-in-safrica. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, March 9). Ex-VC advocates retaliations for xenophobic attacks against Nigerians. Available at http://punchng.com/ex-vc-advocatesretaliations-for-xenophobic-attacks-against-nigerians. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, March 14). South Africa promises legislation to end killings of Nigerians. Available at http://punchng.com/xenophobia-safricapromises-legislation-to-end-killing-of-nigerians. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, March 19). Nigerian lawmakers meet Mbeki. Available at http://punchng.com/xenophobia-nigerian-lawmakers-meet-mbeki. Accessed 12 November 2017. The Punch [online]. (2017, March 22). Five Nigerians attacked in South Africa again. Available at http://punchng.com/xenophobia-five-nigerians-attackedin-safrica-again-2. Accessed 12 November 2017. Tuchman, G. (1972). Objectivity as strategic ritual: An examination of newsmen’s notions of objectivity. American Journal of Sociology, 77 (4), 660–679. Van Gorp, B. (2005). Where is the frame? Victims and intruders in the Belgian press coverage of the asylum issue. European Journal of Communication, 20(4), 484–507. Waisbord, S. (2013). Reinventing professionalism: Journalism and news in global perspective. Cambridge: Polity. Wilson, R., & Magam, L. (2018). Frustration-aggression, Afrophobia and the psycho-social consequences of corruption in South Africa. In A. O. Akinola (Ed.), The political economy of xenophobia in Africa (pp. 93–107). Cham: Springer.

PART III

Belonging, Identity Construction

CHAPTER 10

‘Uganda Can Protect Chinese Investors but Not Its Own Citizens?’ Paradoxical Perspectives in Xenophobic Narratives and Practices Fostering Otherness in Uganda Elizabeth Lubinga

Introduction and Background Globally, migration within and/or between countries is an age-old occurrence and is often constant over time. Many African countries have over the years been hubs of internal and external migration, which is mostly driven by political, social, economic or agricultural causes. In most of these countries, migration has been precipitated by numerous and lengthy civil wars. An example is Africa’s newest country, South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011. It has suffered civil war since 2013, but even before that the territory experienced conflict from 1972 to 2005. This caused many of its people to migrate to other countries, including to its southern neighbour, Uganda (Daly and Rolandsen 2016).

E. Lubinga (B) Department of Strategic Communication, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_10

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Statistics indicate that Uganda hosts 1.1 million refugees, mostly from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the largest number for any country in Africa and the third largest number of any country in the world. The large influx into Uganda is courtesy of the country having one of the world’s most progressive refugee policies (Action Against Hunger 2018), despite the fact that Uganda is a small country with a total land area of only 199,810 km2 (77,147 sq. miles) and its own large population of over 45 million (United Nations 2019). Apart from inward migration, there is a high level of internal migration. Kampala is the economic, judicial, executive, religious and legislative centre of the country. Because of this, many citizens are moving to Kampala, specifically to seek work. The concentration of state functions in Kampala means that the rest of the country has fewer opportunities for development. However, the efforts by Ugandan citizens to engage in a variety of trades in Kampala are being met by considerable competition from Chinese investors who often source their goods from their home country. Chinese traders are perceived by their Ugandan counterparts to be undercutting trade, not contributing to the local economy and being interested in short-term gain only (Warmerdam and van Dijk 2016). In this chapter, I attempt to address the following questions: • In what way have Ugandan government officials created perceptions that they protect Chinese investors at the expense of their own citizens? • How do the measures introduced by the Ugandan government to protect Chinese investors, including policy measures, security and physical infrastructure, contribute to xenophobic sentiments against the Chinese by Ugandan citizens?

The Uganda Investment Code Act (1991) In 1991, the government introduced the Uganda Investment Code Act. It was ostensibly geared to growing the economy by providing more favourable conditions for local and foreign investment in the country. Among others, Section 27 of the act allows for the protection of foreign investments against compulsory acquisition, or the free transfer of the compensation proceeds should such acquisition in fact occur (UN Conference on Trade and Development 2013). The Act is significant; it has been

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responsible for attracting foreign investors, including Chinese investors, who are at the epicentre of xenophobic utterances in Uganda. Over the years, minor social discord has arisen between some Ugandans and asylum seekers from South Sudan, Somalia, the DRC, Burundi and Rwanda (Nash 2016) but has never erupted in or been cited as a source of public protest. However, the situation concerning the Chinese is different. While it can be argued that the introduction of the investment code was necessary for the growth of Uganda’s economy, three pertinent questions arise. The first relates to whether the Act could have been promulgated to avert a repeat of the forceful emigration in just 90 days of Asian, mostly Indian, businessmen and their families from Uganda by former President Idi Amin in 1972. As Hundle (2018) argues, while the expulsion was a critical (once-off) event, it has created an ongoing presence of an unresolved historical era. One of the dominant narratives of the current National Resistance Movement government is that Uganda’s underdevelopment stems from the ‘misguided’ policies of Idi Amin that culminated in the expulsion of the Asian middle class. Hundle (2018, p. 462) argues that the expulsion unleashed: … ethnic-based violence, patronage and the expansion of the illegal economy (magendo in Kiswahili) … this Ugandan “underdevelopment” is also characterised by a generalised breakdown of the moral character of the Ugandan citizenry, their deviant behaviour and a looting or “getting things for free” mentality among political elites, and their patronage networks (particularly those who benefitted by receiving Asian property …

The Act may thus appear to serve as a remedy to the 1972 event by the government trying to woo businesspeople of Asian descent back to the country. However, the intention of introducing the Act may be misconstrued by some to be the redemption of the ‘depraved Ugandan national moral fibre’ that was previously eroded by the freely available ill-gotten gains following the 1972 expulsion. Conversely, businesspeople of Asian descent may inadvertently be portrayed as ‘saviours’ of Uganda: once crucified for their economic success, now ‘resurrected’ and responsible for the country’s redemption. It is a view that is backed by the protection offered by the Act and by other measures that were put into place by President Museveni’s government, such as the return of buildings and other previously owned property to returning Indian families.

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A second pertinent question is whether one of the rationales for passing the Uganda Investment Code Act was to assuage growing citizen resentment of foreign investors, particularly the Chinese, who were given carte blanche legal access to invest in the country while local entrepreneurs remained unacknowledged. Some authors argue that the 1972 expulsion narrative marginalises and neglects Ugandan traders, thereby ignoring a sizeable part of the domestic market as symbolised by the explosion of the informal economy (Goodfellow and Titeca 2012) and subsistence farming in rural and urban Uganda. Hundle (2018) notes that ‘South Asians continue to be cast as model economic entrepreneurs, businessmen and “drivers” of the national economy (and therefore politically ineffectual citizens), while indigenous Africans’ capacity for contributing to national development is consistently devalued and marginalised’. A third question is whether investors of Asian descent, who are ‘courted’ and protected by the investment code, use their ‘pedestalled’ position to alienate themselves from Ugandan citizens in a quest to concretise their (new) identity by creating isolated communities of their own. The pedestalled position is driven by the development vision of a government that relies heavily on a direct foreign investment model. This model allows Asian investors to be based in the country and help resuscitate the economy, but not to participate in other facets of life in Uganda, especially politics. As Hundle (2018) asserts, Ugandan Indian men who remained in the country during the 1970s developed ‘depoliticised subjectivities’ and ‘clientelist’ relations with the state.

Government Incentives and Chinese Investment in Uganda The Ugandan government has put incentives into place to attract Chinese investors. For example, to fast track development, Uganda adopted China’s industrial park model, which has involved giving Chinese investors land for the establishment of such parks (Ssekandi 2018). One of Uganda’s gazetted forests, Namanve Central Forest Reserve, which was originally 3200 hectares in extent, had 400 hectares degazetted. The land was given to the Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) for the purpose of creating the Mukono Industrial Park. Investors were able to apply for plots at no cost as long as they presented evidence of an investment threshold of US$250,000 (Kiwawulo 2018). About 431 investors applied for land, many of whom were forced to pay for it, despite the ‘free-land’

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promise, and 277 bids were accepted. Of these, 75 companies have since lost their allocated plots owing to failure to develop them (Kiwawulo 2018). The Mukono Industrial Park is owned by the Chinese Tian Tang Group, which by September 2018 had invested US$46 million in the park’s development. Similar Chinese-owned industrial parks have been set up in three other districts in Uganda, namely in Mbale, Tororo and Nakaseke. The latter has a value of US$600 million and is set to create employment for 16,000 people by 2025. An envisaged 22 Chinese-owned parks are meant to be built all over the country (Ssekandi 2018). A US$220 million Kehong China-Uganda Agricultural Industrial Park was launched in April 2016. By 2019, China was Uganda’s largest direct foreign investor, followed by India. Over the past decade, Beijing has lent over $3 billion to the 34-year-old Museveni government. These loans were partly used to foot the bills of Chinese companies constructing the $580 million expressway between Entebbe airport and Kampala, and a $2.2 billion dam on the White Nile. The money also funded construction of the president’s office, which is equipped with Chinese furniture and was unveiled by China’s deputy premier at the time (Hruby 2018). Yet, the government does not appear to view the country’s trade relations with China as being unequal or imbalanced and strongly believes in expanding the relations. In 2017, Uganda’s minister of finance, planning and economic development, Matia Kasaija, enthused about trade between Uganda and China having grown to almost US$933 million. Noteworthy in this context is that a breakdown shows that while Chinese exports to Uganda amounted to just over US$875 million, Uganda exported a mere US$58 million to China. This represents a vastly unequal trade relationship between the two countries (Uganda–China Economic, Investment and Trade Cooperation 2017). It would be unrealistic for anyone to expect an equal trade relationship between the two countries, given that China’s economy is huge compared to that of Uganda, which is one of the poorest countries globally. Still, Uganda aspires to develop its manufacturing industry and export the products. Of the glaring ‘imbalance’ of trade between the two countries, minister Kasaija said: ‘I am hopeful that the balance of trade between China and Uganda will register a favourable trend for the benefit of the two countries in the medium and long term’ (Uganda–China Economic, Investment and Trade Cooperation 2017). But the measures instituted to encourage investment have caused critics to question whether Uganda

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will be able to service the loans to China (Musisi 2018; Ssebwami 2018). Minister Kasaija has expressed confidence that the government can service the Chinese loans: China taking over assets? I don’t know. I have heard, but in Uganda, I have told you, as long as some of us are still in charge, unless there is some catastrophe which I don’t really see at all that will make this economy going behind, I want to assure you the economy is now on [track]. And it is possible, am talking about China taking over assets, they can do it elsewhere but here I don’t think they can. (The Observer 2019)

Apart from pesky areas such as the trade in (petty) merchandise, big projects such as road construction have raised questions about Chinese business interests being placed above those of Ugandans. Chinese road contractors have competed with and won tenders against the Uganda National Roads Authority, even though some argue that this space has not been vacant. The construction space has recently been vacated by European and American firms whose services are now deemed to be too expensive (Musisi 2018). However, in 2019 there have been indications that the intentions of Chinese investors in Uganda appear to have morphed from being purely economic to possibly including political aspirations. A Chinese microblogging site, Sina Weibo, indicated that a number of Chinese investors and employees intend to start lobbying President Museveni to have their own semi-autonomous district in Uganda. The ‘Chinese’ district, if approved, would have its own (Chinese) mayor, members of parliament and even a budget allocation (The Zambian Observer 2018).

Xenophobia in Uganda The term ‘xenophobia’ has been recently popularised on the continent by widespread anti-migrant protests that have flared up intermittently in South Africa from 2005 onwards. It relates to a strong dislike of migrants of African origin, including but not exclusive to Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Somalis and Congolese who appear to have migrated to the country in greater numbers than citizens of other African countries (Hickel 2014; Valji 2003). The xenophobic situation involving Chinese investors in Uganda contrasts with that of South Africa, where, for example, as outlined in

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studies, state and public narratives are complicit in portraying African migrants as foreigners and criminals (Crush et al. 2008). Tagwirei (2016) argues that South African media reports seem to link foreignness and criminality with utterances made by government officials and citizens. It is through the labels of ‘foreigner’ and ‘criminal’ that African migrants in South Africa are co-opted into a politically charged discourse that serves to ‘Other’ them from South African citizens (Tagwirei 2016, p. 193). As xenophobia refers to the fear of ‘the Other’—any ‘Other’—some argue that South Africa, rather than xenophobia, experiences Afrophobia, the fear of a specific Other, namely black Africans from the rest of the continent (Tshaka 2016). Where the situation in Uganda differs is that the government often acts as the defender and protector of Chinese investors, even though citizens and opposition politicians publicly express their dissatisfaction with them. The government’s gesture to install special measures to protect Chinese investors and Chinese industrial parks from criminal attacks that have occurred over a long time, as in 2018, left Ugandans wondering why government was not looking after its citizens in the same way (GoloobaMutebi 2018). Chinese investors have been accused of squeezing local producers out of the market by increasing competition, using local contacts to obtain government contracts (Allen and Baguma 2012), consuming scarce resources such as water and power, and contributing to an increase in local unemployment. Warmerdam and Van Dijk (2016, p. 134) pose the question whether the Ugandan government ‘can find a way to balance its interests in its engagement with China yet maximise the benefits to Ugandan citizens, Uganda’s socio-economic development and the interests of the Ugandan elite’. Some Ugandan government officials have defended the Chinese presence in the country in public statements. The government’s Media Centre head Ofwono Opondo in 2016 said: ‘These days, with bogus and parochial nationalism being spewed and hyped mainly by opposition elements, social cynics and, I dare say, floundering investors, it is increasingly becoming fashionable to blame foreigners, especially Indians and Chinese for Uganda’s perceived woes.’ This discussion could be indicative of a paradox of perspectives towards Chinese investors. For both the Ugandan government and the country’s citizens, Chinese investors represent the ‘Other’, even though a divergence in perspectives exists as regards the ‘utility’ of the ‘outside

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others’. Chinese investors ‘have owned otherness’ by creating communities within Uganda and possibly soliciting own legislative representation (The Zambian Observer 2018).

Chinese Presence and Othering Practices in Uganda Apart from the economic sphere, the social and cultural landscape of Uganda has been transformed by the influx of Chinese businesspeople over the past decade. Around the beginning of the 1990s, a small group of Chinese businesspeople came to Uganda. The Fang Fang Group of businesswoman Fang Min established a Chinese restaurant in Kampala and five years later a hotel. Since then, the Chinese migrant population has grown to such an extent that Mandarin has been introduced to Uganda’s educational curriculum in 20 schools and Makerere University has started a pilot Chinese language course with plans to import Chinese lecturers to assist with the project (Ssebwami 2018). Previously, apart from indigenous languages, only English, French and Swahili were taught. Officially, 458 business licences were issued to Chinese businesspeople by the UIA from 2007 to 2017 (Uganda-China Economic, Investment and Trade Cooperation Forum 2017). Former UIA executive director Jolly Kaguhangire acknowledged that ‘sometimes some Chinese who claim to have expertise do not turn out to be right. We have to carry out due diligence to make sure we get the right investors’. The Chinese Enterprises Chamber of Commerce in Uganda was founded in 2009 and had 98 registered members by 2017. In that year, the number of Chinese living in the country was estimated at between 10,000 and 50,000 people (Oketch 2017) but there seems to be no official record of the total number of Chinese businesspeople currently residing in the country. A Chinese businessman, Wei Kun, has claimed that money changes hands with government officials and becomes untraceable, which suggests that there may be a number of undocumented Chinese people engaged in trade in the country (Associated Press 2015). Several Ugandans, especially traders, indicate that most Chinese ‘investors’ who migrate to the country ‘claim’ to be serious investors but ultimately set up business in petty trade. It is sentiments such as these that culminated in public protests in July 2011 and again in July 2018, while simmering in between, with locals demanding that Chinese should

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leave Uganda. Chinese businesspeople have indeed invested in Uganda, with legal backing by the Ugandan government, yet even they do not seem to have received complete acceptance by Ugandans. It may be because Chinese people are so culturally distinct and visibly different from what is understood to be the Ugandan self that they seem to be objectified in ‘otherness’. Nell (2009, p. 234) cites three factors that facilitate xenophobic intolerance: • Level of exposure to strangers, with less exposure likely to increase intolerance in a community. • Cultural factors, including identity and nationalism, with citizens exhibiting intolerance to uphold national identity. • Material or economic factors related to job opportunities and available resources. Researchers have argued that perceptions prevailing in many societies that foreign migrants take employment opportunities from local citizens are often shrouded in unproven myths (Kalitanyi and Visser 2010; Maistry 2015; Valji 2003). The Chinese-Ugandan trader relations that led to protests differ from those in, for example, Ghana, where Chinese merchants appear to enjoy complementary, collaborative and competitive relationships with local traders (Dankwah and Valenta 2019). Xenophobia, ‘Othering’ and ‘Otherness’ The objectives of my study were three-fold, namely to: • Highlight xenophobic narratives in Uganda as portrayed in online Ugandan newspapers and magazines. • Interrogate perceptions that Uganda government officials protect Chinese investors at the cost of Ugandans, as reflected in online newspapers and magazines. • Examine how the Uganda government’s enablement of Chinese investors contributes to xenophobic sentiments against them, as shown in online newspapers and magazines. Selected conceptual dimensions of otherness relevant to the topic of this paper are discussed to provide insight into the subject. Barnhill (2010) views ‘objectified otherness’ as that which involves treating the ‘Other’ as

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a mere object, with an inability or refusal to accept the Other as a ‘subject’ as part of one’s community of humans. In the complex Sino-Ugandan relationship, the notion of objectified ‘Otherness’ is applied by the Chinese upon Ugandans and vice versa. For, even though it is generally agreed that a Chinese presence in many African countries implies investment and the creation of employment, Chinese employers ‘are known to bark at their employees’ (Choksi and Wall 2016). Few Chinese view Africa as their home, even if they may have spent most of their lives on the continent. Chinese in Africa have almost exclusively got Chinese friends with whom they share a conservative culture that is closed to outsiders (Chang and Yuan 2013, p. 12). Whether embedded in perceptions by Ugandans towards the Chinese on the one hand, or by the Chinese towards Ugandans on the other, ‘Otherness’ produces a sense of isolation, apartness, disconnectedness and alienation, including a feeling of being on the edge, the margin or on the periphery (Madrid 1998). ‘Otherness’ views the ‘Other’ through ‘difference and separation’, whereby the Other is not like ‘Us’—the dominant group/view within what is possibly a minority group (Barnhill 2010). There is an inability by the dominant group to see similarity or continuity. In this context, some Ugandans view Chinese businesspeople as ‘parasites’ whose presence in the country benefits them to the disadvantage of locals. Chinese entrepreneurs are viewed as a society of small bosses, owners of gaming parlours, restaurants, supermarkets and travel agencies that stand firmly on the shoulders of an underclass, namely Ugandans who work as translators, cooks, waiters, cleaners, guards and assistants (Choksi and Wall 2016). The tendency by many Chinese businesspeople to favour working in exclusion in other countries is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to Uganda. Globally, one is sure to find a ‘China City’, ‘China Town’ or ‘China Mall’ in metropoles, cities and major towns (Kuo 2017). Perhaps, apart from the ease of doing business, it serves to anchor Chinese business and cultural identity in a new environment. As elsewhere, in Uganda a number of dominant cultural narratives have arisen, such as perceptions that marriages between Ugandans and Chinese are exploitative, an attempt by the latter to gain access to the country (Kuo 2016). In 2016, senior immigration officials from the Ugandan Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control and UIA officials were summoned to appear before the Parliamentary Committee of Trade and Investment to explain why Chinese were engaging in petty trade and

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were ‘crowding’ out Ugandans when according to law they should only be allowed into the country to bring scarce skills. They responded in part by claiming that the Chinese were marrying Ugandan women to obtain residence permits (NTV 2016). While ‘Othering’ serves to mark and name those who are thought to be different from oneself, it is also a process by which people construct their own identities in reference to others (Johnson et al. 2004). Some persons of Chinese origin, even when married to Ugandans, are accused of differentiating themselves by not bothering to adjust to Ugandan culture. For instance, Yuan Zhongshun, who is married to a Ugandan and has lived in the country since the early 1990s, said that she has never tried to adhere to Ugandan society’s expectations of women, such as wives kneeling before their husbands when serving them food, as a sign of respect. ‘I had no interest in that’, she said. ‘Of course, other people here look at you strangely and you feel out of place, but my husband doesn’t care. He knows to leave me alone with these things’ (Hruby 2018). Johnson et al. (2004, p. 254) argue that by talking about individuals or groups as the Other magnifies and enforces projections of apparent difference from oneself. But ‘Otherness’ is also permanently sealed by physical appearance, skin colour, ways of speaking and dressing or of doing by the Other (Ndhlovu 2013; Piller 2016). ‘Othering’ extends to the children of mixed marriages, although in a seemingly positive way. Some Ugandans view being married to a Chinese person as having some prestige. Offspring of Sino-Ugandan marriages, who are lighter skinned, enjoy being viewed as more privileged than the average Ugandan. A cross-cultural SinoUgandan couple says: ‘In Uganda, the children [from these marriages] don’t stand out, and if they are noticed, they’re often praised for having a lighter skin’ (Hruby 2018). This is another feature of otherness. ‘Otherness’ is ‘simplified’ when there is an inability or a refusal to see the differences among members of the ‘Other’ group (Barnhill 2010). In the case of Uganda, although there are Chinese investors who are genuine and who have contributed to the growth of the country, many Ugandans generalise and view all the Chinese people resident in the country as corporately exploitative. Opondo (2016) points out that while it is common for politicians to unfairly castigate Chinese and Indians for engaging in so-called petty trade, such petty trade, in his opinion, was untapped until foreigners came. He sarcastically alludes to failure by Ugandans to develop trade in the country. ‘It is necessary to ask these

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“wonderful” members of parliament where the indigenous Ugandans were, not to see that from our millet, cassava and bananas, kabalagala (pancakes) or delicious ground-nuts could be made and packed for the supermarket shelves!’ Otherness ‘devalues’ the Other as having only instrumental value to ‘us’, the dominant group (Barnhill 2010). Chinese presence in the country is actively sought and cultivated by government for the singular purpose of growing the economy. In 2017, minister Matia Kasaija said that the country aspired to develop its manufacturing component by producing more products and exporting them with the support of China (Uganda-China Economic, Investment and Trade Cooperation Forum 2017). The minister for investment and privatisation in the ministry of finance, Evelyn Anite, confirmed that the Chinese presence was instrumental to the development of the country (Athumani 2017). Otherness is ‘objectified’ with the Other treated as a mere object (Barnhill 2010). In the case of Uganda, the government clearly views Chinese, as well as Indian investors, as tools, objects necessary to facilitating the country’s economic growth. The privileges that have been offered to them, exemplified and perpetuated by the Investment Act, have had a singular intention—facilitation of the growth of the Ugandan economy through the enablement of Asian businessmen to engage in trade. While the move may appear to be explicitly positive, the Chinese are objectified. They are useful for growing the economy but are not able to become meaningful and holistic citizens of the country, and are unable to participate in executive, judiciary and legislative functions as is the right of the citizens of any country.

Othering Practices and Perceptions Data was sourced from news reports in four local and three continental online newspapers and two magazines. Most stories were identified using an online search based on the keywords ‘xenophobia in Uganda’. Others were identified from links embedded in the searched stories. The local online newspapers included: New Vision, Daily Monitor, The Observer and PML Daily. African newspapers included two from Kenya, The East African and Daily Nation, and one from Zambia, The Zambian Observer. Magazines included The Vice and Quartz Africa. The period of publication ranged from 2011 to 2019. Most of the stories were hard news stories and covered specific events such as protests, the anniversary of

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the 1972 Asian expulsion, the immigration officials’ meeting with the parliamentary committee, and attacks on Chinese investors.

Findings and Discussion Chinese Victims Versus Ugandan Villains Some media have positioned Chinese businesspeople who are involved in bribing Ugandan officials as victims, with the Ugandans with whom they are transacting portrayed as the villains. A New Vision story about how Chinese investors are paying hefty bribes to Ugandans to stay in the country or secure meetings with President Museveni to report ‘thieving’ government officials has the headline: ‘How the Ugandan mafia is stealing from Chinese investors’ (Kiwawulo 2018). Whereas both parties are often considered complicit in crime, here the Chinese are portrayed as the injured party. ‘Chinese investors have reportedly been paying crooked government officials to meet the President … Chinese investors pay between US$20,000 and US$50,000 to meet the President’ (Kiwawulo 2018). Chinese investors, in the interest of establishing businesses without having problems, work with the wrong people. ‘The mafias contact the Chinese investors in the name of helping them overcome government bureaucracy before fleecing them’ (Kiwawulo 2018). Chinese businessman Wei Kun in 2015 reportedly paid government officials a total of US$8000 over four months to avoid having his business closed (Associated Press 2015).1 Rhetoric and Preferential Treatment by Government Officials Pronouncements by government officials that single out and appear to favour Chinese investors over Ugandans have the potential of sparking strong dislike or even hatred by citizens, who cannot enjoy the same privileges afforded to non-citizens in their motherland. For example, President Museveni, while addressing a group of 120 Chinese investors on 14 November 2018 following the killing of two Chinese nationals by suspected employees and concerns that security guards may have facilitated robberies at Chinese businesses, announced increased security patrols and CCTV installations at Chinese industrial parks: ‘I have ordered “an army-ordered operation” in all industrial parks. All security organs, including local security guards, will be treated like soldiers. If one loses

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a gun, he/she will have to face a court martial with a penalty of either a seven-year imprisonment or death by execution’ (New Vision 2018). The order to deploy troops to protect Chinese businesses from robberies raised concerns about whether Ugandan businesses should not be protected by their government as well, given that they were facing the same spate of crime. President Museveni reassured Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zhu Qiang that there would be permanent security at industrial parks and factories: ‘Some thugs have been attacking Chinese investors, but we shall defeat them … Tell the government of China that I am personally handling this issue’ (Wandera 2018a). During the 2017 protests, traders expressed dissatisfaction about the fact that government offered tax privileges to Chinese investors, which enabled them to price their goods lower than Ugandan traders could (Ngugi 2017). The Negative Portrayal of Chinese Investors A senior immigration official from Uganda’s Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control claimed there was an increase in convenience and fake marriages between Chinese and Ugandans so that the Chinese partners could obtain citizenship and continue running their businesses as bona fide citizens. ‘… we have many who are marrying and even producing (sic). Our Ugandan women are good, they are good at accepting to produce [sic] with these men. By the time they come to us they have three children and are asking for facilities’ (NTV 2016). Such rhetoric portrays Chinese investors in relationships with Ugandans as disingenuous and manipulative in their quest to achieve personal gains, while the Ugandan women are portrayed as a victims of such machinations, albeit willing ones. As NTV reported, ‘We have a gap in the law which the Chinese exploit. We need stronger laws that make it more difficult. Three years is short [to prove whether a Chinese married to a Ugandan citizen is genuine and is in the relationship for the long run]’ (NTV 2016). Not all associations between the two nationalities are as long lasting as hoped for. The East African (2017) reported that some Ugandan women are stranded with children fathered by Chinese workers, who promise to marry and take them to China but then disappear. ‘In Uganda’s Oyam District, for instance, over a dozen women are struggling to raise children sired by Chinese nationals after the fathers abandoned them’ (The East African 2017).

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Retribution by Ugandans Dissatisfaction by some Ugandans over their treatment by Chinese bosses appears to translate into retribution. Some staff members of a company where a robbery occurred said the arrogance of their boss could be leading them into trouble: ‘These people are arrogant to us, the workers. They do not consider our humanity as important, that is why some of the staff have been conniving with the wrong elements to harm them. You can trace that in most of the reported cases’ (Wandera 2018b). In 2017, the chairman of the Kampala Capital City Traders Association, Everest Kayondo, said that it was time the government barred foreigners from petty trade (Athumani 2017).2 Politicians such as the member of parliament for the then Kampala Central district, Patrick Nsamba, joined the demonstration by traders to champion their cause. He said: ‘We have started a campaign to find out how some of these Chinese came here. Parliament did not allow me to push for a bill that seeks to regulate these investors. I explained that we have to develop a law that makes certain jobs illegal for foreign investors’ (Twaha 2017). By allegedly keeping large sums of cash on their premises, Chinese investors are believed to render themselves vulnerable to attacks by local criminals. Between October and November 2018, about 12 Chinese businesses experienced attacks by armed robbers (Olukya 2018).3 Following such incidences, Chinese investors threatened to leave the country if government did not guarantee their security (Olukya 2018; Wandera 2018c). Experiences of Ugandans Working for Chinese Investors A link exists between otherness and racism, with ‘Othering’ practices often manifesting themselves in racist behaviour (Johnson et al. 2004). The Chinese appear to have failed to blend in and live peaceably with Ugandans, with many Ugandans claiming harassment and mistreatment at the hands of Chinese employers who use racist language (The Zambian Observer 2018). In 2017, over 400 Ugandan workers at a Chinese-owned construction company staged a strike. They were protesting against sexual harassment (Mukhaye and Ndhaye 2017) by Chinese managers and poor pay of less than US$1 per day (New Vision 2015), maltreatment, and long working hours (Ngugi 2017). Other workers accused and sued their Chinese employers for discrimination after they were forced to take

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HIV/AIDS tests and were fired when found to be positive (Thomson Reuters Foundation 2017).

Conclusion While authors like MacNaughton et al. (2009) argue that ‘Othering’ as a process often derives from hierarchical ‘us’ and ‘them’ thinking, in which ‘them’ is seen through negative stereotypes, the Ugandan status quo seems to reflect a reciprocity in ‘Othering’ and being othered. The Chinese are seen through positive stereotypes, especially by government officials who are courting foreign investment. This, among others, emboldens Chinese investors to threaten to leave the country if the government does not provide guaranteed security (Olukya 2018; Wandera 2018c). It could also be that extreme measures by the Ugandan government to protect Chinese nationals are in fact part of a strategy to maintain its grip on power (Golooba-Mutebi 2018). Yet other government officials, such as those from the Department of Immigration and the UIA, are perceived to be facilitating illegal entry by Chinese traders for self-gain, in the process negating opportunities by Ugandans themselves to earn a living through trade. Even if immigration laws were strengthened as a measure to weed out illegitimate Chinese immigrants, as Nandala-Mafabi (2018) points out, government officials may be incapable of applying them properly because of their compromised authority brought about by previous corruption. It is debatable whether the government has strategies in place to manage the bi-directional ‘Othering’ between Ugandans and the Chinese immigrants. The measures that have been put into place by the government appear to facilitate a long-term stay by Chinese investors. Government would need to put into place strategies to manage current practices that elevate Chinese investors over their Ugandan counterparts and to ensure that citizens benefit as well. Otherwise, retaliatory criminal acts may escalate. While the Ugandan government may now not expel Chinese investors, as was the case with Indians in 1972, the Chinese may themselves leave if the investment climate does not remain conducive.

Notes 1. Associated Press (2015, June 24). Chinese merchants tread warily in Uganda: while meeting huge demand for cheap goods, they are

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targets of resentment and extortion. South China Morning Post. Available at https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/1825431/ chinese-merchants-tread-warily-uganda#. Accessed 21 May 2020. 2. Athumani, A. (2017, April 26). Tensions deepen over Chinese traders in Uganda. Voice of America. Available at https://www.voanews.com/africa/ tensions-deepen-over-chinese-traders-uganda. . Accessed 21 May 2020. 3. Olukya, G. (2018, November 27). Chinese in Uganda “under threat” after spate of armed robberies. South China Morning Post. Available at https://www.scmp.com/news/world/africa/article/2175014/chi nese-uganda-under-threat-after-spate-armed-robberies. Accessed 12 March 2019.

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Daly, M. W., & Rolandsen, Ø. H. (2016). A history of South Sudan: From slavery to independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dankwah, K. O., & Valenta, M. (2019). Chinese entrepreneurial migrants in Ghana: Socioeconomic impacts and Ghanaian trader attitudes. Journal of Modern African Studies, 57 (1), 1–29. Goodfellow, T., & Titeca, K. (2012). Presidential intervention and the changing politics of survival in Kampala’s informal economy. Cities, 29(4), 264–270. Golooba-Mutebi, F. (2018, November 20). Uganda can protect Chinese investors but not its own citizens. The East African. Available at https:// www.theeastafrican.co.ke/oped/comment/Uganda-can-protect-Chineseinvestors-but-not-its-own-citizens/434750-4860334-fe1i42/index.html. Accessed 19 March 2019. Hickel, J. (2014). ‘Xenophobia’ in South Africa: Order, chaos and the moral economy of witchcraft. Cultural Anthropology, 29(1), 103–127. Hruby, D. (2018). Romance without borders: As China grows its influence in Uganda, one cross-cultural couple raises a family. Available at https://www.six thtone.com/news/1002209/romance-without-borders. Accessed 16 March 2019. Hundle, A. K. (2018). 1970s Uganda: Past, present, future. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 53(3), 455–475. Johnson, J. L., Bottorff, J. L., Browne, A. J., Grewal, S., Hilton, B. A., & Clarke, H. (2004). Othering and being othered in the context of health care services. Health Communication, 16(2), 253–271. Kalitanyi, V., & Visser, K. (2010). African immigrants in South Africa: Job takers or creators? South African Journal of Economics and Management Sciences, 13(4), 376–390. Kiwawulo, C. (2018, November 27). How the Ugandan Mafia is stealing from Chinese investors. New Vision. Available at https://www.newvision. co.ug/new_vision/news/1490276/ugandan-mafia-stealing-chinese-investors. Accessed 16 March 2019. Kuo, L. (2016, December 7). Uganda is worried about the number of Chinese men marrying their women. Quartz Africa. Available at https://qz.com/africa/857156/uganda-is-worried-about-the-number-ofchinese-men-marrying-their-women. Accessed 16 March 2019. Kuo, L. (2017, April 30). Chinese migrants have changed the face of South Africa. Now they’re leaving. Quartz Africa. Available at https://qz.com/ africa/940619/chinese-traders-changed-south-africa-now-theyre-leaving. Accessed 14 March 2019. MacNaughton, G., Davis, K., & Smith, K. (2009). Exploring ‘race-identities’ with young children: Making politics visible. In G. MacNaughton & K. Davis (Eds.), Race and early childhood education: An international approach to identity, politics and pedagogy (pp. 31–47). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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CHAPTER 11

Feminisation of Migration: A Thematic Analysis of News Media Texts About Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa Joanah Gadzikwa and Nicola-Jane Jones

Introduction We live in unprecedented times of global human migration. The ease with which people are relocating to other countries in search of greener pastures, either because they are caught up in wars or political instability, or as a result of poverty and other reasons, is attributed to improvements in the infrastructure of globalisation. South Africa and Zimbabwe share a long history of human exchange stemming from the fact that colonially imposed political boundaries divide a people that share ethnic and cultural backgrounds. One example is a similarity of languages, with Ndebele, isiZulu and Tsonga being spoken in both countries. Members of the same clan are even split between the two countries.

J. Gadzikwa (B) The Independent Institute of Education, Monash South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] N.-J. Jones University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_11

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While the reasons for Zimbabwean migration have changed over time, it is undisputed that there are more immigrants of Zimbabwean origin living in South Africa than the other way round. For economic reasons, men were previously more migratory than women (Ranga 2015; Crush and Tevera 2010). However, a recent trend, especially following the post-2000 politically induced economic downturn in Zimbabwe, has been an increase in the number of Zimbabwean female migrants to South Africa (Pasura 2008; Gouws 2010; Ranga 2015; Hungwe 2015), resulting in terms like the feminisation of migration being coined. These developments require an exploration of the dynamics of female migration. There is no doubt that the media have been central to documenting stories about migrants. News about migrants in South Africa makes international headlines, especially when it deals with xenophobic violence and attacks on non-South African citizens. Extant literature has already explored the relationship between the South African media and Zimbabwean migrants (Neocosmos 2008; Crush 2000; Danso and McDonald 2001; Hussein and Hitomi 2014; Matsinhe 2011; Landau 2006; Nyamnjoh 2006; Asakitikpi and Gadzikwa 2015). However, none of these studies has specifically looked at this relationship as it concerns women. It is this gap in the literature that our study attempted to fill. The feminisation of migration, which is described by Lipszyc (2004) as a mass movement of female migrants, is a phenomenon that calls for specific interrogation since women’s subjectivities in the hosts’ destinations are likely to be unique. In this regard, it was difficult to shy away from the feminist theory, particularly feminist literary criticism, as a lens to make sense of the themes. Feminist theory has been primarily concerned with the oppression of women globally. However, following a grand theoretical narrative stemming from Marxism, some major shifts and disintegrations have taken place. One such shift has been the move from generalisation to particularisation to contextualise women’s experiences (Carlson 2011). In this study, feminist theory is taken to mean the account of women’s experiences in a context. It is the focus on women’s experiences, oppressed or free, that brought this writing to be positioned within feminist literary criticism, which examines the productive power of language that socially constructs gender through language and symbols. The theory is concerned with writings about women. Simone de Beauvoir’s argument (cited in Plain and Sellers 2011, p. 11) that ‘one is not born a woman’ provided the basis for feminist literary criticism especially.

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Through language, society can construct ideas of who should be regarded as a woman. Academic feminism continues to draw insights from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (de Beauvoir 1989), particularly her discussion of difference feminism as opposed to equality feminism (Changfoot 2009). However, in this study, the concern is not with a particular brand of feminism but rather with the generative power of discourse to create a certain reality. Difference feminism with its criticism of power structures and their role in the marginalisation of women (Changfoot 2009) informed the interpretation of news media texts in this study, which is skewed to feminist literary criticism and, in particular, its concern with the manner in which cultural production reinforces the social and psychological oppression of women. As a starting point, a narrow focus on the representations of Zimbabwean women migrants by Johannesburg-based news media was used. We agree with Castells’s (2010, p. 139) ‘media politics’ notion that the media shape consciousness. The media has a relationship with both individual and group identities. News articles about Zimbabwean women migrants were extracted from five Johannesburg-based English newspapers, namely The Sowetan, The Daily Sun, Business Day, The Star and The Citizen. Stories were also retrieved from Johannesburg’s weeklies that are The Sunday Times, City Press, Sunday World, Rapport, The Mail & Guardian, Financial Mail and The Daily Sun (the Sunday edition of the tabloid). All newspapers are available online, some under a different name. For instance, The Star was accessed through its IOL website.

Methodological and Theoretical Framework The aim of this research was to identify the themes that were generated by a string of news stories found in Johannesburg headquartered newspapers on Zimbabwean women migrants. A content analysis was done to retrieve the news stories. A uniform search for the period 2012 to 2015 was performed on each website using the phrase: ‘Zimbabwean women migrants in Johannesburg’. Twenty news articles were extracted and coded before their themes were generated using the grounded theory method. The themes were then used to delineate the framework painted by the media about Zimbabwean women migrants.

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Applying the Grounded Theory Method Through Coding Central to the grounded theory method of data analysis is the coding process (Braun and Clarke 2006; Gray 2004; Babbie 2014). According to Cassell and Gillian (2004, p. 257), a code is simply ‘a label that is attached to a section of text to index it as relating to a theme or issue in the data which the researcher has identified as important to his or her interpretation’. The terms code and theme can be used interchangeably (Marks and Yardley 2004, p. 57). Bohm (2004, p. 270) defines coding as ‘the deciphering or interpretation of data and includes the naming of concepts, and also explaining and discussing them in more detail’. Codes are generated through the inductive coding of the latent content of the texts. Inductive coding requires themes or codes to be generated from the data (Braun and Clarke 2006), that is the researcher allows the data to speak for itself, without the researcher’s influence. Latent coding calls for the coder to develop themes or codes by making inferences about the underlying assumptions of the data (Braun and Clarke 2006; Ritchie et al. 2014). Codes were thus generated based on the meanings coming out of the stories. The application of the grounded theory method for the generation of themes follows systematic steps (Cresswell 2014; Babbie 2014) that are followed chronologically. This includes the creation of categories of data by grouping similar categories together, threading them together into a story, delimiting the theory and, finally, writing the theory. To generate codes from the media texts on Zimbabwean migrants, steps in the coding process described by Cresswell (2014) were followed. The researchers coded the data by reading through all the downloaded media texts and writing a summary of each text. The researchers then made a list of themes emerging from the main and subthemes of the texts. Themes were identified by finding the most appropriate descriptive word or phrase for a cluster of data. Abbreviations were assigned to the identified themes by using the first letters of the words making up the theme. Data belonging to each category was assembled under a main theme. Following the grounded theory method of data analysis, themes emerged by applying both open and axial codings. Open coding is the first level of coding in which concepts are identified through ‘conceptualising the underlying pattern of a set of empirical indicators within the data … that explains what is happening in the data’ (Bryant and Charmaz 2007,

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p. 266). At this level, the researchers categorised and sorted the manifest or what is explicit in the text, making notes on the ideas emerging from the data. These ideas were then put into categories to form a theme, with a descriptive term being assigned to the theme. Open coding also involved extracting verbatim excerpts that expressed the essence of the article from each news story. The second phase was axial coding. According to Bohm (2004, p. 272), ‘axial coding is applied in the middle or later stages of an analysis’. He goes on to explain that axial coding is mainly applied to short textual segments. In this phase, the researchers identified connections in themes by looking at the segments assigned codes. Some themes were collapsed, while others were grouped together under a main theme. Baxter and Babbie (2005) argue that identified themes should possess a heuristic value. This can only be achieved by the codes and themes being grouped together (Babbie 2014). From the manifest or explicit meanings of the content, the researchers then coded the latent or implied meanings of the news texts. According to Babbie (2014, p. 346), latent coding calls for the researchers to view the ‘underlying meaning’ of the communication and make a subjective assessment with regard to assigning names to the themes and the codes. While both these are a result of the researcher’s own interpretation of the texts, they were generated by closely examining the texts for their denotational significations, achieving an analysis that is likely to be free of bias in the main. This does not necessarily mean that another coder or interpreter would come up with the same themes and codes. Five main themes emerged from the corpus of news articles retrieved from the news websites, namely victimhood and vulnerability, institutionalised xenophobia, liminal existence, prostitution and criminalisation of migration. In this chapter, we discuss the two major themes that emerged, victimhood and vulnerability, and institutionalised xenophobia. These themes were selected because of their overreaching nature as they also touch on the themes that were excluded. For instance, references to criminalisation of migration were found in institutionalised xenophobia. The main subthemes and the codes discussed in this chapter are presented in Table 11.1.

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Table 11.1 Themes Identified and codes used

Main theme

Subthemes

Victimhood and vulnerability

Codes VV

Victims of sexual violence Vulnerability to destitution Losing their children to baby-snatchers Single parenthood Vulnerability to emotional turmoil Poverty, hunger and starvation Liminal existence

VSV VD

Exclusion from health care Hate speech Threats of arrest and deportation

EH

Institutionalised xenophobia

LCBS SP VET PHS LE IX

HS TAD

Victimhood and Vulnerability The theme of victimhood and vulnerability of Zimbabwean women migrants in South Africa was explored quite extensively in the media texts extracted. Victimhood and vulnerabilities emerged as Zimbabwean women were represented in subthemes as victims of sexual violence, vulnerability to destitution, losing their children to baby snatchers, single parenthood, vulnerability to emotional turmoil and victims of poverty, hunger and starvation. In this corpus, the reports are so overwhelming that they reinforce and entrench specific stereotypes of victimhood and vulnerability. The main theme and its subthemes, when brought together, paint a picture of helplessness and defeat on the part of the women migrants. The texts and their manifest and latent meanings contribute to the formation of a social milieu that becomes the basis of an ascribed identity (Castells 1996, p. 3). According to Banda and Mawadza (2015), the South African media’s depictions of migrants contribute to the readers’ view and definition of the migrants. The theme of victimhood and vulnerability, together with its subthemes, gives rise to a communicative context in which both readers and the migrants define who immigrants

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are. The excerpts from the media texts listed in Table 11.2 show how Zimbabwean women migrants are represented as vulnerable victims. The representation of Zimbabwean women migrants as victims who are vulnerable when it comes to a range of institutions and individuals is reflected in the following texts. When seeking healthcare services for antenatal check-ups and delivery (Text 1): ‘Hospitals held [their] babies for ransom’ (The Star, IOL, 14 July 2015). Despite being legally entitled to receiving medical care (Text 13): ‘Xenophobia violates Health Act and migrants’ rights to care’ (Mail & Guardian, 28 November 2014), women migrants are still denied access to healthcare services. Some women manage to access the muchneeded healthcare service for safe delivery of their babies but are still depicted as vulnerable to emotional turmoil (Text 2): ‘Fears for health of deported triplets’ (The Star; IOL, 24 January 2013). The fear of deportation is always a looming shadow of the precariousness of living in a country illegally. Others are not so lucky and even complain of their babies being held to ransom or worry about their health in the face of deportation (Text 3): ‘Foreign mom’s neglect turns fatal’ (Mail & Guardian, 20 September 2013). Zimbabwean women are reported as sending warning messages on how not to live a life (Text 4): ‘High time we learnt a lesson from Zimbabwe’ (The Star; IOL, 23 October 2012). Through migration, Zimbabwean women lose their social status (Text 5): ‘Migration is a tale that knows no bounds’ (Mail & Guardian, 23 August 2013). The vulnerability of Zimbabwean women migrants is portrayed in Text 6: ‘Promise of a job ends in mom’s heartbreak’ (The Star, IOL, 5 April 2013), which describes how a South African local promised a Zimbabwean woman a job, only to disappear with her baby. Zimbabwean women migrants also fall victim to the government’s wrath in Text 7: ‘South African government declares war on Zimbabweans’ (Times Live, 10 January 2015), which reports on Zimbabweans being seen as enemies of the state and force having to be used by the South African government to quell an insurgence. In worst-case scenarios, Zimbabwean women migrants jump from the pan into the fire when they commit a crime and end up in prison. The headline in Text 8: ‘Women in prison: ignored and neglected’ (The Star, IOL, 8 March 2014) reveals how inmates, including Zimbabwean women migrants, are denied basic sanitary necessities. If not denied sanitary pads, life in prison is a squalid experience (Text 12): ‘Foreigners cooped in cage’ (Times Live, 6 May 2015). Even those who have visited the country

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Table 11.2 News excerpts on victimhood and vulnerability Number Headline

Excerpts

Text 1

Hospitals held our babies for ransom

Text 2

Fears for health of deported triplets

Text 3

Foreign mom’s neglect turns fatal

Text 4

High time we learnt a lesson from Zimbabwe

East Rand mothers allege Pholosong Hospital is withholding newborn babies from foreign mothers until they can pay for giving birth at the public hospital (VET, VV). Originally from Zimbabwe but living in Bramfischerville, Linda Mhlanga says that staff at Leratong Hospital outside Krugersdorp threatened to have her arrested in 2014 when she could not pay for the birth of her daughter (TAD, LE). The Star: IOL, 14 July, 2015 UNWANTED: Zimbabwean Chipo Chiramba is being deported from South Africa, together with her newborn triplets (TAD, LE). Chiramba had previously pleaded for a South African family to take care of her triplets, saying she would rather be separated from them than take them back with her to Zimbabwe (VET, VV). Chiramba gave birth to triplets on December 14 at Tygerberg Hospital. She entered South Africa illegally in September, after apparently being thrown out of her husband’s house in Zimbabwe (VET , VV). ‘If you are an undocumented migrant you will be turned away at the border, unless you want to apply for asylum’ (VD, VV, TAD, LE. The Star; IOL, 24 January 2013 Nurses and doctors are ‘forced’ to treat non-residents, but such care is too often perilous (EH , IX). Chenai Mushangazhike (not real name) sits on an old 25-litre paint bucket in the dark three-by-three-metre unit she rents in a derelict building in downtown Johannesburg (PHS, LE, VD, VV). The physical wounds caused by the traumatic birth of her fifth baby last year may have healed but, mentally, Mushangazhike has not recovered from the death of her newborn (VET , VV). ‘The doctors did what they could, but my baby didn’t make it. He lived for only one day’, she recalls. But Mushangazhike’s asylum-seeker documents had been stolen from her on the same day as her second baby was snatched from her arms outside of her building in 2008 (LSBS, VV). ‘I was told that replacing those documents would cost R3 000. As a person who begs for a living, I don’t have that kind of money’ (PHS, LE, VD, VV). Mail & Guardian, 20 September 2013 The bell at the gate rings and I can make out from the accent that it is a Zimbabwean woman. I ask my wife to go and attend to her. After some 15 minutes or so she comes back into the house very upset, mumbling something about it not being fair and raiding the refrigerator and cupboards for food (PHS, LE, VD, VV). I come face to face with two girls of about 15 or 16 years old, each with a baby on her back (SP, VV). It is very hot and they are sitting in the shade in the yard waiting for my wife to return (PHS, LE, VD, VV). The Star; IOL, 23 October 2012

(continued)

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Table 11.2 (continued) Number Headline Text 5

Text 6

Text 7

Text 8

Text 9

Text 10

Excerpts

Migration is a tale that knows no bounds

Migrants are represented in the mass media or in politics as groups inhabiting camps, mines or slums, as masses flooding into alien countries, or victims of mob violence (VD, VV). The personal journeys—the disappointed hopes, lost love, family quibbles, weddings and funerals, the daily experiences of hope or failure—have little public space (VET , VV). Mail & Guardian, 23 August, 2013 Promise of a Victoria Muyambo from Zimbabwe says her son was stolen by job ends in a woman who promised her a job, but disappeared with her mom’s baby at a shop in central Johannesburg (VET , LCBS, VV). heartbreak Johannesburg—Victoria Muyambo was delighted when she was offered a job as a domestic worker. She is a street beggar and had been desperate to find employment (VD, VV). The Star; IOL, 5 April 2013 South A pregnant woman crosses under a barbed wire fence, one of a African group of 20 Zimbabwean men and women who crossed the government border near Beit Bridge on March 31 and then braved the declares war flooded and crocodile-infested Limpopo River to get to South on Africa (TAD, LE). Times LIVE, 10 January 2015 Zimbabweans Women in Prisons such as Sun City do not cater for specific requirements prison: of women serving their sentences at the jail (IX). Viwe, 26, is ignored and serving a three-year sentence for defrauding Absa out of neglected R45,000 (CM). The Star; IOL, 8 March 2014 Zim couple The couple was granted a stay of 15 days each, from the want SA annual visa-free 90-day stay which applies to visiting travel ban Zimbabweans (IX). ‘On July 17, Sithobekile, who has a history reversed of cardiac related ailments, collapsed. The couple hurried for the border, more than 500 kilometers away but only arrived at the exit port after midnight’. ‘That led to our ban from South Africa as we arrived two hours after June 27 ended’, he said (TAD, LE). The Star; IOL, 30 July 2015 Zimbabwe After spending a week at the Lindela repatriation camp awaiting wants SA to deportation, Pamberi was taken by train to Musina and then keep its across the border into Zimbabwe in a police truck (TAD, LE). citizens Malayishas, Zimbabwean nationals who transport fellow (LE) citizens’ groceries and other parcels from South Africa to Zimbabwe, provided transport back to Johannesburg, said Pamberi. ‘When you see a car that flashes its lights twice you run to that car because you know that’s the one that’s safe to use’, she explained (VV, LE). Mail & Guardian, 17 May 2013

(continued)

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Table 11.2 (continued) Number Headline

Excerpts

Text 11

Desperate Zimbabwean women flock to cross-border trade despite risks

Text 12

Foreigners cooped in cage

Text 13

Xenophobia violates Health Act and migrants’ rights to care A sick system abuses its refugees Advocacy group hails NPA’s decision to probe allegations of mass rape in Zimbabwe (VSV , VV) Don’t border-jump into SA, there’s death there: Zimbabwe’s vicepresident tells pupils

Matanda, 36, was pushed to join the swelling ranks of Zimbabwean women risking rape, robbery and death as cross-border traders (SP, VV). But some never make it home. The bodies of two Zimbabwean women, who had been assaulted before being killed, were recently found in Germiston, 15 km (9 miles) east of South Africa’s capital Johannesburg (VV). ‘I will soldier on’, said Nora Sithole, 34, a single mother of three, who was robbed of her passport and over $1000 on the road last year (VV). Times Live, 21 July 2015 The Lindela Repatriation Centre, in Krugersdorp, on the West Rand, is an overpopulated Limbo. The queues of people outside the centre, friends and relatives of those detained, are long and winding. Many of them are women with babies on their backs. It appears that it is exclusively men who are held in the centre (SS, VET, VV). Times Live, 6 May 2015 Female migrants are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, exposing them to sexually transmitted infections, which makes it all the more urgent that they be able to get access to health services, according to Nkomo (VSV , VV). ‘They promised to help me and buy me food and I had nothing. I had no money to get to Johannesburg to look for work (VD, VV)’. Mail & Guardian, 28 November 2014 The government is also considering withdrawing the work and study rights of asylum seekers, leaving them far more vulnerable to destitution than before (VD, VV). Mail & Guardian, 16 March 2012 CANADIAN advocacy group AIDS-Free World remained adamant that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) would investigate allegations of a politically motivated campaign of mass rapes leading up to Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections, despite apparent mixed messages on the part of the national prosecutor (VSV , VV). ‘This kind of action gives the women of Zimbabwe who were mercilessly raped a reason to hope and believe that justice is real’ (VSV , VV), said the organisation’s co-chairman Stephen Lewis. Business Day, 27 February 2013

Text 14

Text 15

Text 16

School pupils should not try to jump the border into South Africa as they might go back ‘in a coffin carrying flowers on your chest’, said Zimbabwe’s vice-president Phelekezela Mphoko, according to a report. Mphoko said: ‘If you’re a girl, omalayitsha will detain you at their house… They’ll hire you to their friends and by the time they recoup their money you would have fallen sick and come back home in a coffin carrying flowers on your chest’ (VSV , VV). Times Live, 14 March 2015

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temporarily, on exit from South Africa, incur a travel ban for missing the deadline to exit the country for reasons beyond their control (Text 9): ‘Zim couple wants SA travel ban reversed’ (The Star, IOL, 30 July 2015). With nowhere to run to, women migrants must be content to live in limbo (Text 10): ‘Zimbabwe wants SA to keep its citizens’ (Mail & Guardian, 17 May 2013). Those who decide to retain a foothold in Zimbabwe and maintain a perpetual transnational migration lifestyle are free to do so, albeit with dire consequences as described in Text 11: ‘Desperate Zimbabwean women flock to cross-border trade despite risks’ (Times Live, 21 July 2015). Alternatively, Zimbabwean women can seek asylum in South Africa (Text 14): ‘A sick system abuses its refugees’ (Mail & Guardian, 16 March 2012). Victims of Sexual violence Female migrants are depicted as victims of sexual exploitation and sexual violence. In Text 13, this is epitomised by Ndlovu, who speaks of being ‘used by men’ (Mail & Guardian, 28 November 2014). Before that, Business Day of 27 February 2013 in an article entitled ‘Advocacy group hails NPA’s decision to probe allegations of mass rape in Zimbabwe’ reported of the mass rape of Zimbabwean women in their home country (Text 15). The perception that Zimbabwean women migrants are victims of sexual violence was even used by the vice-president of Zimbabwe to warn girls against migrating to South Africa. He is quoted in Times Live of 14 March 2015 as saying: ‘They’ll (omalayitshas – transport drivers) hire you to their friends …’ (Text 16). Vulnerability to Destitution The subtheme of vulnerability to destitution was explored, both latently and manifestly, in three of the media texts. Text 5, for example, comments on how migrants are represented in the mass media as groups of people who live in camps and slums and on the mines. The article is complemented by a photo of women, some with babies, inhabiting a makeshift shelter that resembles a public hall. Text 14 establishes a direct link between migrant vulnerability and destitution in a description of major systemic issues of the South African government’s policies ‘regarding

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work and study rights of asylum seekers’. In Text 6, this theme is epitomised by Victoria Muyambo, a mother of two, who ekes out a living by begging on the street. Losing Their Children to Baby Snatchers South Africa is a crime-riddled country. However, baby snatchers seem to be targeting women migrants for reasons not disclosed in the media texts. Text 3 reports how Chenai Mushangazhike’s baby was snatched from her arms in broad daylight. On the same day, her asylum seeker’s documentation was also stolen. It is not clear whether the theft of her identity documents was a ploy by the criminals to prevent Chenai from reporting the matter to the police, or whether the two losses were unrelated. In an unrelated incident, Text 6 reported that the baby of Victoria Muyambo, an immigrant from Zimbabwe, was snatched by her potential employer. Baby snatching is not unusual in South African society but reports such as these entrench certain ideas about women migrants. These ideas then accumulate to form codes through which the locals define migrants. Single Parenthood Single parenthood was depicted in three media texts. Text 4 reports on two young girls, estimated to be about 15 or 16 years old, each with a baby on her back, moving from house to house begging for food and used clothes. The fathers of their children are reported to have disappeared. Text 11 relates how Zimbabwean women cross the border to South Africa for the sole purpose of providing for their children in the absence of the fathers. Theresa Mutanda, a widow with two children to look after, joins a host of others, as reported in an article headed ‘Desperate Zimbabwean women flock to cross-border trade despite risks’ (Times Live, 21 July 2015). In Text 13, Thembi Ndlovu from Zimbabwe narrates her worries about her daughter who has just given birth but is faced with the reality of raising the child on her own because the father of the baby is not helping her. Vulnerability to Emotional Turmoil In Text 1, published on The Star’s IOL website and titled ‘Hospitals held our babies for ransom’, Linda Mhlanga, originally from Zimbabwe

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but living in Braamfischerville, says that staff at the Leratong Hospital outside Krugersdorp threatened to have her arrested in 2014 when she could not pay for the birth of her daughter. This is a clear example of vulnerability to emotional turmoil, a subtheme of victimhood and vulnerability. The emotional distress of a pregnant Zimbabwean migrant begins at the hands of healthcare workers who zealously enforce rules that are designed to prevent foreigners from accessing basic services. The vulnerability to emotional turmoil theme of women migrants runs deep as they are blackmailed to choose between their newborn babies and freedom. Mhlanga is quoted saying: ‘I was charged R800 for booking only, but I told them that I do not have money … They allowed me to give birth and threatened that they were going to send me to the police if I did not pay them’. The charges are meant to bar foreign women from competing for resources that are meant to be exclusively for locals. According to Banda and Mawadza (2015), Zimbabwean women migrants are stigmatised as coming to South Africa mainly to seek health care, especially during pregnancy. Whether the stories are presented in a negative or positive manner, the South African media sensitise their readers to the competition for scarce resources by foreigners. Banda and Mawadza (2015) concluded that the South African media are instrumental in the construction of discourses of exclusion by publishing news stories depicting psycho-social conditions that lead to moral panic. Mhlanga’s ordeal did not end with the birth of her child since she suffered the same treatment when her daughter became sick: ‘When my daughter was five months old, she got sick and I took her to Leratong Hospital’. She was only attended to and admitted after she had paid R150 for the opening of a file. When the baby was due for check-up months later, health workers allegedly turned the pair away when it transpired that Mhlanga could not pay R300. As caregivers in most African homes, African women would be distressed by incidents such as these since they would experience such incidents as a threat to their gender role. In Text 2, for example, vulnerability to emotional turmoil is depicted with even more intensity as the deportation to Zimbabwe of a mother of newly born triplets, Chipo Chiramba, is inevitable. She is forced to contemplate giving up her triplets for adoption rather than taking them with her to her rural home in Zimbabwe. This report is implicit about the hardships in her home country, so much so that she cannot think of taking her triplets there in the event of deportation.

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In this subtheme, women migrants are always represented as having suffered multiple tragedies. In Text 3, for example, Chenai Mushangazhike’s traumatic experience of losing a baby during childbirth was not the only tragedy she had to deal with. Her second baby had been snatched from her the day she lost her asylum seeker’s documents. Chenai’s losses and despair are unique owing to the fact that she is a migrant woman. The loss of her documents is symbolic of her loss of individual identity. Chenai’s life is spiralling out of control as she failed to raise money to replace her documents. One cannot help but identify with Zimbabwean women migrants who cease to be in control of their own destinies. Poverty, Hunger and Starvation The sample texts below are examples of the characterisation of Zimbabwean women migrants as a people running away from extreme poverty, hunger and starvation, another subtheme of victimhood and vulnerability. Text 2:

Texts 3:

Text 4:

Text 13:

‘Chiramba’s niece, Hellen Ndlovu, said her aunt came to South Africa to earn money to send back to her mother living in a small village in Zimbabwe’s rural Gokwe region, about 200 km west of the capital, Harare’. ‘Chenai sits on an old 25-litre paint bucket in the dark three-by-three-metre unit she rents in a derelict building in downtown Johannesburg. “I was told that replacing those documents would cost R3 000. As a person who begs for a living, I don’t have that kind of money”’. ‘It is very hot and they are sitting in the shade in the yard waiting for my wife to return. They look thoroughly exhausted. It turns out that they ran away from poverty and hunger in Zimbabwe’. ‘Thembi Ndlovu was born in Zimbabwe but came to South Africa in 2002 to look for work as she could not eke out a living in her country with its “crumbling economy”’.

In these texts, the transnational nature of poverty, hunger and starvation of the Zimbabwean women is brought to the attention of the reader in a glaring manner, as in Text 4. Similarly, Text 3 illuminates the abject

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poverty of a Zimbabwean migrant by presenting a vivid description of her makeshift home in central Johannesburg. This description of her squalid living conditions, coupled with the tragedies this woman has experienced and the fear of forced deportation, tells the story of a life lived under a continuous cycle of poverty, hunger and starvation. The text gives insight into the lives of Zimbabwean women whose journeys to South Africa often end in tragedy and calamity. Text 13 is the story of escape from a stifling economic meltdown. There is no doubt that Zimbabwean woman migrants in South Africa often swing between two extremes. However, it is their association with poverty, hunger and starvation that results in their vulnerability and victimisation.

Institutionalised Xenophobia Another major thematic representation of Zimbabwe female migrants in Johannesburg is their portrayal as victims of institutionalised xenophobia. Although overlapping strongly with victimhood and vulnerability, this theme was treated separately because of its overwhelming latent content. We argue that the representations of Zimbabwean women in conflict with the institutions that are meant to provide them with services tend to ascribe negative labels and normalise institutionalised xenophobia. Through coding of latent content, institutionalised xenophobia was explored through the exclusion from health care, hate speech and threats of arrest and deportation. There are five news articles in the corpus, namely Text 1: ‘Hospitals held our babies for ransom’, Text 3: ‘Foreign mom’s neglect turns fatal’, Text 13: ‘Xenophobia violates Health Act and migrants’, Text 14: ‘A sick system abuses its refugees’ and Text 17: ‘Operation Fiela like “ethnic cleansing”, The Star; IOL, 16 May 2015’. Generally, the themes of news articles are captured in their headlines. Headlines are strategically positioned (Chiluwa 2011) to capture the attention of the reader and thereafter settle in the readers’ cognitive memory. Headlines such as for Texts 1 and 14, for example, do not only point to the theme but also to the actual institutions that perpetuate the systematic exclusion of immigrants. The headline of Text 14 summarises the systemic nature of institutionalised xenophobia. Putting on a feminist lens, one cannot help but notice how these media platforms, as part of a broader cultural aim, are working in cohort to reproduce the psychological and social systemic oppression of women migrants.

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Since the appearance of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, otherness has been a central aspect of masculine subjectivity (Changfoot 2009). However, in the media texts presented here, we did not find otherness in the binary form of masculine against feminine, but as a systemic and institutionalised otherness, where migrant women were singled out as subjects for pointed institutionalised xenophobia. The othering of Zimbabwean women migrants occurred at two levels. The first level was that which happened on the ground as the women were forced to endure hardships when accessing services that are deemed the preserves of citizens. The second level was negative reports of women migrants that, when brought together, can create a particular discourse. Reading through the accounts for the meanings generated, as is consistent with latent coding, we found mostly negative reports of women migrants. This created a string of meaning that formed a discourse through which migrant women could be perceived. Exclusion from Health Care Zimbabwean migrant women were represented in our media sample as a group of people who are always in conflict with the country’s healthcare workers. Text 1 reports on mothers with sick children being turned away from a public hospital over unsettled hospital bills, even though this is in contravention of the National Health Act, which makes provision for free care for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children below the age of six. The apparent exclusion of migrant women from health care emanates from different interpretations of the National Health Act. Sasha Stevenson, an attorney quoted in this text, interprets the Act to mean free health care to all women and children regardless of nationality, while the Gauteng Department of Health, according to its spokesperson Steve Mabona, holds that undocumented immigrants are not covered by the act. This interpretation leaves women migrants at the mercy of the healthcare workers. In its report, the newspaper contributes to an ideological construction of foreigners weighing down on resources meant for locals. Text 3 reports on the tragic results of foreigners being excluded from health care. The story reports of a Zimbabwean woman migrant, Mushangazhike, being turned away by nurses at the Albert Clinic in central Johannesburg for not having identity documentation. Only after a humanitarian organisation, the Lawyers for Human Rights, had written to

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the clinic stating that the law did not allow it to turn away patients on the grounds of failing to produce identity documents, was Mushangazhike attended to by the clinic’s staff. However, the law could not protect her and her unborn child from further exclusion, discrimination and segregation when she was not permitted further access to the health care required and was treated with disdain. Clinic staff seemed to mimic general sentiments about women migrants by insulting Mushangazhike with the words: ‘You foreigners are trouble’ and ‘You foreigners are stupid’. The characterisation of foreigners as burdensome and therefore unwanted is further represented in Text 14, which contains a balanced analysis of healthcare exclusion. Although denying health care to foreigners can cost South Africa more, especially in relation to containing the spread of diseases in communities where non-citizens reside, the text does not dwell much on the cost implications of the act. Attention is once again given to the overwhelming number of foreigners who, according to the text, are overstretching the healthcare system. It seems that Johannesburg’s medical facilities are fast reaching the conclusion that foreign women are burdensome. According to Text 13, Zimbabwean migrant women who fear being turned away by hospitals in Johannesburg travel to rural Mavela to access antenatal care. Hate Speech One of the ways institutionalised xenophobia was represented in news reports was by hate speech being quoted verbatim. The quoted material was not expressed by ordinary members of society but came from persons who represented institutions in their official capacity. In Text 3, for example, healthcare workers at a clinic in Johannesburg are reported as hurling insults like, ‘You foreigners are trouble’ and ‘You foreigners are stupid’. It is possible that such comments are made outside the mandate of institutions but in the absence of reports about the ramifications faced by individuals who made such insults, it is logical to associate the xenophobic utterances with the institution. In Text 1, when asked to comment on the harassment of Zimbabwean women migrants by staff of the Leratong Hospital, the representative of the Gauteng Department of Health stated that although he was not quite sure, undocumented migrants were treated like private patients at public hospitals. It was when trying to enforce payment by undocumented migrants that some hospital

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staff members sometimes used hate speech. There was often uncertainty about how undocumented migrants should be treated when they present themselves at public hospitals. This left the treatment of undocumented migrants at the discretion of the hospital staff members on duty. Text 17 reports on yet another example of the institutionalisation of xenophobia through hate speech. The article quotes the concerns of Zimbabwean activist, Elinor Sisulu, over a move by South Africa to launch what he called an ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaign dubbed ‘Operation Fiela’. This was a joint operation by major law and order institutions, namely the South African Police Service, the South African Military and the Department of Home Affairs. The South African government defined ‘Fiela’ as ‘to sweep clean’, to rid communities of crime and lawlessness. Even though this special joint operation was targeted at crime and lawlessness in general, this particular operation associated the move with an effort by the South African government to remove undocumented migrants from communities. The association of foreigners with criminality tends to further entrench institutionalised xenophobia. Hate speech in this instance was three pronged: coined by government, executed by government institutions and put into perspective by the media. By associating migrants with the operation, especially by the press, is tantamount to hate speech since the word Fiela stands for sweeping away unwanted rogue elements to keep the society clean. The angle of the news story is to condemn the government’s operation for targeting migrants. However, the government definition of ‘Fiela’ does not suggest a link to migrants or foreigners. It is the press, therefore, that introduced this association and thus perpetuated hate speech.

Conclusion Our study has shown that South Africa’s Johannesburg press has depicted Zimbabwean women migrants as victims of a range of calamities. Almost all the themes that emerged from the 17 news articles analysed portray the migrants as having suffered some form of tragedy or other. The news reports covered the period from January 2012 to December 2015. The main and subthemes that emerged from the media narratives point to the depiction of women migrants as victims who are to be pitied for their deplorable living conditions and for being ill-treated by staff members at the different institutions they visit to access social services.

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We applied the grounded theory method of analysing the media texts. Two methods of coding were applied. In the initial stage of generating codes, open coding was used to categorise excerpts of the news stories into specific main themes. The excerpts were extracted from the texts because of their significance in illuminating the central idea of the news report. Reports in the same category of the main theme were grouped together in preparation for the second stage of coding. Axial coding involved reading through the excerpts and assigning a code based on the meaning of the sentence. The codes were refined several times and the regrouping of related codes occurred on a continual basis during the data analysis process. The process of coding the data yielded a variety of themes and subthemes. It was not possible to discuss all the themes in this chapter. Through the lens of the feminist, the feminisation of migration revealed a different type of othering, whose origin is beyond the masculine versus feminine subjectivities. We found othering in the form of xenophobia that is deeply rooted in state institutions.

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Neocosmos, M. (2008). The politics of fear and the fear of politics: Reflections on xenophobic violence in South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43(6), 586–594. Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2006). Insiders and outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in contemporary Southern Africa. London: Zed Books Ltd. Pasura, D. (2008). Gendering the diaspora: Zimbabwean migrants in Britain. African Diaspora, 1(1), 86–109. Plain, G., & Sellers, S. (2011). A history of feminist literary criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ranga, D. (2015). Gender differences in the migration of Zimbabwean teachers to South Africa. East African Social Science Research Review, 31(1), 43–62. Ritchie, J., Lewis, J., Nicholls, C. M., & Ormston, R. (2014). Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students and researchers. London: Sage Publications.

CHAPTER 12

‘Africa Must Be … One Place, One Country’: Xenophobia and the Unmediated Representation of African Migrants in South Africa Pragna Rugunanan

A young Egyptian named Afzal stated unequivocally during an interview with me in October 2012 that Africa must be one place, one country; for all people in Africa it must be the same home, the same place. This vision of a borderless Africa contrasts sharply with the jarring image of Mozambican national Ernesto Nhamuave being burnt alive during the xenophobic violence in South Africa in 2008. In a matter of two weeks, violence rapidly spread across South Africa. Foreign African and south Asian nationals were targeted in particular. More than 60 people were killed and a further 100,000 left homeless. South Africans watched in shock and disbelief as the ideal of the Rainbow Nation crumbled amidst the widespread dislocation of thousands of people, South Africans and foreign nationals alike.

P. Rugunanan (B) University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_12

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In 2015, there was a resurgence of xenophobic violence in South Africa, this time targeting previously excluded groups, such as Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationals (Rugunanan 2016b). In Naledi, Soweto, a 19-year-old bystander, was killed when police fired into a crowd surrounding a Pakistani-owned shop. The South African boy, Nhlanhla Monareng, was reported to have been friendly with the Pakistanis in the past but had now become part of the group that threatened the shopkeepers. The police downplayed these attacks as forms of ‘criminality’, rather than an outbreak of xenophobia (Scott 2015). Simmering tensions in communities in the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal were exacerbated by inflammatory comments, including the words ‘foreigners must go’ by Goodwill Zwelithini, king of the Zulu nation when speaking to the media in 2015.1 The king’s utterances incited violence against foreign nationals; their shops were looted and burnt down, and roads were blockaded with burning tyres and rocks (SA People 2015). The reaction by various constituencies to the violence was immediate and reverberated not only in South Africa but throughout the African continent. Foreign nationals did not take the attacks lying down but retaliated in kind. The Nigerian media denounced xenophobic attacks on Nigerians and opinion pieces stressed the fact that when South Africans needed assistance during the apartheid years, countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and other African countries took them in; now the nationals of those same countries were being targeted in South Africa. The violent nature of the attacks received worldwide attention, with social media sharing graphic videos of victims being stoned and burnt alive (SA People 2015). In early 2018, a massive protest march against foreigners took place in South Africa’s political capital, Pretoria. The core issue of the protest was nationals from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Pakistan for allegedly taking jobs belonging to South Africans and contributing to increasing crime levels in the country. This was articulated by one of the organisers, Makgoka Lekganyane, who queried: ‘Why is the government giving asylum status to Nigerians, Zimbabweans and Pakistanis? Is there war in Nigeria, Zimbabwe or Pakistan?’ (Moatshe 2017). The argument that foreigners ‘steal’ jobs from South Africans is not unique to South Africa. Globally, the typical anti-immigrant sentiment is that immigrants take away jobs from locals and contribute to an increase in crime. In 2010, a survey by the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) found that 60% of South Africans believed that

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immigrants ‘take jobs’ and 55% believed that they contributed to the increase in crime (Chaskalson 2017). Chaskalson commented, however, that, in fact, ‘we know very little about the actual labour market effects of immigration to South Africa’. He argued that although the most useful source to gather demographic information about immigrants was the 2011 national census, this was also outdated. According to the census, the vast majority of immigrants were black Africans (71.7%), while 4.2% were of Indian or Asian descent, which nevertheless reflected a sizable Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi component. In this chapter, I draw on research material from a broader, qualitative study (Rugunanan 2016a) that sought to understand the construction of migrant communities in Johannesburg. The study’s main findings were that new migrant communities withdraw into enclaves that allow new identities to emerge and that social networks and social capital facilitate economic and social integration. While the threat of xenophobia was constant, it emerged that in their search for community and a sense of belonging migrants developed a contingent and instrumental solidarity (Rugunanan 2016a). This allowed the migrant groups to co-exist with South African nationals in the face of subtle forms of xenophobia. The focus of my study was to examine the interrelationships between three groups: Egyptian, Malawian and South African Indians in Johannesburg. Little is known about Egyptian migration to South Africa but the pronounced differences between the two groups of African migrants in relation to South African Indians in the study makes this a novel contribution. The study provides for an unmediated dimension: the direct perceptions of migrants through interviews are analysed and examined within a framework of how the media portray migrants, especially in the light of xenophobia.

Migration Flows to Africa According to the United Nations (2017), as of 2017, 106 million migrants out of a total of 258 million migrants displaced worldwide, originated in Asia. Of the people who migrated internationally, 17 million originated from India, 13 million from Mexico, 10 million from China, seven million each from Bangladesh and Syria and six million from Pakistan.

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Migration on the African continent is compelled by multiple factors. The continent has a long history of migration that is not only intracontinental but also intercontinental. According to Rwodzi (2011, p. 18), migration is classified in three distinct groups, namely ‘intercontinental, intra-continental and interregional’. The reasons for migration include the pursuit of a better standard of living, fleeing from conflict, poverty, pestilence, famine and to find better employment opportunities (Rwodzi 2011). The desire for security and social stability is a contributing factor for migration to other countries. Conditions across the continent, notably escalating population rates, unstable political economies, ethnic wars, poverty, environmental degradation and rising unemployment levels force Africans to search for a better life elsewhere. Under apartheid, the South African state did not consider black South Africans as citizens and discouraged black immigration. Yet it actively solicited cheap, unskilled labour mostly from its immediate neighbours to service the growing mining and farming sectors. Africans could enter South Africa as contract workers on temporary permits or ‘illegally’ as undocumented migrants, which was sanctioned by the state (Maharaj 2004; Crush et al. 2005). During the 1980s, the political turmoil in Mozambique and surrounding countries resulted in refugees seeking safety within South Africa’s borders. Documented and undocumented African migrants sought refuge in apartheid South Africa’s segregated townships and were not regarded as a threat by the local population. They shared the political goal of overthrowing the white supremacist government. Post-1994, this situation changed sharply when immigrant and refugee flows from further north in Africa, neighbouring states and southern Asia began to increase (Rugunanan 2016a). These new migrants were attracted by the ideals of a socially just and democratic South Africa and the promise it yielded not only for its citizens but to all those who live in it. In sub-Saharan Africa, Gauteng is the wealthiest region, with Johannesburg regarded as the economic and cultural hub. It serves as an important portal for migration into southern Africa and provides access to nearby metropoles such as Tshwane and Ekurhuleni in Gauteng, and is within easy access of Botswana, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe (Centre for Democratic Enterprise 2008). In the belief that previously marginalised communities would play a larger and more significant role in shaping the economy under the new dispensation,

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migrants saw this as a potential opportunity. They hoped South Africans would repay their indebtedness to countries that provided refuge to antiapartheid activists leading up to 1994. This has not been forthcoming. Whitehead and Durrheim (2016) question the extent to which race relations have changed since South Africa’s transition to democracy. The Afro-pessimist narrative denounces countries such as Zimbabwe and other African states that are riddled with crime, corruption and nepotism, and fear for South Africa’s similar demise. Other narratives talk of privileging whiteness at the expense of ongoing racial conflict and deepening inequality in South Africa. ‘Reverse racism’ is used by the privileged minority to protest against redress policies to heal the inequities of apartheid (Whitehead and Durrheim 2016). A history of racism and social and service delivery issues quickly becomes racialised in a society characterised by deep inequality, division and a growing chasm between the rich and the poor. The realisation that social and economic rights still elude the majority of South Africans has culminated in new forms of discriminatory practices against foreign nationals, in particular the black African foreign nationals. The government’s failure to deliver on social and economic promises has resulted in a backlash in which migrants have become scapegoats, as witnessed in the xenophobic attacks of 2008, 2015 and 2018. ‘Xenophobia refers to the irrational fear of the unknown, or fear or hatred of those with a different nationality’ (Steenkamp 2009, p. 439). Incidents of a xenophobic nature against black foreigners began surfacing post-1994 (Steenkamp 2009). South Africans blame foreigners for the increase in crime, the abuse of state resources, disease transmissions and even taking jobs from South African citizens (Crush and Williams 2003; Posel 2003). The competition for limited employment opportunities, housing, physical space and access to social services are some of the reasons cited for xenophobic attacks. Forms of exclusion are evident not only in the increase of but also the intensity of attacks. Neocosmos (2008, p. 587) is critical of the scapegoating perspective and argues that xenophobia must be seen as a political discourse stemming from a ‘politics of fear’, which, according to him, has three components, namely ‘a state discourse of xenophobia, a discourse of South African exceptionalism and the politics of indigeneity’. On exceptionalism, Neocosmos states that South Africans perceive themselves as being apart from Africa, with their frame of reference tending to lean towards the USA and Europe. As a result, Africa is seen as the ‘Other’. Neocosmos

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(2008, p. 591) attributes this to the failure of the post-apartheid state to construct a nationalism that is embedded in Africa. Instead, it perpetuates and reinvents itself through ‘racial and national stereotypes’. The view that Africa is seen as a threat to South Africa is confirmed by Crush and McDonald (2001) and Mattes et al. (2002). Neocosmos suggests that South Africans need to move beyond the politics of fear to a political practice of peace. The politics of fear led to an intense hatred of foreign nationals, resulting in violence and a breakdown of law and order as South Africans targeted foreigners in the May 2008 attacks. Unique to South Africa is that violence is mainly perpetuated by black South Africans against black African foreigners, whom they label as amakwerekwere.2 White foreign nationals are treated very differently in the country. Peberdy (2001) contends that even when white illegal immigrants overstay their entry permits, they are not stereotyped, nor do they suffer the same level of abuse as foreign African illegals. Steenkamp (2009) extends this view by stating that migrants from Africa are also judged on their nationality. Migrants from Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland are more acceptable than migrants from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Africans from further afield are even less desirable (Southern African Migration Project 2008). Even south Asian migrants are not exempt from the xenophobic attacks.

Methodology A social constructivist paradigm was conducive for this study, as it focuses on how meaning is created and how social members experience and understand their world (Creswell 2009). To understand the interrelationships between foreign migrant groups and South Africans, a qualitative model was deemed preferable. A case study approach was used to investigate five migrant communities and South African Indian traders living in Fordsburg, Johannesburg. A case study allows for in-depth and richly detailed information to be collected. The research was conducted over four years from 2011 to 2014. In total, 82 face-to-face interviews were held with various stakeholders in Fordsburg. Purposeful sampling was employed depending on the category of member that needed to be sampled. Documents, photographs, artefacts and direct participation all served to triangulate the research material (Yin 2009). The study participants that were recruited needed either to live or work in the area. A semi-structured interview schedule

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was adapted according to the sampling profile. The common themes covered related to the perceptions of migrants in the suburb, the notion of community and issues relating to migration, settlement, work opportunities, religion, education and burial practices. We employed the ‘roleordered matrix’ model, wherein Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are used to organise the research material, to assist with analysis and to organise data into an easily readable format that examines the ‘relationship dynamics’ of the participants (Miles et al. 2014, pp. 91, 162).

Discussion of Findings For the purpose of this chapter, the views of two migrant participant groups and those of the South African Indian traders are discussed concerning the themes raised in the media about the choice of destination, access to resources and the perceptions of South Africans. Important push factors from the country of origin are provided to give a sense of why the participants migrated and why South Africa was their destination of choice.

South Africa Is the ‘Heart of Africa’ The participants emanated from different parts of the African continent. High levels of poverty and widespread unemployment were the push factors for unskilled or semi-skilled Malawian migrants (Wentzel and Tibela 2006). Family and friends alerted Malawians to work opportunities in South Africa. Dominic, a 25-year-old Malawian, asserted that ‘[South Africa] is the “heart of Africa”, so I came to see why other people are coming here’ (Interview, January 2014). His description of South Africa as the ‘heart of Africa’ provides a perspective of how the country is viewed on the continent. Banda, also a Malawian, echoed the sentiment, saying that ‘South Africa is the hub of Africa’ (Interview, February 2014). Compared to Malawian migrants who are driven by poverty, Egyptian study participants left their country in search of ‘a better life’ and ‘you know, to go out and experience life’ (Interview with Sahel, June 2011). Sahel also pointed out that there were 85 million people in Egypt, but people had money and ‘stay nicely’. A more prominent reason for migrating for the Egyptian male was to prove his worth in another country: ‘you know, in my country there is no problem, nothing, but our future, the guys come here to look for the future, you know …’. Mikhail,

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a South African whose father originates from Egypt, said that business opportunities were the main reason for migrants choosing South Africa (Interview, September 2012). For Moiz though, it was ‘… for the chance [of a] job’ (Interview, September 2011). Job prospects and living on a basic salary were difficult in Egypt, so a major push factor for leaving was of an economic nature. Similarly, for the unskilled and semi-skilled Malawian migrants it was the hope of finding basic employment opportunities. Subtle contrasts in terms of skills and resources created a hierarchy between the two groups. All the Egyptian and Malawian participants indicated that they had some prior knowledge of South Africa, which was obtained through formal and informal networks of friends and family. As regards the Malawian participants, there was a tendency for the eldest male sibling to migrate. Once settled into employment, younger siblings and extended kin followed and chain migration ensued. The Egyptians, who, unlike many other migrants in the study travelled back to Egypt at least once a year, provided information about possible business opportunities in South Africa when they were home. Migration literature confirms that migrants sustain connections with their home countries.

The Choice of Fordsburg The choice of place is instrumental to a study of this nature. Fordsburg is close to the centre of Johannesburg, a city significant for the discovery of gold in 1886. Over time, the character and identity of Fordsburg underwent several iterations but even today it retains its identity as a working-class community of migrants (Rugunanan 2016a). A newer characterisation of Fordsburg post-2000 is captured quite simply by Afzal from Egypt: ‘Fordsburg is a Muslim place. If I stay in a place [where there] … is no mosque because we pray; if I stay in a place like Cresta there is no mosque [there]’ (Interview, October 2013). Access to a number of places of worship in Fordsburg and neighbouring Mayfair makes it a ready choice for Muslim migrants. A sense of the familiar is also created by the availability of halal food, groceries and products from their home country. The number of migrants in Fordsburg also provides a cocoon of safety from crime and xenophobia. For all the study participants, the existence of an Arab community provides access to an existing network of opportunities and resources. Even if a migrant does not know anybody on arrival, a common religion

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and nationality provides support. With Fordsburg being seen as a Muslim or Indian area and a place where members of the Arab community, south Asians and Malawians of the Muslim faith settle, is reflective of chain migration practices. Family members and family networks assist each other out of a sense of duty and facilitate a new migrant’s integration into a new environment. Their reasons for migrating to Johannesburg and Fordsburg are based on anticipated solidarity with the existing community.

Access to Livelihoods Research shows that contrary to stealing jobs, foreign nationals create jobs and often employ South Africans. According to Malan (2017), the fact that many immigrants arrive in a country whose language they often do not speak and for which most do not have working papers means that they have considerable difficulty in finding work. For this reason, they need to find alternative legitimate sources of income. Their success in doing so has been a source of resentment for many South Africans, black nationals, in particular (Egan 2017). The Egyptian migrants have secured a particular niche in the South African market that involves the sale of traditional Islamic ware, ladies’ abhayias (traditional Muslim garb), men’s clothing, Islamic literature and religious music. While three of the participants were owners of such outlets, two other Egyptian men were employed as staff in outlets of this nature. Most of the participants indicated that they worked seven days a week from 09:30 to 17:00 on weekdays and from 07:00 to 20:00 or even 21:00 over a weekend to capitalise on weekend night markets that draw people from all over Gauteng. While the Egyptians are traders and owners of retail outlets, the Malawians provide manual labour. They neither operate nor own businesses, nor engage in informal trade. They are employed in the flea market as salespersons and cooks. They tend to earn the lowest salaries, receiving from R350 to R650 for a week that usually exceeds 50 hours of work. Monthly earnings thus range between R1400 and R2600 (Rugunanan 2016a). The Malawians were from large families with more than six siblings and parents still living in Malawi. Their main reason for migration was to seek some sort of livelihood that will help sustain the family back home.

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Migrant Views on South Africans When asked to evaluate their relationships with South Africans and other migrant groups in the area, the Egyptian participants said they treated everyone with respect. Moiz said that the perception by migrants that all South Africans were lazy was untrue, as most were hardworking and generally respectful people. However, there were those who were lazy and would rather steal than engage in honest work and depended on government grants to sustain themselves (Interview, September 2011). On the other hand, the Malawians had quite critical views of South Africans and expressed their distrust in them. Dominic said that he found most South Africans rude and that their culture was very different from that of Malawians. For this reason, he could not relate to them, saying, ‘I never sit with them’ (Interview, January 2014). ‘Sometimes, you know, the South African people, you can’t trust them. … [at the] end of the day they take chances and rob you just like that’ (interview with Imraan, February 2014). The Malawians preferred to network among themselves or with migrants from south Asia, limiting their interaction with South Africans by choice. The migrants who participated in the study were fearful of black South Africans, whom they regarded as being perpetrators of violent acts against foreign nationals. They viewed black South Africans as tsotsies or criminals. Malawian participants believed that black South Africans deliberately targeted them in crime. Interestingly, South Africans regard foreigners as being responsible for the escalating crime in the country (Maharaj 2004). The precarious nature of Malawian migration is explained by the fact that they choose to remain undocumented and will therefore avoid the South African authorities at all costs, especially as they cannot afford to renew their permits (Madsen 2004). For this reason, they become easy targets for South African criminals. Any attack on them leaves them in a vulnerable position as they are unable to report the crime. Research supports the view that the South African state has ‘criminalised’ migrant populations through its migration policies (Peberdy and Rogerson 2000; Wa Kabwe-Segatti and Landau 2008). Malawian migrants, Ashraf and Munsif, friends who share accommodation and work together in Fordsburg, were asked if they had friends among South Africans. They both replied: ‘No we don’t want and they (referring to South Africans) don’t want to’ (Interview, January 2014). Imraan has been a target of crime and because of this experience he does

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not trust South Africans. In fact, he admits that he only has one coloured South African friend, apart from many Pakistani and Indian friends (Interview, February 2014). In contrast, Ebrahim from Malawi was one of the few that appeared to have friends across nationalities. He cites six or seven friends at the Fordsburg Square, from Indians to Pakistanis and even an Egyptian. The Malawians vacillated between either networking among members of their own group or with migrants from south Asia. However, South African Indian traders are not very complimentary about migrants from other parts of the world. Sulaiman said that relations between Pakistanis and South African Indians were kept to a minimum. He added, ‘There is a sense of distrust, especially with the Pakistani guys; they are very shrewd. You can’t trust them’ (Interview, October 2013).3 Zaid, a South African who has lived in Fordsburg for a number of years, explains that the perceptions by South Africans of migrants are based on ‘economic resentment’ bordering on xenophobia (Interview, September 2011). He continues: I think it’s more economic resentment because they [the migrants] have come over, they’ve been successful, they open businesses, they’ve taken jobs, so people feel that their jobs and opportunities have been taken away … [The migrants take] any space they get; they open up a business whether it be a barber or tailor or supermarket … The foreigners are very enterprising. (Interview, September 2011)

Discussion and Conclusion Civil society organisations, academics and South African government institutions have been trying to understand how the country has descended into a situation where the burning of foreign nationals and attacking fellow Africans in a free and democratic South Africa has become acceptable. Part of the answer lies in in the rhetoric of politicians (Maharaj 2004), the slow response by government in the aftermath of the 2008 attacks, and the negative portrayal of migrants by the mainstream print media (see Chiumbu and Moyo 2018). The South African media are believed to stoke up tensions against foreign nationals by repeatedly labelling the situation or the immigrants in unwelcoming terms, such as ‘dangerous threat’, ‘illegal’ and ‘undocumented’. A negative public perception of immigrants is created when the media portrays them as being a threat to the safety of communities because of their responsibility

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for the increase in crime and violence (Kariithi, Mawadza and Carlotto 2017, p. 6). The development media theory ‘focuses on how the media within a given society function against how they actually function’ (Nelson and Salawu 2017, p. 3). Media, particularly in developing nations, largely influences ‘racial and socio-cultural development’. One of the most visibly powerful modifiers of cultural and behavioural patterns is television. News and other programmes can be utilised to promote certain agendas, in other words narratives required to form biased racial perceptions (Nelson and Salawu 2017, p. 4). The South African public is manipulated into holding certain degrees of racial tolerance based on how much exposure they have had to the news. Television messages have the power to shape ‘the value systems of the audience positively or negatively, depending on the intent of the mass communicated message’, according to Nelson and Salawu (2017, p. 5). Therefore, by drawing a connection between crime and foreign nationals, the media can cause moral panic by influencing the public mindset towards a negative narrative about immigrants. By using such tactics, the media adds ‘pressure on the government and the institutional apparatus to act’ (Kariithi et al. 2017, p. 6). When covering the issue of xenophobia in South Africa, the media tends to use anti-immigrant sentiments by making unfavourable allusions through the use of adverse stereotypes and labelling migrants with negative terminology, such as ‘illegals’, ‘criminals’ and ‘job stealers‘ (Smith 2009 in Kariithi et al. 2017, p. 6). The South African media frequently portray immigrants as being an economic threat, rather than a valuable economic asset. Immigrants are designated as unwelcome intruders who are appropriating the nation’s scarce resources and are depriving the local population of job opportunities by opening and operating spaza shops (Kariithi et al. 2017, p. 7). Reputable qualities, such as hard work, entrepreneurship and a determination to survive are underemphasised. In this case study, I have provided a different insight into how nationals and non-nationals view each other. Fordsburg is a space that migrants and non-migrants, citizens and noncitizens share, but it also reproduces patterns of privilege that benefits one group over another. It perpetuates a system of racial hierarchy that is endemic to South African society. Nationality, race and access to resources and capital reproduce these privileges in Fordsburg (Rugunanan 2016a). While South Africans have had to rediscover their national identity, the

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situation for Egyptian and Malawian migrants in South Africa was simpler: they see each other as Africans who share a common continental identity. In the meantime, they view south Asians migrants as the ‘Other’. Sharing this view is Afzal from Egypt, who says that South Africans like the Egyptians more ‘because Egypt is still Africa, unlike Pakistan. It is still our home you know’ (Interview, October 2012).

Notes 1. The Zulu nation is recognised under the Traditional Leadership clause of the South African Constitution. 2. According to Warner and Finchilescu (2003, p. 38), kwerekwere is a derogatory term for foreigners. It refers to the unintelligible sounds of their languages. 3. This links to the ongoing India-Pakistan conflict. https://www.aljazeera. com/news/2019/02/india-pakistan-tensions-latest-updates-190227063 414443.html.

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Peberdy, S. (2001). Imagining immigration: Inclusive identities and exclusive policies in post-1994 South Africa. Africa Today, 483, 15–32. Posel, D. (2003, June 4–7). How migration patterns in post-apartheid South Africa changed? Paper presented, Conference on African Migration in Comparative Perspective, Johannesburg, South Africa. Rugunanan, P. (2016a). Forged communities: A sociological exploration of identity and community amongst immigrant and migrant communities in Fordsburg (Doctoral thesis). University of Johannesburg. Rugunanan, P. (2016b). Migrant communities, identity and belonging: Exploring the views of South Asian migrants in Fordsburg, South Africa. In P. P. Kumar (Ed.), Contemporary issues in the Indian diaspora of South Africa. New Delhi: Serial Publications. Rwodzi, C. (2011). Linguistic challenges faced by foreign migrant workers and informal traders in Gauteng (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Africa, Pretoria. SA People. (2015). A sad day for South Africa as #Xenophobia brings Durban’s CBD to a standstill. Available at: https://www.sapeople.com/2015/04/14/ xenophobia-south-africa-durban-cbd. Accessed 20 March 2020. Scott, K. (2015). Chaos erupts in Soweto as the xenophobic violence is dismissed as random criminality. The South African. Available at: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/chaos-erupts-in-soweto-as-the-xenoph obic-violence-is-dismissed-as-random-criminality. Accessed 20 March 2020. Southern African Migration Project (SAMP). (2008). The perfect storm: The realities of xenophobia in contemporary South Africa. Cape Town: Migration Policy Series. Steenkamp, C. (2009). Xenophobia in South Africa: What does it say about trust? The Round Table, 403(98), 439–447. United Nations. (2017). The International Migration Report 2017 (Highlights). Available at: https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/internati onal-migration-report-2017.html. Accessed 20 March 2020. Wa Kabwe-Segatti, A., & Landau, L. B. (2008). Migration in post-apartheid South Africa: Challenges and questions to policymakers. In A. Wa KabweSegatti & L. B. Landau (Eds.), Migration in post-apartheid South Africa: Challenges and questions to policymakers. Paris: Agence Française de Développement. Warner, C., & Finchilescu, G. (2003). Living with prejudice, xenophobia and race. Available at: http://www.queensu.ca/samp/migrationresources/xenoph obia/research/warner.pdf. Accessed 20 March 2020. Wentzel, M., & Tibela, K. (2006). Historical background to South African migration. In P. Kok, D. Gelderblom, T. Oucho, & J. van Zyl (Eds.), Migration to South and Southern Africa: Dynamics and determinants. Pretoria: HSRC Press.

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Whitehead, K., & Durrheim, K. (2016). Race Trouble in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Short Papers Series on Race and Identity. Johannesburg: Auwal Policy Research Institute. Yin, R. K. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and Methods (4th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Inc.

CHAPTER 13

Complicity and Condonation: The Tabloid Press and Reporting of Migrant Access to Public Health in South Africa Thabiso Muswede and Shepherd Mpofu

Introduction The world over, discriminatory tendencies against refugees and migrants often attract a mixed bag of reactions from various sections of society, including the press. Although the press is generally recognised for its significant contribution to providing critical information for the formulation of perceptions by target users (Mtwana and Bird 2006), its approach to the mistreatment of migrants has not escaped widespread public criticism. In South Africa, the tabloids in particular have come under public scrutiny for inflaming intolerant behaviour against migrants from African countries. Numerous studies have accused the press of contributing to anti-foreigner sentiments and perpetuating stereotypical information about migration issues (Danso and McDonald 2001; Hadland 2010;

T. Muswede (B) · S. Mpofu Department of Communication, Media and Information Studies, University of Limpopo, Polokwane, South Africa S. Mpofu e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_13

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Muswede 2015). This supports the perception that discriminatory attitudes by some South Africans may not be a direct consequence of personal encounters with migrants but rather a product of (mis)information or (mis)representation by the press or the political leadership. The publication of news reports or editorials that foster a hatred of migrants remains a challenge (Hadland 2010, p. 5) and should therefore be prioritised as a subject of research. The dislike of immigrants (xenophobia) in South Africa is not an emerging phenomenon but dates back to the early 1990s when foreign nationals were beaten up, thrown out of moving trains and had their shops burnt and looted (Danso and McDonald 2001). However, the sordid nature of xenophobia and its deep institutionalisation has become more complex in the post-apartheid period (Crush 2008). In the formative years of democracy in South Africa, xenophobia against African immigrants flourished, arguably because the country still lacked an effective immigration policy. The scourge continued to simmer for over a decade until it reached outrageous levels in 2008 when sporadic but violent assaults on immigrants left at least sixty persons dead and over a hundred thousand displaced from their homes and communities (Crush and Tawodzera 2014). Since then, immigrants from African countries in particular have been the target of xenophobic attacks, often because they are perceived to be in direct competition with locals for jobs or public services. Despite numerous state and civic society-led interventions, the scourge has continued unabated with different degrees of severity (Hadland 2010). Apart from the fact that xenophobia results in vulnerable migrants becoming easy targets of violent criminal attacks and exploitative behaviour at the hands of government officials (Everitt 2010), xenophobia has far-reaching socio-economic consequences, including in the area of public health. This conclusion follows from the findings of studies on the extent to which xenophobic tendencies have encroached into the provision of public health care. In one of these studies, Crush and Tawodzera (2014) explored the attitudes and behaviour of healthcare workers towards different categories of Zimbabwean immigrants who sought public health care in South Africa. Among other findings, the study noted that some health practitioners, including nurses and doctors, displayed attitudes that had a direct bearing on the welfare of destitute immigrants. Because of the institutionalisation of xenophobic tendencies in this essential services sector (Neocosmos 2006), the behaviour of

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health practitioners had the potential of legitimising acts of negligence and unprofessional conduct in the public healthcare system. Despite this being a fundamental breach of South Africa’s statutory laws, international human rights and professional codes of ethics, depriving migrants access to public health care remains deeply entrenched in the public health system (Crush and Tawodzera 2014).

Role of the Media in Public Health Communication For several decades, the media globally have been recognised as the most powerful educators on public health in society (Brown 2002, p. 7). Although this refers largely to the broadcast media, especially radio in the recent past, the rise of literacy levels in most parts of the Developing World has seen the press become a valuable instrument in global efforts to address communication gaps in health education (Sharma and Choudhary 2007), particularly when it comes to communicable diseases. The extensive deployment of the mass media to address public health problems and the high retention rate of its messages by readers continues to make the press an attractive medium for healthcare education (Corcoran 2007, p. 73). As generators of healthcare insight and exposure (McDonald and Kennedy 2004), the press increases the knowledge base of society, particularly among young users. Some of the popular themes covered in the press involve primary health care, the need to change attitudes and behaviour, and the acquisition of life skills. Such coverage plays an important role in promoting an interest in health. In South Africa, the press has been extensively used at both the local and national levels to promote public information in critical areas such as family planning, HIV prevention, life skills and sex education (Keller 2008, p. 87). The press has become the backbone of public health communication, especially in the promotion of strategies intended to influence behavioural change as regards health risks in all age groups. The creation of health awareness remains central to the delivery of an efficient healthcare service to society, including efforts to transform human behaviour. Numerous studies have attested to high levels of awareness following multi-media campaigns on public health matters (Bessinger et al. 2004; Brodie et al. 1999). Although these successes may not be

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solely attributable to the press alone, the latter has effectively been recommended for escalating public health communication in areas of deficient knowledge. Its localised approach and use of indigenous languages enable the local press to reach segmented target audiences that are excluded from mainstream public health communication. This ensures that health awareness messages even reach the so-called difficult-to-reach groups in peripheral areas. One of the objectives of the press is to promote open channels of communication and facilitate discourse on issues of public interest, including health. Some studies have noted the role played by multi-media campaigns in creating an environment that encourages and increases the readership’s willingness to talk about health issues (Bessinger et al. 2004; UNAIDS 2004). By sharing information and feedback, readers are encouraged to interpret messages, engage in each other’s views and eventually influence each other’s attitudes concerning responsible behaviour. Open dialogue about health issues leads to improved knowledge and understanding of public health issues at both the individual and community levels. In the context of xenophobia, experts have cited free discussion about the scourge through the media among different societal groups as a key element to addressing the challenge (Hadland 2010). This derives from the press’ ability to influence perceptions within existing social norms, values and conditions that have traditionally been difficult to change. The press thus has the potential to influence social change and bring about a positive shift. Stereotyping associated with stigma and discrimination has been cited as a major barrier to effective healthcare delivery. It also has the potential to exacerbate critical interventions in public health (Cross et al. 2017). In some contexts, it is not uncommon for health matters to be characterised by pervasive prejudice, stigma and denial, factors that contribute to poor health care. The complexity usually increases when governments, community structures and policymakers collude within an environment of social silence and denial by failing to acknowledge these factors as threats to public health (Forman 2005, p. 181). Political leaders may foment such xenophobic sentiments. The tabloid press in particular is reluctant to criticise these officials since they are addressing issues that resonate with the general citizen. For example, then Minister of Health (later moved to the ministry of Home Affairs), Aaron Motsoaledi, is on record as advancing

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what some consider to be xenophobic and afrophobic sentiments when he said: The weight that foreign nationals are bringing to the country has got nothing to do with xenophobia … it’s a reality. Our hospitals are full, we can’t control them. When a woman is pregnant and about to deliver a baby, you can’t turn her away from the hospital and say [to them] you are a foreign national … you can’t. And when they deliver a premature baby, you have got to keep them in hospital. When more and more come, you can’t say the hospital is full, now go away … they have to be admitted, we have got no option, and when they get admitted in large numbers they cause overcrowding; infection control starts failing. (Mbhele 2018)

The former MEC for Health and Social Development in Gauteng, home to many foreign nationals from all over the world, Qedani Mahlangu, said something similar when she argued that nine out of ten patients in Gauteng hospitals were ‘foreigners’: ‘I’m not sure why they have to travel to Gauteng, risking travelling long distances … There must be antenatal services provided in their own countries. These women can give birth in those countries’ (Lindeque 2015). In March 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa said during an electoral campaign rally: Everybody just arrives in our townships and rural areas and sets up businesses without licences and permits. We are going to bring this to an end. And those who are operating illegally, wherever they come from, must now know … (Ankomah 2019)

David Makhura, the Gauteng Premier, further complicated matters by saying: I think some specific crimes [are committed] by some specific nationalities, or foreign nationals are involved. Drugs, there’s specific nationalities involved. Violent crimes and murders, including cash-in-transit heists, there’s specific nationalities involved … But we must ask a question: how do we have so many drug dens that are operated by Nigerians in our country? How does this happen? We’ve got to solve that problem and, also, we’ve got to make it a problem with Nigeria … (AFP 2019)

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President Ramaphosa echoed what Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the former leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, said when he was Minister of Home Affairs in 1998: ‘If we as South Africans are going to compete for scarce resources with millions of aliens who are pouring into South Africa then we can bid goodbye to our Reconstruction and Development Programme’ (Neocosmos 2008, p. 588). These quotations suggest entrenched xenophobic thinking even among people in the country’s senior leadership. It would seem that the tabloid press and health professionals take a cue from these sentiments. When xenophobic sentiments are presented by the media, especially the tabloids that have the largest readership and probably the greatest influence in the country, they are likely to justify discrimination by locals against African foreigners. Besides this, public statements such as these by senior public officials are often interpreted as policy, especially by those who work in government departments. Decisions about those who are entitled to use the healthcare services in any society should not be left to health workers and health departments alone since any failure would have a direct bearing on the performance of the entire health system. Because of the health department’s centrality to the performance of other facets of the public service, its functionalities deserve extensive publicity and public scrutiny, especially as it has been noted that many people are deterred from using healthcare services because of the often judgemental attitudes of health practitioners (Lule et al. 2006). Were health care to be denied to migrants, this could lead to the social exclusion of many potential users of the public health facilities. Thus, despite the generally positive perceptions about the importance of the public healthcare system, it comes with a considerable vagueness about its performance. Often this is associated with the gap that exists between positive intentions to use health services on the one hand and the practicalities of doing so on the other, largely because of the weight of factors that impede access to and utilisation of the services. In view of the above dynamics, the media have a responsibility to mitigate the factors that impede access to health care by disseminating information that assists with the facilitation of treatment and care for patients. This responsibility was confirmed by the findings of a study on the utilisation of voluntary counselling and testing services in the Eastern Cape, which demonstrated the effectiveness of mass media in aiding the utilisation of healthcare services (Hutchnson and Malahlela

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2006). It noted that women and men who had had daily exposure to media messages about the use of public healthcare services were less likely to report having experienced any impediments. Although a more direct relationship was not established to ascertain the correctness of this correlation, the study results suggest a possible link between exposure to low self-esteem reducing messages and higher levels of trust in public health services. Thus, the need for multi-media publicity campaigns about public healthcare facilities remains an imperative to encourage society, including immigrants, to seek medical health care.

Tabloids: Roles and Functions in the Communicative Space Dominant views regarding the utility and relevance of South African tabloids tend to ‘dismiss the journalistic integrity of this genre by doubting [the tabloids’] contribution to the public agenda’ (Hadland 2010). Essentially, the term tabloid refers to the dimensions of the publication, which are about half of the standard broadsheet, making it generally easier to handle or read in restricted places (Merrill 2005). Tabloids can further be defined in terms of their textual features, namely range, form and style. Their size means that there is less space for hard news than for soft news, such as entertainment; less focus on foreign news in contrast to local news; and emphasis on visual representations such as colourful photographs, screaming headlines and graphics (Steenveld and Strelitz 2010). Tabloids flourish on their informal qualities, which include sensationalism, personalisation and a focus on private concerns (Sparks 2000). Hence, the newsworthiness of tabloid content is derived from ‘the desire to speak to its wider realities’ (Knox 2014, p. 2). It is these features that have generated a contestation between the binary oppositional dichotomies based on ‘trash’ versus ‘popular’ journalism (Steenveld and Strelitz 2010). In the context of its questionable professional aesthetics and sensationalist outlook, and supposedly its disregard for ethics (Steenveld and Strelitz 2010), it is important to examine the extent to which the genre meets the demands of mediating critical discourses, such as reporting on migrant access to public health in South Africa. The agenda-setting role of tabloids is engendered in their influence on the salience of the topics selected for public consumption. This influence is usually assessed on the basis of whether a significant number of

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readers really regard the topic in question as worthwhile to generate a dialogue among citizens. While many issues compete for public attention, only a few succeed in doing so based on newsworthiness criteria (McCombs 2004). The selected coverage usually exerts a significant influence on readers’ perceptions of what is currently important to them. The press thus sets the agenda to communicate a host of cues to the public about the relative salience of topics on their daily agenda (McQuail 2010; McCombs 2013) through ‘deliberately omitting or emphasising alternative ways of thinking about matters affecting society’ (Katz 2001, p. 273). The rise of mass-circulating tabloids, such as the Daily Sun, and their popularity among the poor, black working class of South Africa makes tabloids central to numerous debates about societal concerns. However, for the majority of the populace, the generally highly pitched dominant discourse carried in the broadsheets is complex and often elusive to the extent that the mostly semi-literate readers hardly understand them. Even so, the simple approach adopted by tabloids is indicative of a determination to renegotiate skewed professional assumptions and practices in the interest of effective inclusion and common humanity through journalism (Wasserman 2010). A study on the role of the media in South Africa’s xenophobic violence confirmed the constructive and reflective function of tabloids (Jone et al. 2008). Instead of disregarding tabloids as ‘trash’ (Steenveld and Strelitz 2010), they should be regarded as a popular form of media that carries alternative world views that broadsheets often fail to address. Arguably, this accounts for their popularity and influence as demonstrated by the tangible evidence in terms of their circulation figures (Knox 2014, p. 2). Tabloids can be seen as a cultural articulation of the often contradictory and shifting processes of transition. They serve as platforms of popular culture, mediated politics and citizenship in the country. Through their simplistic form and content, characterised by numerous images, graphics, bold ink and visual appeal, they signify that they do not speak to the people or for the people but from the people (Steenveld 2006).

Methodology In this study, we adopted the qualitative content analysis approach. Data collection and analysis of text messages were based on news reports on migrant access to public health published between April 2015 and May

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2017. We examined the nature of relevant tabloid news reports with a particular focus on the quality of reportage and their possible implications for the public health delivery system in South Africa. Popular newspapers, namely the Daily Sun, Sowetan and Mail & Guardian, were chosen because of their popular appeal to the majority of citizens across the length and breadth of the country (Wasserman 2010). The study focused mainly on tabloid newspapers owing to their somewhat common editorial style and target audience, which is largely located in the townships where the pre-conditions for xenophobia are supposedly evident (Muswede 2015). Our sample generated 27 news reports that were analysed based on their editorial threshold and prominence, contextualisation, news angle, focus and styles of reporting migrant access to health care at public health institutions. We excluded opinion columns and letters to the editors as they do not necessarily represent the editorial policies of the sampled newspapers. Although news items that addressed migrant problems or xenophobia in South Africa as a secondary theme were read by us, they were not the focus of the analysis.

Theory: Migrant Access and Scapegoating in Public Health Despite numerous interpretations of the attacks against migrants, which were largely described as Afrophobia or acts of criminality, they undoubtedly displayed the features of xenophobia. Mohamed (2011) traces the term xenophobia to a Greek term comprising two words: xeno meaning other (immigrants) and phobia meaning fear. Therefore, xenophobia occurs when migrants experience hatred or prejudice, often as a result of them being regarded as ‘outsiders’ by the residents of the receiving country (Muswede 2015). In the context of our study, an impediment to public health care applies to situations where negative attitudes, actions and denial of health care by medical staff occur when immigrants seek help at public (and private) health institutions. This entails staff at these institutions blatantly declining to provide medical services to immigrants based on ‘othering’, despite clear policy provisions to accommodate foreign nationals with free health care in South Africa as per the National Health Act 61 of 2003. The language used by political leaders may be a contributory factor to this

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breach of policy, the infringement of human rights and a general disregard for the welfare of a person. The scapegoat theory anchors this study. Scapegoating is the tendency by which societal frustrations and aggressions are directed at a group that is not the causal agent of the frustration. In this study, the basis of scapegoating is frustration, aggression and hostility towards non-natives in a specific society. Harris (2001) locates xenophobic tendencies within the context of social transition and change in a democratic South Africa. In his study he uses the scapegoat theory, which explains xenophobia in terms of broad socio-economic factors to describe how South Africa’s political transition to democracy has exposed the inequalities in the country. The accumulative hostilities that have developed towards immigrants result from strained and limited resources such as housing, education, health care and employment, coupled with high expectations following the transition (Harris 2001, p. 58). In the scapegoat theory, if a majority group encounters difficult economic conditions, they often feel threatened by minorities, especially if they are foreign (Harris 2001). Foster (2012) notes that post-1994 the South African government promised efficient delivery of basic services to its citizens but has so far failed to do so. Because of this, South Africa’s black citizens have become increasingly agitated. Political leaders have tended to blame foreigners for the government’s failings since they are an easy target, with the result that some citizens direct their frustrations at African immigrants, whom they believe have come to their country to strain limited resources belonging to them. Thus, from the scapegoat theoretical perspective, xenophobia takes place as a result of competition over access to limited basic resources. This is exacerbated by a public perception that if it were not for immigrants from Africa, there would be adequate capacity by the state to deliver appropriate services. These misdirected frustrations affect particularly foreign nationals living in impoverished communities who become scapegoats for lack of good governance. In view of these arguments, it is possible to locate xenophobic reporting within this frame of analysis as the press forms part of the sociopolitical milieu through which readers see the world.

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Complicity and Condonation: Tabloid Reporting on Migrants’ Access to Public Health The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) (2018) views the mistreatment or discrimination of migrants as irrational behaviour that is usually based on unfounded myths and stereotypes. In this section, we focus on the main editorial dimensions of the press reports as reference indices to examine the manner of coverage. The editorial dimensions were editorial threshold or prominence, focalisation, editorial focus, application of alternate news angles and presentation style. Prominence of News Reports on Migrant Access to Public Health The sphere within which access by migrants to public health was reported is presented with reference to how the reports used the prominence of the topic to problematise the matter as part of the publications’ news agenda. The high frequency of news reports about the mistreatment of migrants denotes that the scourge was treated as topical in the sampled newspapers. Based on the human-interest criterion, this indicates multifaceted coverage reflective of a broad spectrum of variables, including the social, economic and political. Despite the large number of stories that addressed xenophobic behaviour in general or looked at migration issues as a secondary theme, news items that directly referred to migrant access to public health care were few. Sometimes the implied mistreatment of migrants at public health institutions appeared as an offshoot to main stories on xenophobia. Ultimately, the extent of the articles, particularly during the height of the xenophobic outburst in April 2015, hardly satisfies the way in which the publications under review should have reported the problems of migrant access to public health. Contextualisation of Reports on Migrant Access to Public Health The reports on migrant access to public health often failed to provide background information and context to the events leading up to the mistreatment of migrants at public health institutions. This limited readers to obtaining only a superficial understanding of the situation that had the potential of being misinterpreted. Usually, such an approach trivialises the news being reported since it causes readers to presume that

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such stories are of lesser importance as they have not been fully developed (Swanepoel et al. 2007). A few stories appeared in the Sowetan and the Mail & Guardian that had the clear intention of placing xenophobia in context by categorically referring to the constitutional breaches during the mistreatment of migrants. Essentially, the appropriate contextualised reporting of incidents of denied access to public health should have been elaborated with reference to South Africa’s statutory laws, international human rights requirements and professional codes of ethics. The incomplete approach by the tabloids under review deprived readers of a complete picture of South Africa’s progressive refugee policy that affords migrants legal entitlements similar to those that apply to citizens and asylum seekers, albeit with a few limitations (SAHRC 2018). Editorial Focus of Reports on Migrant Access to Public Health Most of the reports placed the immigrants’ denial of access to healthcare facilities within the economic and financial resources frame, thereby leaning towards scapegoating antics. This was evident when Department of Health officials were quoted as saying that hospitals had challenges in providing open access ‘due to stretched health care resources’ (SAHRC 2018), or were taking strain with the extra ‘influx of foreigners’ (Health-e News 2015). Pertinent aspects of the irresponsible actions by healthcare workers received little attention, with reports understating the potential effects the prejudicial actions could have on the performance of the country’s entire healthcare system. Nearly all reports focused in the main on circumstantial issues, such as the suffering, frustration and indigence of migrant patients, similar to the customary portrayal of xenophobia since the 1990s. Thus, instead of illuminating the discriminatory tendencies of some public health officials and outlining their human rights obligations, the reports had the unintended effect of preventing readers from understanding the issue of migrant access to the public health system beyond the ‘resources’ narrative. Rather than approaching the migrants’ encounter with ‘a sick system’ (Odhiambo 2012) from a mitigation perspective, the news reports emphasised the ‘lack of documentation’ or played the ‘progressive realisation’ trump card that presents the problem as a product of administrative jurisprudence and statutory policy disjuncture (Alfaro-Velcamp 2017). The editorial teams failed to explore the reasons for the undocumented state of most refugees and asylum seekers several years after their arrival in

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South Africa. Furthermore, instead of ‘naming and shaming’ the health care staff involved, most of the reports did not provide the names of the responsible health workers. Style of News Reports on Migrant Access to Public Health Although the reports covered xenophobia in a variety of news genres such as features, reviews and news bites, at least 80% of the sampled news items were presented in a sensational or narrative format. The reports were limited by the fact that the focus was mainly on timeliness and elements of novelty, with interrogation playing a lesser role. This failing was compounded by frequent references to the individual reactions of victims (90%), which captured the emotional aspects of the situation (Seleka 2015), instead of elucidating the legal and mandatory obligations of public health institutions. A balanced coverage would have featured reactions from healthcare academics or analysts, civic groups and legal experts who would have interpreted the implications of discriminatory tendencies in the public health sector. The Daily Sun provided the least expert analysis or legal opinion. Most reports approached the news from a traditional perspective that only covers the human-interest element of an incident. This is typical of the populist paradigm of tabloids and has no capacity to positively influence negative stereotypes.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have highlighted the dearth of studies that have focused on the plight of migrant access to public health care in South Africa. We have also argued that, despite the paucity of tabloid news reports on migrant access to public health, the few incidents that were reported were mainly based on the ‘Afrophobia’ or ‘othering’ indices. The lack of a nuanced approach to reporting discriminatory tendencies, mistreatment and/or denial of access to public health care compromised the editorial role of the tabloid press. Such an approach is not beneficial to upholding the ‘equal access’ role of the press when covering sensitive issues that affect vulnerable groups in society. The lack of contextualisation in the stories and the application of presentation styles that were premised on the traditional ‘resource limitations’ or ‘economic’ perspectives tended to result in a prejudiced ‘migrants as a burden’ narrative that leaned on scapegoating antics about

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migrants overcrowding the public health system. In terms of South Africa’s statutory laws, international human rights requirements and professional codes of ethics, the country’s obligation to provide access to health care for everyone within its borders is imperative and thus deserves objective media reporting, especially as a migrants’ social security and healthcare requirements are the same as those of citizens. Failure by the press to highlight the denial of access to public health has unprecedented ramifications for both migrants and citizens, since communicable diseases such as Cholera, Ebola, Tuberculosis and COVID-19 can put the country’s entire population at risk if migrants do not receive the same treatment as locals. There are also costs associated with rectifying complications resulting from an initial refusal to treat migrants. Furthermore, denying migrants access to public health care robs both the government and the migrants of an opportunity to foster the self-reliance, independence and productivity of African immigrants, as opposed to having them depend on government resources or handouts. For this reason, we recommend that a human rights paradigm be incorporated when migrants’ access to public health is reported on. Emphasis should also be placed by the press on editorial reforms that foster an inclusive approach that illuminates the plight of migrants as a vulnerable group. Such an approach will benefit all people living in the country.

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Brown, J. D. (2002). Mass media influences on sexuality. The Journal of Sex Research, 39(1), 42–45. Corcoran, N. (2007). Mass media in health communication. In N. Corcoran (Ed.), Communicating health: Strategies for health promotion (pp. 73–95). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cross, R., Davis, S., & O’Neil, I. (2017). Health communication: Theoretical and critical perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press. Crush, J. (2008). The perfect storm: The realities of xenophobia in contemporary South Africa. Cape Town: IDASA. Crush, J., & Tawodzera, G. (2014). Medical xenophobia and Zimbabwean migrant access to public health services in South Africa. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(4), 655–670. Danso, R., & McDonald, D. A. (2001). Writing xenophobia: Immigration and the print media in post-apartheid South Africa. Africa Today, 48(30), 115– 137. Everitt, D. (2010). Overview and prospects: Strategy and tactics (Gauteng City Region Synthesis Report). Available at http://www.gcro.ac.za/sites/default/ files/news/xenoreports. Accessed 23 May 2018. Fernadez, L. L., & Teresa, B. J. (2015). Health and social media: Perfect storm of information. The Korean Society of Medical Informatics, 21(2), 67–73. Forman, L. (2005). Both medium and message: HIV/AIDS, information and communication in Africa. A Journal of Law and Policy, 1(1), 171–217. Hadland, A. (2010). Shooting the messenger: Mediating the public and the role of the media in South Africa’s xenophobic violence. Africa Development, 35(3), 119–143. Harris, B. (2001). A foreign experience: Violence, crime and xenophobia during South Africa’s transition. Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. Health-e News. (2015). Mothers and children are collateral damage in immigration clampdown. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-09-06-hea lth-enews-mothers-and-children-are-collateral-damage-in-immigration-clampd own/. Hutchnson, P. L., & Malahlela, X. (2006). Utilisation of voluntary counselling and testing services in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. AIDS Care, 18(5), 446–455. Jone, N., Vanderhaeghen, Y., & Viney, D. (2008). The rise of the daily sun and its contributions to the creation of post-apartheid identity. In A. Hadland, E. Louw, S. Sesanti, & S. Wasserman (Eds.), Power, politics and identity in the South African media. Cape Town: HSRC Press. Katz, E. (2001). Lazarsfeld’s map of media effects. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 13(3), 270–279.

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Keller, S. (2008). Using media to address adolescent sexual health: Lessons learned at home. In J. D. Brown (Ed.), Managing the media monster: The influence of media on teen sexual behaviour and attitudes (pp. 84–107). Washington, DC: National Campaign. Knox, S. (2014). The grotesque symposium of the tabloid: Reflections for inclusive democratic systems (Policy Brief No. 114). Africa Institute of South Africa. Lindeque, M. (2015). MEC: State hospitals pressurised by foreigner influx. Available at https://ewn.co.za/2015/08/21/Health-MEC-Foreigners-put ting-severe-strain-on-hospitals. Accessed 18 June 2020. Lule, E., Rosen, J. E., Singh, S., Knowles, J. C., & Behrman, R. J. (2006). Adolescent health programmes. In Adolescent and childhood diseases. Washington, DC: Adolescent Health Research Institute. Mbhele, T. (2018). Foreign nationals are burdening SA health system: Motsoaledi. https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/foreign-nationals-are-bur dening-sahealth-system-motsoaledi/. McCombs, M. (2004). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. Cambridge: Polity Press. McCombs, M. (2013). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. McCombs, M., Hubert, L., Kiousis, S., & Wanta, W. (2011). The news and public opinion: Media effects on civic life. Cambridge: Polity Press. McDonald, J. T., & Kennedy, S. (2004). Insights into the ‘healthy immigrant effect’: Health status and health service use of immigrants to Canada. Social Sciences & Medicine, 59(8), 1613–1627. McQuail, D. (2010). Mass Communication Theory (6th ed.). London: Sage. Merrill, J. (2005). Two faces of tabloidism. Equid Novi: African Journalism Studies, 26(2), 264–284. Mohamed, A. (2011). Moving beyond xenophobia: Structural violence, conflict and encounters with the ‘Other’ Africans. Development Southern Africa, 28(5), 691–704. Moorhead, A. S., Hazlett, D. E., Harrison, L., et al. (2013). A new dimension of health care: Systematic review of the uses, benefits and limitations of social media for communication. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15(4), 1–17. Mtwana, N., & Bird, W. (2006). Revealing race: An analysis of the coverage of race and xenophobia in the South African print media. Available at https://www.mediamonitoringafrica.org/images/uploads/Final_rep ort_v5_Print_final.pdf. Accessed 28 March 2020. Muswede, T. (2015). South African media and the coverage of xenophobic violence against foreign nationals: A study of two tabloid newspapers. Proceedings of the 4th SAPAAM Limpopo Chapter Annual Conference 28–30, Polokwane, South Africa. National Health Act 61. (2003). Government Gazette. Cape Town.

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Neocosmos, M. (2006). From ‘foreign natives’ to ‘native foreigners’: Explaining xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA. Neocosmos, M. (2008). The politics of fear and the fear of politics: Reflections on xenophobic violence in South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43(6), 586–594. Odhiambo, A. (2012). A sick system abuses its refugees. Available at https:// mg.co.za/article/2012-3-16-a-sick-system-abuses-its-refugees. Accessed 12 March 2020. Rosen, E. D. (2012). Improving public sector productivity: Concepts and practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Seleka, N. (2015, April 22). Pregnant, displaced and unsure of the future xenophobic attacks. Sowetan. Sharma, N., & Choudhary, S. N. (2007). How effective are radio programmes in dissemination of health messages to the rural masses? Indian Journal of Public Health, 51(2), 122–124. South African Human Rights Commission. (2018). Medical xenophobia—Public hospitals deny migrants health care services. Johannesburg: SARHC. Sparks, C. (2000). Introduction: The panic over tabloid news. In C. Sparks & J. Tulloch (Eds.), Tabloid tales: Global debates over media standards. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Steenveld, L. (2006). Tabloids a social phenomenon. In S. Bulbulia (Ed.), The tabloid challenge: What is good journalism? (pp. 18–21). Johannesburg: Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. Steenveld, L., & Strelitz, L. (2010). Trash or popular journalism? The case of South Africa’s Daily Sun. Journalism, 11(5), 531–547. Swanepoel, T., Fourie, L. M., & Froneman, J. D. (2007). HIV/AIDS reporting in three South African newspapers. Communicare, 26(1), 74–91. UNAIDS. (2004). The media and HIV/AIDS: Making a difference. Global Media AIDS Initiative. Geneva: UNAIDS. Wasserman, H. (2010). Tabloid journalism in South Africa. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

CHAPTER 14

Gateways and Gatekeepers: Social Media and the (Re)Defining of Somali Identity in Kenya’s Security Operations Gianluca Iazzolino and Nicole Stremlau

Introduction In the early hours of 2 April 2014, several vehicles of the Kenyan National Police, including divisions of the GSU (General Special Units), an elite branch of the police, converged on Nairobi’s neighbourhood of Eastleigh, known also as Mogadishu Kidogo (Swahili for Little Mogadishu) because of its large Somali population. Apart from Somali refugees, it is also home to internal migrants from the mostly Somali North Eastern Province. Roadblocks were placed at each end of First Street, which bisects the neighbourhood, and hundreds of agents stormed private residences and hotels, disrupting deliveries and the activities of workers in the dozens of shopping malls that teem with customers during the day. The premises

G. Iazzolino Department of International Development and the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, London School of Economics, London, UK N. Stremlau (B) Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_14

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of Saint Therese, a local Catholic church, were turned into a temporary holding centre in which dozens of people were corralled to await identification and eventual transfer to detention centres. Dubbed Operation Usalama Watch (Peace Watch)1 and ordered by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in the wake of a blast that killed six people in at the end of March, the security operation was officially aimed at identifying and uprooting local cells of Al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamist movement. Attacks by militants in Kenya have been on the rise since the Kenyan Defence Forces launched Operation Linda Nchi (Protect the Homeland) in October 2011, when the Kenyan Defence Forces crossed into southern Somalia with the declared intent of neutralising Al-Shabaab and thus prevent a spill-over of the Somali conflict into Kenya. Instead, the invasion triggered the opposite. With its conspicuous Somali presence, high financial turnover and relative impenetrability to state scrutiny, Eastleigh was portrayed in public discourses as a centre for money laundering and the financing of terrorism,2 and it became the internal front of the Kenyan ‘War on Terror’. Following the onset of Operation Usalama Watch, a response was launched by local groups to dispel the neighbourhood’s sinister reputation, and by activists to denounce cases of abuse and harassments allegedly perpetrated by the Kenyan security forces. At the forefront of the reaction was the Eastleigh Business Community (EBC), a leading Somali business association representing over 3000 business owners with considerable economic influence. By staging demonstrations and public gatherings, holding closed-door meetings with the authorities and participating in radio programmes and talk shows, prominent businesspeople spoke for the Somali community as a whole. Local business associations played a crucial role in challenging narratives about the criminalisation the Somali population in Kenya. They used the traditional and the new social media to mobilise, access information and hold authorities accountable for harassment and abuses. The business community placed particular emphasis on Somali solidarity as a value that bound together all Somalis, whether they had legal status as Kenyan citizens or were Somali refugees. In this way, they perpetuated the view that has dominated studies of Somalis in Kenya for decades, namely that they are a homogeneous population sharing a common language and culture, and the Islamic faith. Spokespersons of the business organisations successfully focused the spotlight on bureaucratic neglect of the area, pointing to the area’s poor

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infrastructure in spite of the large amount of taxes annually payed by local businesses. However, as refugees were being rounded up and police operations were disrupting business activities in the neighbourhood, some segments of the Somali community questioned the narrative that was being advanced, namely the recasting of Eastleigh’s Little Mogadishu as a tight community whose social relations were based on trust. Refugees and leaders of Somali minority clans in particular claimed that their voices had been deliberately sidelined by the local business elite, thereby curtailing their access to the authorities and the media. By examining the tensions underlying these claims, we investigated xenophobic violence, Somali activism in Eastleigh in particular, and the role of the social media in advancing certain interests and perspectives. We argue that two intertwined struggles over narratives unfolded against the background of Operation Usalama Watch and the broader securitisation of the Somali population in Kenya; one that took place in physical spaces and on social media to challenge sweeping generalisations about Somalis and terrorism, which dominated Kenyan public discourses, and the other an inconspicuous contestation (yet one that was deeply ingrained in Somali colonial and postcolonial history) of roles of power and forms of gatekeeping that portrayed the Somali community as homogeneous and obscured the identity and interests of Somali minorities. In particular, we highlight the dynamics that reflected and actively contributed to reproduce pre-existing inequalities rooted in the Somali context and illuminated during the volatile period coinciding with Usalama Watch. The dynamics that enabled some voices to be amplified while silencing those of others derives from clanship, a crucial feature of Somali culture and society that regulates political allegiances and business partnerships (Luling 2006; Mohamed 2007). Besides providing solidarity and protection, Somali clans are both the outcome and the drivers of social and political change and, as such, the elements that underpin a complex architecture of power. While social networks based on clanship may help consolidate trust or smooth the flows of information and facilitate access to political institutions, they are at the same time regulated by the logic of inclusion and exclusion since ‘sociability cuts both ways’ (Portes 1998, p. 18) and encapsulates the risk of exacerbating patrimonial relations and limitations to individual freedom. This approach directly challenges assumptions about the linear relationship of democratic institutions, development and social capital, as

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postulated by a large literature that has placed emphasis on the significance of civil society organisations for democratic participation and economic development (for a review of this ‘social capitalism’ perspective, see Meagher 2009, 2010). Yet, forms of patronage may lie beneath a surface of horizontal symmetric relations, sugar-coated in the language of solidarity (Chabal and Daloz 1999; Bayart et al. 1999). They can also be embedded within a democratic framework, originating in a neopatrimonial system in which the ‘distinction between private and public interests is purposely blurred’ (Bratton and van de Walle 1994, p. 458; see also Bach 2011; Beresford 2015). Or the risk of social networks being hijacked and turned into neo-patrimonial structures lies in what Szreter and Woolcock (2004, p. 6) call ‘linking social capital’, which refers to the ‘norms of respect and networks of trusting relationships between people who are interacting across explicit, formal or institutionalised power, or authority gradients in society’. Pre-existing inequalities may be entrenched and reproduced through control, exerted by political and economic elites of, on the one hand, the channels of communication with political authorities and media institutions, and, on the other, the language and narratives structuring this communication. This appears true not only for traditional media, with their one-to-many structure, but also for social media, despite the expectations of greater participation and horizontal communication attached to them. In this redefined political space, power asymmetries are brought to the fore by the limited range of choices of some groups to cope with uncertainty and venting their grievances. Thus, in the context of Eastleigh, while members of groups with access to resources and opportunities could rely on a broader repertoire of channels (mobile phones, social media, mainstream media), Somali refugees hailing from marginalised communities in Somalia were limited in their choice of communication options to mostly face-to-face and mobile phone interactions. This chapter proceeds with a brief introduction of the experience of Somalis in Kenya since the country’s independence and the securitisation of the Somali population in Eastleigh. We then examine the response of the Somali community and the role of the Eastleigh Business Community in challenging the view that Somalis are a national security threat. Thereafter we consider how power structures rooted in postcolonial Somalia reverberate in local inequalities, thus affecting the way in which Somali minorities can cope with insecurity. We conclude by discussing how entrenched forms of patronage and gatekeeping may lurk behind

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self-styled civil society organisations based on normative assumptions of democratic participation and empowering narratives of information and communication technologies.

The Kenyan Government and the Securitisation of the Somali Community In March 2014, just prior to the crackdown associated with Usalama Watch, one of Kenya’s leading columnists and the managing editor of The Daily Nation opened his column by arguing that, ‘It would appear that every little, two-bit Somali has a big dream – to blow us up, knock down our buildings and slaughter our children. They declared war on us and we thought it was a small matter that some guy in government was going to take care of. We were wrong’.3 The Kenyan media has been full of sweeping statements blaming the entire Somali community for the violence. The securitisation of the Somali population in Kenya should be seen in the context of the broader global agenda in the post-September 11 scenario that strengthened the security development nexus (Faist 2005), as well as against the historical background of identity politics in postcolonial Kenya. For a country such as Kenya, located on the front line of the so-called War on Terror because of its proximity to Somalia, a ‘failed state’ in policy discourse and therefore deemed to be a breeding ground for terrorism, conditionalities were attached by donors to its commitment to fight against the terrorist threat (Bachmann and Hönke 2010).4 The immediate security concerns merged with a more insidious anxiety that the growth of the Somali population might subvert the demographic, religious and political balance of the country. Since colonial times, tensions have marred the relationship between the Kenyan state and its Somali population that is concentrated in the north-eastern borderland with Somalia. Ahead of Kenyan independence, unrest started brewing in what was known at the time as the Northern Frontier District and became the North Eastern Province (NEP), a semiarid area that was part of Jubbaland before that region was ceded to the British by the Italians. In the wake of the proclamation of the Republic of Kenya in 1963, two groups of Somali-Kenyans merged into the Northern Province Peoples Progressive Party (NPPPP) but later evolved into the Northern Frontier Districts Liberation Army (NFDLA) that launched an insurgency in the area (Branch 2014, p. 645). One group of the NFDLA

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was supported by Hawiye clans and was rooted in the northern borderland areas of Wajir, Moyale and Mandera, while a second group hailed from the Darood clan and was active in the area surrounding Garissa and across the south-western border with Somalia. Following attacks against Kenyan troops, Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta declared a state of emergency in the entire district. This was a momentous decision not only for Kenyan Somalis but also for Somalia, and one that would have implications for the Kenyan attitude towards Somali refugees and, more generally, for Kenya’s refugee policy. The ensuing four-year war, remembered as the shifta war after the local word for bandit by which Kenyatta used to label the insurgents, left about 4000 persons dead and an open sore between Kenya and its citizens of Somali origin (Weitzberg 2017). Although the hostilities ceased in 1967, the area continued to be marred by tension and violence (Anderson 2014). The militarisation of the NEP was characterised by frequent roundups and episodes of state violence, such as the Wagalla massacre in 1984 during which security forces murdered between 1000 and 5000 Somalis. This reinforced the perception of Kenyan Somalis as ‘ambiguous citizens’ (Scharrer 2018). Ogaden politicians and top army officers used the state apparatus to benefit their own lineages, such as during a screening of ethnic Somalis in Kenya in 1989 to assess Kenyan citizenship claims. In the course of this exercise, the Darood Ogaden elite hijacked the state apparatus to neutralise economic and political competitors, ‘mirroring conflicts expressed along clan lines in neighbouring Somalia’ (Lochery 2012, p. 617). The consolidation of the Darood Ogaden elite occurred while the collapse of the state administration in the early 1990 s accelerated the flight of those who could either rely on ties with relatives or who had the money to relocate to Kenya. Thus, although Kenya’s border control efforts intensified in the late 1980 s as the Barre regime in Somalia was unravelling and a growing number of Somalis crossed into Kenya, an informal two-tier system was effectively in place in the NEP. Former officers of the Somali regime were granted asylum, while thousands of refugees were turned away (Milner 2009). Having relatives in Kenya became critical to acquiring an increasingly valuable Kenyan identity document. The state of emergency in the province, imposed in the 1960s, was only lifted in 1991 at a time when Somalia descended into civil war. Between 1991 and 1994, over 400,000 people crossed the border into Kenya (Milner 2009). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

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(UNHCR) was given a mandate by Kenya, making it responsible for registering asylum applications and determining refugee status. Although relinquishing responsibilities to the UNHCR for the management of humanitarian affairs, the Kenyan government officially adopted a policy of ‘abdication and containment’ (Milner 2009, p. 88), which obliged refugees to reside in refugee camps while a durable solution was being sought. The camps were located in the Kenya–Somalia border region. The main shelter was established 100 km from the border on the outskirts of Dadaab village in the Garissa district. It soon expanded into three UNHCR facilities, Ifo, Dagahaley and Hagadera, turning Dadaab into one of the largest refugee complexes in the world and an icon of the protracted Somali refugee situation (Horst 2006; Agier 2011). Most displaced Somalis had little scope for improving their living conditions unless they were able to resort to pre-existing social relationships in the NEP or in Nairobi’s neighbourhood of Eastleigh. Although the local Somali population in Eastleigh has boomed since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, the neighbourhood was initially a transit space while awaiting resettlement to other countries or return to Somalia following the end of turmoil in that country. Eastleigh today has unique characteristics within the Nairobi urban landscape, particularly as over 40 shopping malls have been built there over the past 20 years, making it a local landmark (Carrier and Lochery 2013). From initially being an ethnic enclave, the neighbourhood has evolved into a centre for Somali nationals and Somali refugees with Kenyan citizenship, as well as Kenyans lacking qualifications and nonSomalis from the NEP. Over the years, events that threatened state power were regularly followed by a security crackdown on the Somali refugee population in Eastleigh (Campbell 2006).5 The opacity of the financial channels through which the refugee’s capital flows is not only a popular source of suspicion but also softens popular opprobrium for the harassment and extortion of which Somalis (both refugees and Kenyan citizens) are often victims. Since the 1990s, advocacy organisations have criticised the Kenyan authorities for their treatment of Somali refugees (Otunnu 1992). Despite the political prominence acquired by many Kenyan Somalis during the Moi and Kibaki presidencies, the business success of the Somali diaspora has made refugees increasingly appealing victims of a corrupt police, which indiscriminately targets their victims as ‘walking ATMs’, according to an idiomatic expression very popular among Somalis in Eastleigh.

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The rise of Al-Shabaab in Somalia ushered in a new phase of the conflict in that country and impacted upon the popular perception of Somalis in Kenya. Increasing insecurity in the borderlands and the refugee camps foreshadowed a spill-over of the Somali conflict to Kenya. Following Operation Linda Nchi, a string of terrorist attacks claimed by Al-Shabaab hit Kenya, which exacerbated the negative profiling of the Somali population and the scale of abuses by the security forces (Teff and Yarnell 2012). On 12 December 2012, the Kenyan Department of Refugee Affairs issued a directive ordering the cessation of all urban refugee operations and the relocation of Somali refugees to the humanitarian complexes of Dadaab and Kakuma (239, m 2014). The relocation was subsequently put on a hold on 23 January 2013 by the High Court, but it added to a situation of deep uncertainty for the thousands of Somali refugees in Eastleigh. A stop-and-frisk policy targeted young males in particular. They were brought to the nearby Pangani police station for questioning and were often held without reason. Rampant police corruption was largely perceived by Somalis in Eastleigh as a greater threat to their daily lives than the threat of terrorism, which undermined the official interpretation of events. Insecurity and institutional distrust became particularly evident in the aftermath of the 21 September attack on Nairobi’s elite Westgate Mall by Al-Shabaab gunmen. During the three-day siege, 67 people were killed. Evidence of gross negligence and misconduct by the security forces emerged during the post-attack inquiry, further tarnishing the reputation of the government of Uhuru Kenyatta, which was already in a difficult situation because of an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the alleged irresponsibility of fanning political violence in 2008. Many questions were left unanswered during the inquiry, adding to a sense of unease and fuelling conspiracy theories.

Eastleigh Speaks Back: The EBC and the Representation of the Somali Community Following the launch of Operation Usalama Watch and the decision to turn the Kasarani stadium in the outskirts of Nairobi into a detention centre, advocacy organisations became increasingly outspoken in denouncing the government’s counter-terrorism policy as being simultaneously ineffective and detrimental, since it exacerbated the grievances and marginalisation of the Somali population. Reports from local and

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international non-government organisations (NGOs) were published by some mainstream media. Two weeks into Usalama Watch, Kenyan police spokesperson Masoud Mwyini told reporters that the operation ‘has continued to arrest criminals, suspected terrorists and illegal aliens’ (Joselow 2014). To counter allegations of the ethnic profiling of Somalis, he said: ‘1136 suspects from 14 different nationalities have undergone security screenings’. However, it was indisputably the Somali population that bore the brunt of the security swoop and suffered its side effects. Among others, Human Rights Watch expressed its concerns, reporting a disturbing number of allegations of harassment and abuse by the security forces against Somalis who were unable to pay bail for their release (The New Humanitarian 2014). It also condemned the summary deportation of undocumented Somalis to Somalia. A leading role in denouncing the blanket criminalisation of the Somali population was played by the EBC, which requires its members to operate under an official licence to keep them accountable to local government. By emphasising the economic dynamism of Somali entrepreneurs as the key to the successful rise of a historically marginalised community, the EBC embraced the role of a homogeneous body sharing common values and interests that faced the same issues, above all the corruption of the state apparatus. Its ‘trickle-down rhetoric’ stressed the beneficial effect of business on the whole Somali community in Eastleigh and beyond. The disruption of business activities because of the ongoing security operation in Eastleigh was framed as a blow to the livelihoods of the broader Somali community. While the Somali business community’s contribution to Kenya’s exchequer was estimated at US$780 million a year (Barnes 2014), the militarisation of the neighbourhood was costing Kenya between 10 KSh and 40 KSh billion ($93–$375 million) in missed revenues (Mohammed 2013). According to Ahmed Mohamed, secretary general of the EBC: To protect the business in Eastleigh is also to protect all Somalis, and the other way around. When the terror attacks started, and thereafter Usalama Watch, the situation in Eastleigh became very difficult. There was a lot of police around and people were scared to come here, and this affected the business, which went down.

The experience of Mohammed is particularly telling. As a well-educated Somali–Kenyan born in Mandera in the NEP, he has been at the forefront

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in drawing the attention of the Kenyan government to the neglect of Eastleigh. During Usalama Watch, Mohamed argued, the Kenyan media portrayed all Somalis as terrorists. This is what made him believe that it was the role of the EBC to counter this narrative actively. Leveraging his links to the local member of parliament, Yusuf Hassan Abdi, and majority leader Aden Duale, Mohamed organised a demonstration against terrorism in the aftermath of the Westgate attack, as well as blood donor collection outside the mosque in Jam Street. The EBC derives its influence over local and national politics from its economic relevance. Crucial to this narrative are both the individual skills of its members as community leaders and their ready access to the media that allows them to reach out to a larger audience, including other businesspeople, politicians and foreign actors. Ahmed, for instance, is a regular speaker on Radio Star FM, the most popular radio channel in Eastleigh and among Kenyan Somalis. The studios are located on the top floor of Eastleigh Mall and the station is owned by Sheik Mahmoud Shakul, an influential Darood Ogaden cleric and businessman from the NEP. As the spokesperson of the EBC, Ahmed’s main task is to reach out to journalists and local politicians. Eloquence, coupled with a good education attained overseas, has contributed to making him a charismatic figure in Eastleigh. He has built his reputation as a leader able to link to external networks. Ahmed has focused on links between corruption and the marginalisation of the Somali population and reminds people of the incomplete integration of the NEP within the Kenyan state, noting, for example, that ‘People in Garissa [the largest city in the NEP] used to say “I’m going to Kenya” when they came to Nairobi’. He also advances the narrative of Somali unity through which the EBC has garnered legitimacy and support from external actors. Ahmed’s prolific radio engagement has been accompanied by the savvy use of the social media (Dubois and Gaffney 2014), which has proved crucial to expanding his pre-existing networks and tie the protests against the militarisation of Eastleigh to broader issues of institutional neglect of the neighbourhood, including the absence of an efficient garbage collection system. As he has noted: I use Twitter a lot. I prefer it to Facebook. Actually, I don’t like Facebook, people post too much nonsense and you get lost in it. With Twitter it’s different, you have a few characters to say what you want to say and it’s much easier to manage. You can see who your followers are and follow

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others. As the spokesperson of the EBC, I’ve always been communicating a lot with the media. They know me and I know them. They follow my Twitter account, so they know that if there is something going on here, they will know it from me. Sometimes I take pictures with my phones and I share them on Twitter and then journalists and activists ask me if they can use them. Also, when there is some event here, such as a demonstration or the blood collection after Westgate, I invite journalists here to have a look.

Social media was also used to challenge or correct mainstream narratives on security in Eastleigh. However, the capacity to do so is dependent upon the user’s influence, both online and offline, and the ‘linking [of] social capital’ to interact with multiple institutions. ‘Correcting things when they’re wrong’, as Ahmed put it, ‘may thus require a political endorsement to capture the attention of media professionals and prompt them to revise their approach to a specific news [story]. In one case, The Nation published a title on two Somalis who had robbed a shop and put exactly that, “Somali thieves”. So, I put this title on Twitter and I wonder[ed] how it would have been if, for instance, the journalist had written “Kikuyo thieves” instead. That would have been racial profiling. Then a member of parliament from the Jubilee coalition retweeted my tweet and, because of her endorsement, the newspaper immediately corrected the title’. While the clout of the EBC derives from its economic significance, other more creative strategies were deployed to recast the opinion about the Somali population in Kenya. For instance, the Eastleighwood Youth Forum (EYF) (a nod to Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood), which was founded by Burhan Iman, a Somali-Kenyan from the NEP, produces videos and movies, arranges media events and provides technical training to young Somalis. As Burhan explains: I think that much of the problem depends on the idea that many Kenyans have of the Somalis. This is why at one point the government decided that all Somalis here were terrorist, even those like myself with a Kenyan passport, and (Kenyan) people believed it because they did not know much about Somalis, even though Somalis are Kenyan as well. So, the problem can be solved only by changing the perspective that most Kenyans have of Somalis by showing them that the Somali youth have the same life and dreams as Kenyan youth.

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The EYF regularly organises screenings at one of Eastleigh’s largest hotels, inviting Kenyan journalists to ‘show [them] a different face of the Somali community’. This activity took on greater importance at the peak of Operation Usalama Watch. The savvy use of social media made the EYF popular among young Somalis in the diaspora, gaining over 6100 followers on Facebook and more than 4500 subscribers to the EYF channel on YouTube. One of its most popular productions, a video of the song Iqra Yarey Hees Cusub Shidi, was watched almost 400,000 times. The creative use of video to convey a more reassuring image of young Somali men and women, dealing with individual aspirations and social commitments to which a broader audience can relate, succeeded in capturing the attention of the foreign media, such as BBC Africa and Al Jazeera, and subsequently that of the Kenyan media. Burhan has an approach that is controversial within the community. He has been threatened and attacked by particularly conservative Somalis. The experience of the EYF does, however, bring to the fore the importance of having specific competences, including language skills and the use of various communication channels, to reach audiences beyond one’s normal network. As Swahili native speakers, Kenyan Somalis are well positioned to reach out to political institutions and media in Kenya and influence dominant narratives. The narratives developed by the EYF often revolve around the generational divide. They tend to gloss over the issue of power relationships in Somalia and the Somali diaspora, focusing instead on the tensions arising from the clash between traditional constraints and the cosmopolitan aspirations of the Somali youth; some topics are even too sensitive to be addressed by a progressive media organisation such as the EYF.

The Marginalisation of Minority Voices The narrative of Somali solidarity as championed by Eastleigh’s business elite has been challenged by many who emphasise the fragmentation of the Somali community, especially the major cleavage between SomaliKenyans and Somali refugees who are ‘looked down upon’ by the former. This view has been supported by a Somali journalist who works for the Kenyan media, according to whom the ‘real mistrust between and Somalis in Kenya’ is one of the main challenges when reporting on and abuse by the security forces. In contrast to Somali-Kenyans and diaspora members

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who operate businesses in Eastleigh and are safe from the risk of encampment and deportation to Somalia, Somali refugees perceive their situation to be particularly precarious and regard themselves as being misrepresented by those, such as the spokespersons of the EBC, who claim to speak in their name. This perceived chasm between holders of different papers, and therefore different rights, reflects a deeper rift that can be traced back to Somalia and to power structures that have survived, and have been reinforced by the collapse of the Somali state. The relationships of dominance and subordination, which have become entrenched in colonial and postcolonial times, have been further exacerbated by the eruption of civil war and reproduction in spaces of displacement, both within Somalia and across the border. In Kenya’s borderland with Somalia, the ties of kinship survived the drawing up of colonial boundaries. The members of clans straddling the current borders have been better positioned to access strategic resources, such as identity papers and financial capital. During the 1980s, members of the Darood Ogaden, in particular, gained influence through a series of political and military promotions (Lochery 2012; Anderson 2014). The consolidation of a Darood Ogaden elite in Kenya paved the way for the flight of clan members living in Somalia as the regime there begun to crumble.6 Kenya’s refugee population boomed following the eruption of largescale violence in southern Somalia but, while those with means headed towards urban centres where they were able to rely on clan fellows to obtain papers and support, others were forced to find shelter in humanitarian facilities. Only later could they make their way to Eastleigh to study or look for better living opportunities. There is no precise data on the clan composition of Eastleigh but, according to a survey conducted for the US Embassy in Nairobi, as well as general opinion, businesses in Eastleigh are dominated by members of the Darood and Hawyie clans. Although the EBC downplays the role of clans by upholding Somali solidarity and a community imbued with Islamic values, this and other formal organisations are generally perceived as being dominated by informal clan assemblies that regulate the relationships among members, provide support and enforce sanctions. Thus, as Carrier and Lochery (2013, p. 339) point out, ‘Somalis in Eastleigh and elsewhere speak so much of how their businesses rely on “trust” that the concept appears

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not so much descriptive as proscriptive, perhaps allowing other aspects of these relationships – especially power asymmetries – to be hidden’. Somalis from minority groups attribute their protracted marginalisation to a lack of capital to start a business or obtain education and papers, which are often purchased from dominant clans, mostly the Darod Ogaden, through personal ties to Somali-Kenyans from the same clan in the NEP. Moreover, since access to material resources is mostly contingent upon one’s kin network and its entwined political and economic relevance, minority members feel that the campaigning activity of the EBC and of other organisations associated with majority clans does not acknowledge their particular vulnerability. Omar, a Bantu7 leader, clearly expresses this exceptionality, describing it as follows: We were the most vulnerable during Usalama Watch because we were not able to pay when the police stopped us. We Bantu have no space for activism in Eastleigh since politics here is for jileec,8 so we’re left fencing for ourselves. We live here, so we know how things go. But then there are things that Cushitic Somalis know, and they are friends with the government, so we don’t know … We Bantu all know each other, we come from the same regions in Somalia and we were in Dadaab and Kakuma together. We have to stand together because we cannot really trust the Somali Cushitic [and the EBC]. This is why we also stay in touch via mobile phone and meet regularly.

The need to avoid encampment and deportation seems to be much more pressing for refugees, particularly those from minority clans, because of their inability to pay for security at home and in the refugee camps. Hassan, a Somali Jareer9 student who moved recently to Eastleigh from the Kakuma refugee camp, where he worked for an international NGO that helps refugees to track their relatives, stresses the difference between Somali Cushitic, the Kenyan security forces and Al-Shabaab. I think that not all Somalis suffer the same for the situation. For instance, we Jareer have always been suffering the most, also back in Somalia, and today the causes are almost the same. I think, for instance, that what is happening with Al Shabaab affects all Somalis but particularly us because we cannot pay the police, we cannot get resettlement, we cannot go to Uganda and we cannot return to Somalia. So, you see, the problem is especially for us. In the camp of Kakuma, where I come from, Kakuma 3,

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there are only Jareer so I help mostly them. Most Somali Cushitic don’t need my help. But Refugee United is for all refugees, not just Somalis.

Members of minority clans are particularly vulnerable in Somalia, where, as Omar claims: There is not real democracy because the problems of the Somali minorities are completely ignored. While we live in refugee camps or we are displaced in Somalia, Darood and Hawyie occupy our land and force us in[to] misery. So, there is no democracy in Somalia. Here in Kenya we are not citizens, we cannot vote and we cannot find a proper job because we don’t have money.

Somali refugees may also possess skills acquired in pre-war Somalia or through their proximity to the humanitarian apparatus. An example of this is Said Abukar, a refugee from the Bajun community, a minority group. He grew up in Mogadishu and acted as secretary to his father, a judge under Siyad Barre’s government in the 1990s when violence had abated, and a precarious order was holding. After his father was killed, he fled to the Dadaab refugee camp where he honed his English and worked with the UNHCR before moving to Eastleigh. Here, thanks to his legal skills, he obtained work as a field worker for Kituo Cha Sheria, a Kenyan advocacy organisation that provides free legal assistance to those (not only refugees) unable to afford it. Said was one of the signatories of the appeal against the encampment directive issued by the government in 2012. He explains his role as ‘a link between the organisation and refugees in Eastleigh’ because he knows ‘how to speak to both [communities] and [has] the trust of the Somali refugees’. He continues: ‘I mostly work with the most vulnerable, Benadiri, Bantu and [those] from other minorities who speak bad Swahili and don’t know their rights and are therefore more afraid of the police and more vulnerable to abuses. [During Usalama Watch] people came to me with complaints and reporting abuses, but there was not much I could do because the UNHCR didn’t collect complaints. So, the only thing I could do was to help people communicate in English because most of them only speak Somali. But you know, it’s also risky for me to approach the police because my family doesn’t have money for my release if I get caught. [During Usalama Watch] my advocacy activity was actually to inform the refugees of their rights and [how to] uphold the Kenyan law. The

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problem is that they don’t know their rights, and this is why they’re so afraid and accept to pay the police when they’re stopped in the street or arrested at home in their homes. They were particularly afraid after the government issued a directive ordering the encampment of all the refugees. The crisis was indeed due to police harassment and to a situation in which people in Kenya started thinking that all Somali refugees were Al Shabaab … therefore the police was authorised to do whatever they wanted, even extorting money because that money came from terrorism or piracy. But this was illegal according to Kenyan law and we decided to use the law. I believe in the law, but the fact is that what is happening depends mostly on one thing: the directive of the government. Even after the Supreme Court repelled the directive, the government tried to push it again’.

Said’s capacity to give visibility to the issues of refugees, who see him as the gateway to advocacy organisations, is restrained by his limited access to the media, which he needs to communicate with and beyond his network.

Conclusion The experiences of Somalis in Kenya offer a complex insight into both historical and contemporary xenophobic violence. Gatekeepers have long shaped the narratives around who is Kenyan or Somali-Kenyan, and the media has long entrenched these dominant narratives. Social media appears to have done little to challenge this. In the context of Usalama Watch, it was clear that the use of the social media was dependent upon education, pre-existing networks and age. However, this did not substantially alter the narrative of those who were targeted by the violence and who affected and shaped the perceptions of external actors, including international organisations and the local and international media. Identity politics, including the definition of who was Somali, became embedded in communication networks, including in social media. Twitter is generally popular among young Kenyan Somalis with a good command of English and is used for commenting on politics, local issues and football, and to send greetings during religious celebrations. Facebook has a larger base of users who post messages in Somali, and pictures, clips and videos from Somali TV shows, but it is less often used in Kenya for mobilising collective action. As this chapter has discussed, embedded forms of patronage and gatekeeping lie beyond self-styled civil society organisations. The assumed

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liberating powers of both social media and such seemingly democratic, or horizontal, associations as business associations and NGOs are often based on normative assumptions of democratic participation. To understand the intersection between civil society, social media and xenophobic violence, it is essential to unpack the power dynamics and historical legacies that permeate the long-term securitisation of the Somali population, of which Usalama Watch is only the latest event, and the co-option of organisations within the EBC and local NGOs.

Notes 1. For an in-depth review and analysis of Operation Usalama Watch, see the Report of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. Available at: https://www.knchr.org/Portals/0/CivilAndPoliticalReports/Report% 20of%20KNCHR%20investigations%20on%20Operation%20Usalama%20W atch.pdf?ver=2018-06-06-194906-830. Accessed 28 November 2019. 2. Speaking in the Kenyan Parliament, Orwa Ojodeh, a former assistant minister for internal security, compared the war against the Islamist group to the fight against ‘a big animal with its head in Eastleigh, Nairobi, and the tail in Somalia’ (Opiyo and Githinji 2011). 3. Available at: http://mobile.nation.co.ke/blogs/Are-we-just-going-to-sitaround-and-wait-to-be-blown-to-bits/1949942-2252048-format-xhtml-iya akqz/index.html. Accessed 27 November 2019. 4. Right after being sworn in, the Kibaki government presented to Parliament a controversial Suppression of Terrorism Bill. In addition to allowing security forces the extensive power of arresting and detaining suspects of terrorism who are in a judicial limbo, it included clauses that appeared to be targeting Muslims and Somalis in particular. 5. This was the case, for instance, in 1999 when repeated security raids that followed on the bombing of the US Embassy in 1998 culminated with a major ‘police crackdown on illegal aliens’, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians suspected of posing a threat to Kenyan security (IRIN 1999). During 2002, 1800 ‘illegal foreigners’ were arrested in two roundups (The Nation 2002; East African Standard 2002). It happened again in 2003 when over 100 Somalis were arrested after Kenyan intelligence warned of a terrorist threat to the US Embassy in Nairobi (The Nation 2003). 6. As many purchased Kenyan IDs, the effect became visible in the size of the Kenyan-Somali population, which became an increasingly politicised issue. The 1979 census put the number of Kenyan-Somalis at 516,385, or 3.3–3.4% of the Kenyan population of approximately 15.1 million to 15.7 million. By 2010, however, the Kenyan-Somali population had increased to 2.3 million, or about 5.8%, of the total population of 39,423,264. These

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figures were leaked following allegations of doctored census data at the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Planning (Chau 2010, p. 304). 7. The Somali Bantu are a minority and marginalised group that are primarily based in the Southern part of the country. 8. Literally ‘soft hair’. The term refers to Somalis hailing from pastoralist groups, mostly of Cushitic origin, who hold sway over Somali politics and the economy since precolonial times. 9. The Somali Jareer, also known as the Somali Bantu, are a minority group that primarily reside near the Shabelle and Juba Rivers in the south of Somalia. They have historically been marginalised and first came to the Somali region as slaves from central, west, and southern Africa.

References Agier, M. (2011). Managing the undesirables: Refugee camps and humanitarian government. Cambridge: Polity Press. Anderson, D. M. (2014). Remembering wagalla: State violence in Northern Kenya, 1962–1991. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 8(4), 658–676. Bach, D. C. (2011). Patrimonialism and neopatrimonialism: Comparative trajectories and readings. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 49(3), 275– 294. Bachmann, J., & Hönke, J. (2010). ‘Peace and security’ as counterterrorism? Old and new liberal interventions and their social effects in Kenya. African Affairs, 109(434), 97–114. Barnes, C. (2014). Losing hearts and minds in Kenya. International Crisis Group. Available at http://blog.crisisgroup.org/worldwide/2014/04/16/ losing-hearts-and-minds-in-kenya. Accessed 20 January 2015. Bayart, J. F., Ellis, S., & Hibou, B. (Eds.). (1999). The criminalisation of the state in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Beresford, A. (2015). Power, patronage and gatekeeper politics in South Africa. African Affairs, 114(455), 226–248. Branch, D. (2014). Violence, decolonisation and the cold war in Kenya’s northeastern province, 1963–1978. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 8(4), 642– 657. Bratton, M., & van de Walle, N. (1994). Neopatrimonial regimes and political transitions in Africa. World Politics, 46(4), 453–489. Campbell, E. H. (2006). Urban refugees in Nairobi: Problems of protection, mechanisms of survival and possibilities for integration. Journal of Refugee Studies, 19(3), 396–413. Carrier, N., & Lochery, E. (2013). Missing states? Somali trade networks and the Eastleigh transformation. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 7 (2), 334–352.

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Chabal, P., & Daloz, J. P. (1999). Africa works: Disorder as a political instrument. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Chau, D. (2010). The fourth point: An examination of the influence of Kenyan Somalis in Somalia. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 28(3), 297–312. Dubois, E., & Gaffney, D. (2014). The multiple facets of influence: Identifying political influential and opinion leaders on Twitter. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(10), 1260–1277. Faist, T. (2005). The migration-security nexus: International migration and security before and after 9/11 (Working Paper No. 9). Centre on Migration, Citizenship and Development (COMCAD), University of Bielefeld. Horst, C. (2006). Buufis amongst Somalis in Dadaab. The Journal of Refugee Studies, 19(2), 143–157. Joselow, G. (2014). Kenya police intensify security crackdown. Available at https://www.voanews.com/africa/kenya-police-intensify-security-crac kdown. Accessed 19 May 2017. Lochery, E. (2012). Rendering difference visible: The Kenyan state and its Somali citizens. African Affairs, 111(445), 615–639. Luling, V. (2006). Genealogy as theory, genealogy as tool: Aspects of Somali clanship. Social Identities, 12(4), 471–485. Meagher, K. (2009). Culture agency and power: Theoretical reflections on informal economic networks and political process (DIIS Working Papers 27). Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies. Meagher, K. (2010). Identity economics: Social networks and the informal economy in Nigeria. Suffolk: James Currey. Milner, J. (2009). Refugees, the state, and the politics of asylum in Africa. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mohamed, J. (2007). Kinship and contract in Somali politics. Africa, 77 (2), 226–249. Mohammed, G. (2013). Kenya: The cost of harassing Somalis over terror. Available at https://allafrica.com/stories/201301100532.html. Accessed 27 February 2020. Opiyo, P., & Githinji, P. (2011). Minister says Eastleigh the next target in hunt for Al Shabaab militants. Available at https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/art icle/2000045206/minister-says-eastleigh-the-next-target-in-hunt-for-al-sha baab-militants. Accessed 27 February 2020. Otunnu, O. (1992). Factors affecting the treatment of Kenyan-Somalis and Somali refugees in Kenya: A historical overview. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 12(5), 21–26. Portes, A. (1998). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1–24. Scharrer, T. (2018). ‘Ambiguous citizens’: Kenyan Somalis and the question of belonging. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 12(3), 494–513.

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Szreter, S., & Woolcock, M. (2004). Health by association? Social capital, social theory and the political economy of public health. International Journal of Epidemiology, 33, 650–667. Teff, M., & Yarnell, M. (2012). Somali refugees: Ongoing crisis, new realities (Field Report). Refugee International. Available at https://reliefweb. int/report/somalia/somali-refugees-ongoing-crisis-new-realities. Accessed 26 February 2020. The New Humanitarian. (2014). Ethnic Somalis under pressure in Kenyan capital. Available at http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2014/ 04/11/ethnic-somalis-under-pressure-kenyan-capital. Accessed 19 December 2018. Weitzberg, K. (2017). We do not have borders: Greater Somalia and the predicaments of belonging in Kenya. Athens: Ohio University Press.

PART IV

Social Media and Framing the Margins

CHAPTER 15

Social Media, Migration and Xenophobia in the Horn of Africa Ayalkibet Berhanu Tesfaye

Introduction The view of Africa, as portrayed in the Western media, is that of a continent from which people are in continuous flight to Europe, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula in search of new opportunities. This distorted picture belies the fact that most African migrants move within the continent (McAuliffe and Kitimbo 2018), including South Africa, which is the destination of choice, particularly for migrants from the Horn of Africa. Migration within Africa is triggered by a number of complicated natural and human-made problems linked to both domestic and international issues such as deforestation, desertification, drought, war and interference by many countries, for example, China and the USA, which have established military bases through bilateral agreements with nation states in north-eastern Africa. A combination of these problems has made life untenable for a great many people in the Horn of Africa and engendered irregular migration. In turn, this has led to a collusion between people smugglers, public officials and ordinary citizens who, wittingly or

A. B. Tesfaye (B) University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_15

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unwittingly, are drawn into a web of illegality, as discussed in this chapter. These activities are sometimes exposed by social media (Graydon 2019). Prior to 2000, Ethiopian migrants regarded South Africa as a transit point for migration to other countries, such as Canada, the USA, the UK and Australia (Tesfaye 2017). However, since many of them are largely economic migrants, they began to explore business opportunities in South African cities and townships and then remained there. But as the country’s major economic hub, Johannesburg has been their major focus since it offers the best economic opportunities (Zack and Estifanos 2015; Nuttall and Michael 2000; Kalitanyi and Visser 2010; Lehohla 2015). Earning power here far exceeded that of Ethiopia (Kefale and Mohammed 2015, p. 71). However, the continued decline in the South African economy since the global economic crisis of 2008 has corresponded with increasing hostility towards migrants in general, which has manifested itself in periodic outbursts of xenophobia or what some have called Afrophobia. To the extent that this situation prevails, coupled with language and cultural barriers, migrants from the Horn of Africa find it difficult to achieve social integration and assimilation in South Africa. In this regard, the social media has proven to be a two-edged sword. While it exposes the problems that come with irregular migration, it also contributes to migrants being regarded as undesirables. In this sense, it contributes to xenophobia. In this chapter, I seek to establish the factors that contribute to the decision by citizens from the Horn of Africa to migrate to South Africa, the xenophobia experienced there and how the transnational milieu is shaped by social media. The study relies on primary and secondary data gathered from several studies on migration from north-east Africa. The research also includes data garnered by me from my primary interaction with and observation of the Ethiopian and Eritrean migrant communities in Johannesburg, Durban and Pietermaritzburg (Tesfaye 2017).

The Reasons for Migration Within and from the Horn of Africa Whether migration is domestic, regional or intercontinental, it is often triggered by an increase in economic and institutional disintegration (Flahaux and De Haas 2016, pp. 2–3; Landau and Achiune 2015, p. 1; Fauvelle-Aymar 2015, p. 13) and ethnic conflict.

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With the construction of the Suez Canal in 1867, the area that was to become known as the Horn of Africa began to assume increasing importance. This region originally consisted of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea (also referred to as the ‘Greater Horn’), to which Sudan was added later (Bereketeab 2013, p. 72). Strategically located as the region borders the Red Sea, the Nile River, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean (Woodward 2003, p. 11), its commercial importance cannot be overstated. Progressively, the Horn of Africa attracted the attention of the world’s major powers (Habte Selassie 1980, pp. 1–2). Strategic factors added to the region’s importance: Bal el Manded and the Red Sea are the main shipping routes for goods from the Middle and Far East to Europe and the Americas (Bereketeab 2013, p. 1) and it is near ‘to the highly sensitive region of the Middle East, where two factors – oil and the Arab-Israel conflict – interface’ (Bereketeab 2013). Initially, three legacies contributed to the Horn of Africa’s instability, namely Ethiopia’s imperial expansionism and colonial legacy; foreign imperialist intervention (Habte Selassie 1980; de Waal 2015); and World War II followed by Cold War ideological competition and conflicts between the West and the Soviet Union (Oberdorfer 1978). Following Emperor Haile Selassie’s assassination and the abolition of the 3000-yearold Solomonic Dynasty in 1974 by the socialist and military-oriented Derg under Mengistu Hailemarian (Fransen and Kuschminder 2009, p. 5), Ethiopia’s instability became pronounced as the opposition struggled to establish an anti-Derg coalition. Ultimately, this was accomplished with US support. In turn, the Derg was supported militarily by the Soviet Union, a development that coincided with Eritrea’s war of independence from Ethiopia (Fransen and Kuschminder 2009). The situation was further complicated by the 1976 war between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Ogaden territory of eastern Ethiopia (Dougherty 1982, p. viii; de Waal 2015, p. 39). A border dispute over resources allocation resulted in the war between Ethiopia and Eretria from 1998 to 2000 (Gilkes and Barry 2005), which claimed more than 100,000 lives and brought with it the mass deportation of people on both sides irrespective of family relationships and length of residence (Gilkes and Barry 2005). The Sudanese civil war, which gave birth to South Sudan; a long-standing border dispute between Ethiopia and Sudan; and a similar dispute between Djibouti and Eretria, all contributed to the region’s instability. In addition, there was the

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prospect of a Somalia–Kenya dispute over oil and gas reserves (TRT World 2019). Furthermore, there is the ongoing issue among Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt over the allocation of the waters of the Blue Nile following the construction of The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (de Waal 2015, p. 1), a source of tension that has yet to be fully resolved. These issues have exacerbated an already incendiary political and social reality, namely ongoing migration from the Horn of Africa (de Waal 2015, p. 15). All these ‘structural factors’ have contributed to an anomaly, as outlined by Fransen and Kuschminder (2009, p. 9). Because of the inter-linkage of political issues in the region, all countries became sending, transit and destination countries for refugees, often at the same time. The push factors of migration have clearly been delineated by failed or fragile governance, persecution, political turmoil, armed conflict, poverty, natural disasters, resource scarcity, environmental stress and population pressure. Institutional weaknesses, such as forced marriages, dysfunctional homes and an emerging ‘culture of migration’ in certain countries, have created compelling push and pull factors that affect the decision to move (Horwood 2015, p. 8). All these issues are aspects of the protracted and complex structural factors (Campbell 2017) that have created an atmosphere of both the anomic and the nihilistic (Thielicke 1981; Perry 2011). The fact that there is no prospect in sight for the addressing these problems translates into ‘a continent of considerable migration’ (Baker and Aina 1995, p. 87). The ‘cumulative causation’ or inducement from those who have gone before, as well as poverty, have all served to perpetuate migration in the Horn of Africa (Dekker and Engbersen 2013, p. 402). One of the consequences of this situation is that ‘there is … an environment of flux in which people are moving, sometimes out of choice but often in the absence of any positive choice, in search of a better life’ (EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa 2017, p. 1). In the arena of Realpolitik, the macro-motives of international actors are usually hidden from local leaders (de Waal 2015, p. 16), or as Cottom (1967) put it, in the arena of ‘competitive interference’ proxies are usually kept in the dark. Currently, numerous foreign powers have military bases in the region. Djibouti, which is described as ‘a tiny barren country’ (Latif Dahir 2017), hosts military bases from the USA (including USAFRICOM which is the largest), Italy, France, Japan, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia and

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China (Boujrada 2018). Turkey has a military base in Somalia and the United Arab Emirates has one in Eritrea. This inter-state competition is compounded by the omnipresence of religious fanaticism and terrorist organisations such as the Al-Shabaab. Despite the current efforts by the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, to bring peace and stability to the region by means of the use of soft power, and the removal of Sudan’s dictator of three decades, Omar alBashir, from power in April 2019, migration from the Horn of Africa has continued. Migration in the past was largely a controlled undertaking that saw groups of people being allowed into a particular country in a rational manner and for specific purposes (Glynn 2011, p. 1; Peach 1991). However, in more recent times, those who seek to migrate without obtaining a visa or being granted refugee status have triggered fear of new cultural traits such as normative patterns of behaviour, including the role of religious symbols in worship, as well as terrorism, especially since 9/11 (Held 2015, p. 1). Illegal migrants also create socio-economic problems that contribute to xenophobia, which is particularly focused on African immigrants in South Africa and is often referred to as Afrophobia. Nevertheless, the desire for a better life by people from the Horn of African, coupled with the willingness of people smugglers to assist them, results in irregular migrants continuing to face the risks involved, such as drowning at sea or being hurt or killed in many other ways. Usually well-organised and efficient, people smugglers have developed numerous alternative migration networks and informal national and international contacts to assist them. They also have access to social media, such as WhatsApp and Facebook to facilitate the process. In 2018, 248,913 irregular migrants from the Horn of Africa used eastern, southern and northern routes to various countries, including South Africa (Manoharan 2018) in search of greater economic opportunities and political freedom (Besharov and Lopez 2016, p. 34). Even so, African migrants move mostly to neighbouring countries or within the same region. Of the world’s total of 258 million migrants, Africa’s share was 36 million. Of this number, 19 million migrated within the continent and 17 million left the continent (Musau 2019), despite sensationalised media reports to the contrary (Spaan and van Moppes 2006, pp. 1–2). It is grossly misleading to suggest that migration is either ‘new’ or that most African migrants end up in Europe. However, the ‘new’ availability

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of social media with its rapid communication has been used to induce, as well as discourage migration (Bacishoga et al. 2016).

Migration Routes from the Horn of Africa Historically, migrants from the Horn of Africa have mainly taken one of four routes: the eastern route through Yemen, the Middle East and beyond, which between 2011 and 2015 accounted for around 93,000 Ethiopians and Somalis (Horwood 2015, p. 10); the northern route through Sudan and Libya to Europe (the Central Mediterranean Route); the less used Egypt-to-Israel route (the Sinai Route); and the southern route through Kenya, Tanzania and on to South Africa, which was used by between 17,000 and 20,000 Somalis and Ethiopians annually in 2008 and 2009 (Horwood 2015).

The Role of Social Media in the Horn of Africa Migration Network Social media is inextricably linked to everyday life in the contemporary world (Craig 2019) and is an ‘agent of change’ (Craig 2019) with the potential for worldwide impact (Sheedy 2011, p. 4; Seargeant and Tagg 2014, pp. 2–11). It does so in ‘real time and with a wide range of multimedia content’ (Akhgar et al. 2017, p. 69). This being the case, it has ‘facilitated [the] creation and exchange of ideas … quickly and widely’ (Greer 2013, p. 156), facilitated communication and has rendered Planet Earth much smaller (Seargeant and Tagg 2014, p. 1). Furthermore, it has shed light on numerous phenomena in the world. Social media has psychologically enveloped much of the world with both negative and positive consequences, both of which may exist simultaneously (Akhgar et al. 2017, p. 45). Organs such as Twitter and Facebook have, for example, played a pivotal role in exposing the diverse and complex problems of the Horn of Africa, and this has triggered migration with all its consequences, including xenophobia (Dekker and Engbersen 2013). The matrices of migration have been restructured by social media. It has done so by facilitating the maintenance of contacts with primary associates such as family and friends and established a working relationship with ‘weak ties’ despite their anonymity (Dekker and Engbersen 2013, pp. 406–407). In the process, the use of social media forms the bases for

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new social relationships as they facilitate the realisation of objectives associated with migration (Utz and Muscanell 2015, p. 420). With respect to the vicissitudes and the exigencies of migration, social media also serves another vital function. Considering the possibility of unanticipated if not spontaneous changes in the migratory process, social media provide a pragmatic nimbleness and real-time life and death decision-making that permits almost instantaneous adjustments to the exigencies that irregular migrants face. To do so, migrants must rely on their social capital and the coping mechanism it offers to effectively address problems. It is in this sense that their social capital moves with them and facilities their survival. Consequently, as is the case with their religion, social capital assumes a sliding quality (Komito 2011, p. 1075) where ‘streetwise knowledge’ is required (Dekker and Engbersen 2013, p. 406), particularly when dealing with people smugglers. Where Libya is used as a transit point to Europe, many African migrants, including those from the Horn of Africa, face multiple and ongoing problems (Hamood 2006, p. 16). These including being commodified (Musau 2019) as migrants are literally sold by one person or syndicate to another, or being tortured, or becoming victims of extortion (Mafu 2019). These practices, it is claimed, provide ‘funds for terrorist groups intent on attacking the West’ (Farley 2018). Among irregular migrants, the most vulnerable are women and older girls as they are kept in detention centres’ and ‘are subjected to … gang-rape and sexual abuse at the hands of traffickers and smugglers’ (UN Report 2018). Sometimes, in Libya, their organs are harvested (Musau 2019). The hopelessness— nihilism, one might say—that characterises the lives of many in the Horn of Africa is so dire that they are willing to risk their lives in undertaking any haphazard, hazardous, unpredictable and shadowy journey into the unknown in anticipation of a better life at their destination. The southern route to South Arica, which is taken primarily by Ethiopians and Somalians, is also strewn with life-threatening hazards. This overland route traverses Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Severe hardships may include taking circuitous routes across many borders in the hope of avoiding the authorities, being bitten by poisonous snakes or stung by dangerous insects, exposure to dangerous wild animals, crossing the sea off the Tanzanian coast to avoid being arrested (according to Dausen 2018, some die from drowning), serving prison time and being deported back home (Kefale and Mohammed 2015, pp. 58 and 65).

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Migrants also risk contracting life-threatening diseases such as infections from contaminated food and water, losing their possessions and being unable to contact their loved ones (Horwood 2009, p. 8). Many irregular migrants have been arrested and imprisoned in Kenya and Tanzania in particular. As John Field (2008, p. 69) has pointed out, social capital may be used negatively, as in the case of people smuggling. The various organised smuggling bodies have bosses who are responsible for running the organisation in an efficient, effective and successful manner while making their self-preservation a top priority by way of wellorganised international smuggling chains (Horwood 2009, p. 8). Because people smuggling is dangerous, social media are indispensable to the network. Social media can also be relied on by migrants who experience a problem to contact family and friends, or even the media, in their country of origin or at their destinations to obtain assistance. One such situation arises when migrants are forced to raise ransom money demanded by their smuggling networks, as sometimes occurs (UNHCR 2013).

The Social Media’s Contribution to Increasing or Decreasing Migration and Xenophobia The ubiquitous nature of social media gives it the potential to affect transnational migration in at least two ways (Sheedy 2011). On the one hand, it facilitates people’s decisions to migrate, while on the other it changes people’s attitudes to migration by exposing the hazards that are associated with irregular migration. Social media may change people’s behaviour by curbing the prevalence of xenophobia on the one hand, while fuelling tensions over xenophobic violence on the other (news24 2019a). The romance of migration, coupled with the anticipation of its financial rewards, created great excitement among migrants initially. However, since then there has been a paradigm shift in the opposite direction. This has largely been generated by social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp through cellular phones. The reason for the change in perception has been made possible by ‘technologies [that now] allow us to stay in touch even when we are scattered across distant parts of the globe … [Consequently], distance is no longer an issue of such importance as it was in the pre-internet age’ (Seargeant and Tagg 2014, pp. 2–11). The social distance that almost totally paralleled the spatial distance between people migrating from the Horn of Africa has

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been eliminated by social media and real-time communication. What has emerged is a picture of the unvarnished reality of illegal migration. The social climate that envelops the migration phenomenon can manifest itself in xenophobia and can be incendiary. Described as ‘a hatred or fear of foreigners’, the term xenophobia is more commonly used to denote a ‘dislike of foreigners’. In this sense, xenophobia is characterised by a ‘negative attitude towards foreigners, a dislike, a fear or a hatred’ (Harris 2002). The negative connotation of the term and its implications are trounced by the ‘structural factors’ that push residents to migrate. The Horn of Africa is a special case in this regard as migration is a family enterprise. ‘Family’ includes ‘people linked by acquaintance, kinship and work experience’ (Dekker and Engbersen 2013, p. 402). In Ethiopia’s case, there is a pronounced expectation by families that their children will go abroad and remit funds to assist them at home (RMMS 2013). Although Horn of Africa migrants to South Africa have experienced pronounced xenophobia, migrants anticipate that the negative feelings towards them will abate. People are thus encouraged to migrate based on their perceptions. For instance, an Ethiopian who lives in Johannesburg explained that his inducement to migrate resulted from a video that portrayed the lifestyle of Ethiopian immigrants in South Africa. He was swayed by images of their affluence and stories of their material success (Zack and Estifanos 2015, p. 5). Consequently, the smuggling networks continue to operate. The constant interaction that is facilitated by email, Facebook, cellular phone communication, WhatsApp and other instant messaging tools (Zack and Estifanos 2015, p. 6) are indispensable contributors to the ‘cumulative causation’ (Dekker and Engbersen 2013, p. 402) that is identified with migration (Svendsen and Svendsen 2004, p. 11). The ethos of social relationships, which are enhanced by social media, provides a steady flow of individuals who desire to migrate. This endorses the theory that ‘migration sustains itself by creating more migration’ (Thieme 2006, p. 38), especially as it relates to the remitting of funds to families in one’s home country. The perception of success and the prestige that it bestows on members of the receiving family create a pulling factor that results in more migration. Glaring examples of the dangers and suffering of migration include the beheading of 30 Ethiopians on their way to Europe by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists in Libya in 2015; xenophobic attacks

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in South Africa in 2008, 2015 and 2019; African migrants, including many from the Horn of Africa, drowning in the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean (Latif Dahir 2018); the suffering of 48,000 irregular migrants from Eritrea and 15,000 from Somalia who made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe in 2014 (Horwood 2015); thousands of Ethiopian landing up in Egyptian and Tanzanian prisons in 2018 (news24 2019b); and the rape of women in Libya, many of whom now have children by unknown fathers (Musau 2019). However, the steady portrayal of the extreme dangers of migration on social media, as outlined previously, has resulted in a change in societal perceptions about the benefits of migration. As a result, the Ethiopian government and society have begun to encourage the younger generation to stay and work in the county rather than migrate. This societal change in attitude has been buttressed by the introduction of small business initiatives by the Ethiopian government through its Asset Based Community Development (ABCD n.d.) and its People Centred Development (PCD) project (Korten 1990). These initiatives tacitly acknowledge that neither the Khartoum Process of 2014 (EU 2014; Stern 2015), nor the EUTurkey Statement (Campbell 2017, pp. 11–12) addressed the structural problems, particularly in the Horn of Africa, that triggered migration. Rather, they were aimed at stemming the flood of irregular migrants ending up on Europe’s shores. For this reason, both the ABCD and the PCD are crucial undertakings geared to economic development of the Horn of Africa region. The urgency of initiatives of this nature was articulated in a speech by Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari at the African Union (AU) Summit in South Africa in June 2015 (Vanguardngr.com 2015). Buhari lamented the fact that ‘… young Africans are drowning in the Mediterranean…’ (BBC 2015) and the Red Sea as they leave African countries in pursuit of what may very well be an illusion as regard experiencing a better life in Europe. In effect, President Buhari was addressing the need for African states to institute policies that are geared to development within a democratic framework to stem the flow of African migrants to other countries.

Conclusion Although social media has been pivotal in exposing the pros and cons of migration, it has also been criticised in different contexts for what has been termed the ‘sensationalisation’ of the problems associated with

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migration and xenophobia (Da Silva 2008; Patel 2016). The structural problems in the Horn of Africa that have played a key role in migration have been compounded by the geopolitical interests of major powers. The difficulties associated with irregular migration have not significantly tempered the motivation to migrate. Undoubtedly, the major push factor is a combination of poverty and family expectations and has resulted in some people concluding that they would rather take the risk of migrating than remaining in their resource-starved countries. NorthSouth economic inequality, which shows no sign of being remedied, and past civil wars have exacerbated migration and fuelled a massive and versatile people smuggling industry. Although both the migratory process and settlement in destination countries are strewn with numerous challenges, social media is playing a key role both during the migration and life in the countries of destination. Social media can both extol the advantages of migration and expose its challenges. It can encourage or discourage migration depending on the images portrayed. The service offered by people smugglers contributes to irregular migration. To the extent that gross inequality continues to exist between the Global North and South, migration will continue.

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CHAPTER 16

Not Just a Foreigner: ‘Progressive’ (Self-)Representations of African Migrants in the Media Kezia Batisai

and Patrick Dzimiri

Introduction In a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected, people move within and beyond the boundaries of their countries and continents mainly in search of greater political stability and better economic opportunities. Citizens of the receiving country often feel threatened by an influx of political and economic migrants. Such fears are deeply embedded in the multiculturalism or cultural variation and by the economic strain and political instability that may result (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013; Tevera 2013; Yakushko 2009). A wide range of scholarship maintains that these fears usually manifest themselves as xenophobia, especially in postindependent states where citizens, who are yet to benefit from and enjoy

K. Batisai (B) Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa P. Dzimiri Department of Development Studies, University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_16

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the fruits of their hard-earned democracy and the rights it brings with it, blame the migrants for unfulfilled expectations (Harris 2001; Kang’ethe and Duma 2013; Kangwa 2016; Neocosmos 2006; Solomon and Kosaka 2013). By definition, xenophobia is an irrational fear or hatred of individuals or groups regarded as foreigners, strangers, or outsiders (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013; Solomon and Kosaka 2013; Vandeyar and Vandeyar 2017). The phenomenon has been observed and experienced throughout human history in different settings across the globe, but its manifestation in contexts such as the Jewish holocaust and the attacks on migrants in South Africa has been violent (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013; Kangwa 2016; Solomon and Kosaka 2013). In South Africa, this violence has manifested itself in cities or urban spaces across the country (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013; Tella 2016) and the urban space as a result ‘is increasingly becoming a troubled terrain of xenophobic violence’ (Tevera 2013, p. 9). The 2008 and 2015 spates of violence against mainly African migrants in South Africa call for ongoing serious research into migration-related social schisms, especially for a country classified as one of the most xenophobic globally (Zihindula et al. 2017). Researchers from diverse academic disciplines have explored questions of migration and xenophobia in South Africa. They have systematically attempted to uncover and examine the social forces that trigger hate and resentment of African migrants in the country. From the late 1990s, that scholarship includes the works of Harris (2001), Kang’ethe and Duma (2013), Kangwa (2016), Landau et al. (2005), Mapitsa (2018), Muswede (2015), Neocosmos (2006), Nyamnjoh (2006), Peberdy (1999), Solomon and Kosaka (2013), Tella (2016), and Tevera (2013). These researchers have illuminated the diverse underlying factors, the myths and the misconceptions that fuelled the violence. However, there was little focus by them on how migration and xenophobia were articulated in the media, even though some did refer specifically to the negative reporting and xenophobic representations of African migrants in the media (Harris 2001; Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) 2017; Muswede 2015; Solomon and Kosaka 2013; Tevera 2013; Tevera and Crush 2010).

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Conceptualising Representation and (Self-)Representation Our study juxtaposed mainstream representation and progressive (self-)representation by African migrants profiled in existing scholarship and in the media. Mainstream representation is defined here as stereotypical portrayal and negative reporting on African migrants in the media by the perpetrators of xenophobia. On the other hand, progressive (self)representation by African migrants, which was given primacy in our study, is representation that communicates positive aspects about self. However, we are mindful of the shortcomings of ‘the presentation of self in everyday life’. This is a theoretical standpoint that frames individuals as performers on the front stage of a theatre where they are required to perform in order to be accepted by the audience as real, while the backstage provides the same individuals the space to depict their real self (Goffman 1956). We are fully alert to the risk of falling into the ‘perfectionistic (self-)presentation’ trap by which individuals portray a flawless and competent version of their self (Hellman 2016). Representation here is framed as progressive (self-)representation because African migrants use it in a context where they are ordinarily misrepresented by the perpetrators of xenophobia. This conceptual standpoint resonates with the observation that (self-)representation is common among people with social anxiety who strive to represent themselves as being capable, moral and competent (Casale and Fioravanti 2015; Hellman 2016). In doing so, progressive (self-)representations in the media deconstruct mainstream images of African migrants who are often perceived and constructed as a socio-cultural and economic burden, as well as a source of all the ills that characterise society today. This illuminates the different approach of our study, which, unlike a few other studies that analyse how migrants are represented in the media, looks at (self-)representation of African migrants and simultaneously provides them with the cognitive ability to relate to self and those in their environment.

Methodology We use a qualitative methodological framework, in particular content analysis, which allowed us to explore and analyse existing texts. Drawing

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on content from secondary research and the media, the methodological framework was designed in a way that allowed data triangulation (van Rensburg 2010, p. 90). This entailed the use of both primary and secondary academic and non-academic data sources ranging from the critical mapping of representations of migration and xenophobia in a variety of media as validated by existing literature. The representations were profiled in and through different but complementary media, such as online and print newspapers, WhatsApp groups and television programmes. The participants on WhatsApp groups were recruited through snowballing, which allowed initial members to attract and add fellow migrants from diverse backgrounds. They connected to each other through different intersecting networks, including residential, work, religious, academic and social circles. It is the diversity of these migrants, whose representations have a common thread, that enriches the analyses, proving that social media is indeed vital for building peace, contrary to earlier notions that it would cause harm by inciting violence (Rasakanya and Sebola 2015, p. 813). In this chapter, we unpack how African migrants juxtaposed their identities with xenophobic experiences and articulated these through a variety of media platforms. Subsequently, we argue that fear and hatred of those labelled as not belonging to South Africa attests to the contradiction that is inherent in the cosmopolitan idea of South Africa as a rainbow nation. It is in this context that we deploy progressive representation through digital, print and social media as an alternative path to fostering social cohesion between African migrants and South Africans citizens.

Mainstream Vis-à-Vis Progressive (Self-)Representations of African Migrants in the Media A critical analysis of media reports has allowed us to identify and profile how African migrants represent themselves in the media. In these (self-)representations, African migrants discussed their identities vis-à-vis xenophobic experiences progressively. Fick (2017), for instance, captured the response by Amina Mama, one of the continent’s major intellectuals originally from Nigeria, to the question: ‘What do you Africans bring here?’ The response progressively and comprehensively outlined the contribution to food supply, craft production, trade, labour supply

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and intellectual endeavour African migrants have made throughout South Africa’s difficult political journey from colonialism through apartheid and the post-apartheid era. The same question was posed to the participants in this study and in response Mark and Tatenda from Zimbabwe echo Mama’s sentiments by emphasising and pluralising the contribution of African migrants to the South African labour system. They both relayed on social media: We came here all the way from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, you name it … legally … with critical skills core to the labour system and economy of this country. We are professionals who are here to work and sustain families both within and outside the borders of this country. Yes, that is what we are here for … nothing else. (Mark from Zimbabwe) We are in every sector core to the economy of this country. From digging trenches for Telkom to putting up pillars for Eskom, running and managing the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, caring for children and treating the sick, and educating future generations of this country. Clearly, we do not undermine opportunities that come our way irrespective of how humble they are … as long as the work is legal and follows proper recruitment procedures. (Tatenda from Zimbabwe)

These comments are borne out by the success stories of Nigerian, Congolese and Moroccan migrant entrepreneurs who, through perseverance, have risen from, for example, the streets of Cape Town to become identifiable businesspeople (Kalitanyi and Visser 2010). Mark and Tatenda’s narratives challenged representations of migrants in mainstream newspapers that portray immigrants as ‘job-stealers’, involved in criminal activities and causing many other social-ills, as well as undeserving people profiting from resources meant for South Africans (Activate! Change Drivers 2017; Kalitanyi and Visser 2010; Tevera 2013; Vandeyar and Vandeyar 2017). These pejorative images increase African migrants’ vulnerability to xenophobic violence and abuse (Tevera 2013). In a similar way to Mark and Tatenda, Carolina from Mozambique and Akwete from Ghana not only debunked these representations but pointed at the ultimate contribution they make to the South African economy and society at large. They respectively declared with confidence on social media:

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One thing for sure is, I am not just a foreigner … I am a taxpayer. In other words, I am not a burden to the fiscus and so are my fellow African migrants. The tax is core to the economy of this country, in fact it is the backbone of the economy. Thus, I am among those who anchor it. (Carolina from Mozambique) I am a taxpayer who pays tax on every income that I earn. This tax makes a huge difference in this country from sustaining the disadvantaged populations to infrastructural development and paying civil servants and other government employees who are paid under the rubric of civil servants. (Akwete from Ghana)

The progressive (self-)representations made by Mama, Mark, Tatenda, Carolina and Akwete reinforce the argument that migrants are a huge asset to the economy of South Africa because of the value-added tax they pay (Kangwa 2016). This contribution is anchored by the estimate that migrants constitute 11% of the country’s working population (Malan 2017, p. 4), an increase from the four per cent estimated in 2014 (Kangwa 2016). It is on this statistical basis that Malan made the controversial argument: ‘If we take them out of the equation‚ I would argue all South Africans are going to be poorer’, an inference from which Henderson’s (2017) online Business Day article of 13 March 2017 was headed: ‘If foreigners are shown the door, South Africans will suffer’. African migrants’ (self-)representations also reinforced the speech of Malusi Gigaba, then Minister of Home Affairs, during the National Assembly’s April 2015 debate on xenophobic attacks. The debate was a good platform for Gigaba to acknowledge and remind his countrymen about the positive impact that migrants residing in South Africa have across economic sectors (SAnews 17 April 2015). He also mentioned the positive contribution of cross-border traders who specifically come to South Africa to buy goods for resale in their countries. Gigaba spelt it out as follows: Immigrants contribute towards our country’s economic development by investing in the economy, supplying critical skills including in our health facilities, teaching our children and youth in schools and universities, and thus transferring their knowledge and skills to them.

The influence of (African) migrants on South Africa’s basic and higher education sectors referred to by Gigaba resonated with the opinion of

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Caroline Ncube, a Zimbabwean academic at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Ncube (2015) inserted her progressive voice in UCT’s Humanities News of 14 May 2015, which is published in print and online. Under the heading, ‘Rhodes: views from a black associate professor at UCT’, she commented: Amid the calls for radical transformation at … UCT, there are many voices seeking to be heard. That must be heard. I am compelled to speak too. I am a black African, non-South African, female associate professor at UCT. As a foreign national I make no bones about the fact that my presence at this institution does not advance the current imperatives of employment equity. Those can only be advanced by the employment of designated (as legally defined) South Africans. Yet, I have a role to play in fulfilling the larger Afropolitan mission of the university and I add to the diversity of the university community. I identify with black South African students and staff, and it is my fervent hope that black students and colleagues find me relatable to, as a person with similar experiences of racism.

Though written in the context of racism, what emerges from Ncube’s excerpt is that the presence of black foreign academics, who have proved to be vital to the higher education of the country, creates a sense of belonging and a progressive academic community that black South African academics and students can comfortably identify with. The article gave voice to a black academic from outside South Africa, ensuring that non-South African academics cease to be an irrelevant statistic in transformation discourses and emerge as brothers and sisters whose experiences and realities, not nationality, matter in the struggle of transforming the South African landscape (Batisai 2019). By embracing the (self-)representations of non-South African academics, rather than representing them as merely different from those of black South African academics, Batisai (2019) emphasised the unnecessary and uncomfortable hierarchies of blackness in the academy and society at large. Chenge, an academic from Kenya, shared his views on social media: I am not … I mean, African migrants, we are not just foreigners … there is more to this identity … an inherent element of diversity in the identity. Yes, the much-needed diversity in the academy. My presence in the academy is about those rich-lived contextual experiences from my country and many others on the continent … my positionality allows me to draw on that experiences which broadens the scope of analysis in the lecture room.

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The notion of diversity that African migrants bring to the country concurs with arguments profiled in existing literature (Muswede 2015; Tevera 2013; Kalitanyi and Visser 2010), as well as with findings published or referred to online (Activate! Change Drivers 2017). However, progressive (self-)representations, Ncube’s in particular, do not blindly celebrate diversity, especially in contexts like the academic community among many other sectors in South Africa where the migrants’ position in the transformation discourse is clearly stated (Mail & Guardian 14 May 2015). Rather, the (self-)representations are made with the understanding that transformation and set annual employment targets in South Africa are all about black citizens from ‘designated groups’, as defined by the Employment Equity Act (No. 55 of 1998). Those making (self-)representations are aware of these dynamics, and their statements only serve to illuminate the need to encompass the accounts of black foreign academics in a spirit of solidarity (Biko 2004). They are in line with notions of internationalisation and diversity that are widely preached and celebrated at the UCT and other educational institutions, such as the University of Johannesburg (Batisai 2019). (Self-)representations paint a positive image of African migrants, which, in the context of Afrophobia (a dislike and fear of the African other), can salvage the image that has been stereotyped and continues to be defamed in and through different media platforms. Economic-wise, African migrants point to their diverse initiatives and activities that have a positive impact on the economy and society at large. Their contributions in the craft and trade sectors alluded to by Mama are reiterated by fellow Nigerians who refer to the availability of West African textile prints and ethnic clothing designs in the South African fashion industry and even further afield. Adaku states on social media: I am a designer. I specialise in ethnic prints and designs … the material is straight from Nigeria … I also do hair … trust me, we are versatile … forget what they say about us … Nigerians have talent.

Defying the odds of prohibitive Department of Home Affairs structures that some might deem as institutionalising xenophobia through delays with regard to the processing of immigration documents (Batisai 2016a; Kangwa 2016), a Nigerian migrant relates how he, through his designs, continued to make his mark, and sustained his family with a South African woman with who he lives in what society perceives or frames as a marriage of convenience (SABC 3 Special Assignment 2015). As migrants

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engage in various entrepreneurial activities, they introduce new products and scarce skills, developing business initiatives and prospects (Activate! Change Drivers 2017; Kalitanyi and Visser 2010). Tich from Zimbabwe, John and Bomani from Malawi shared the following: I make and sell cultural artefacts … these are from Zimbabwe. I am proud that I brought this skill to South Africa. Our rich art has found its way into many South African homes, offices, galleries, restaurants and parks. The evidence is everywhere, such that one cannot deny the impact of our art. (Tich from Zimbabwe) People from diverse backgrounds buy artefacts from me and other Malawians, as well as Zimbabweans who trade by the roadsides. We work very hard because we know why we migrated to this country … so we are involved in many income-generating activities. My clique is a focused group of people … yes, that is how I define and perceive my clique. (John from Malawi) I make and sell curios during the week, but similar to my male colleagues from Malawi, I also work as a part-time gardener during weekends … while my female friends are domestic workers. These women are raising the children of many South Africans who are working. I can proudly say that Malawian migrants and South African families complement each other … this has a long history. The bosses go to work and become productive and in the process they create work for us migrants so that we also earn and raise our families. (Bomani from Malawi)

The progressive (self-)representations quoted above are comparable to how African migrants from Somalia, for example, describe themselves as humble and hardworking people with business acumen and solid social networks. Yusuf Kerow, a Somali businessman, stresses that, integrity sustained his business as an African migrant: ‘You need to attract your customers with cheap prices and good service and be honest’ (SABC Digital News 18 February 2015). Kerow’s progressive (self-)representation in the media echoes empirical findings from an African Centre for Cities (ACC) study that over 2000 migrant entrepreneurs or business owners in cities such as Cape Town and Johannesburg have deconstructed the myths and stereotypes that characterise migrant economic activity. It emerged from the ACC study that the services of migrant entrepreneurs had positively impacted less-privileged

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consumers ‘who can only access affordable goods, which are often available in sizable quantities at places and hours mostly convenient to the consumers’ needs’. It also accented the migrants’ rental contributions paid to South African home or property owners, or to city councils (Activate! Change Drivers 2017). The notions of convenience and low prices, as well as the positive impact migrants have on the pockets of South African landlords is echoed by Malan (2017) and Kangwa (2016). Malan’s (2017) thought-provoking question below puts the financial contributions of migrant entrepreneurs into perspective: If 80 per cent of spaza outlets in South Africa‚ that is 80 000 shops‚ are now being rented by foreigners‚ who are now paying rent to the South African owners of the building, how many billions does that add up to in a year? (Henderson 2017).

These representations debunk mainstream negative images of African migrants as people who have invaded South Africa with bad intentions to destroy the fibre of and harm the peace and unity of the country. The positive intentions of African migrants resonate with empirical findings about African migrant entrepreneurs operating in the Eastern Cape cities of Alice, King Williams Town, East London and Port Elizabeth (Fatoki and Patswawairi 2012), as well with those from a 2007 study conducted by Kalitanyi and Visser (2010) in Bellville, the Cape Town foreshore, Nyanga and Wynberg, all areas with a strong immigrant entrepreneurial presence. Similar to the findings that the Eastern Cape entrepreneurs employed both migrants and South Africa citizens, the Western Cape study revealed that over 80% of the 120 African migrant entrepreneurs interviewed employed South Africans in their businesses. These findings concur with ACC findings that migrants, instead of merely taking employment, are twice as likely to employ people than South African businesspeople (Activate! Change Drivers 2017; Kangwa 2016). Collectively, these findings validate the inference that migrant entrepreneurs create employment opportunities for both migrants and South Africans (Crush et al. 2015). Juxtaposing the opposing identities of African migrants as either job takers or job creators, Kalitanyi and Visser (2010) not only pointed to the transfer of entrepreneurial skills from African entrepreneurs to their South African employees but they also acknowledged the ultimate contribution that these migrants are making towards the growth and development of South Africa. Consequently,

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African migrants and South Africans, as Bomani’s narrative profiled above suggests, complement each other. The complementary aspect of migration can also be understood in the context of the interplay between reproductive and productive work that has characterised migration and the international division of reproductive and productive labour in the Global North (Batisai 2016b). For instance, women in the north who join the workforce in increasing numbers, often as domestic workers, nurses and carers for the elderly and children, rely on transnational migration and labour that emerge as women from economically challenged countries in the Global South move into cities around the world to help in households (Oishi 2005; Parreñas 2000; Sassen 2003). Clearly discernible in the analyses is that, when juxtaposed with content from mainstream literature, the progressive (self-)representations of African migrants in the media and research studies tell a particularly interesting and intersecting story about migration and xenophobia. Over and above challenging mainstream discourses and representations, the progressive (self-)representations of African migrants quoted in this chapter serve as a new lens for analysing media reporting and reengaging xenophobic violence and prejudices towards African migrants in South Africa. It is against this backdrop that we adopt progressive (self-)representation on different media platforms as an alternative path to fostering social cohesion between African migrants and South African citizens.

Towards a Framework for Promoting Social Cohesion in South Africa Although this study reveals that the media in mainstream discourses dominates as the agency that must be held accountable for perpetuating representations that essentialise and prejudice African migrants, the media could be a platform for conveying progressive messages to the South African community about ‘the Other’. The messages, as noted by Gladys from Zimbabwe, allow South Africans ‘to learn how to live with those who are different from them’ (Batisai 2016a, p. 127). The media can double as a vehicle for both social transformation and conflict since it provides individuals with the tools to act either rationally or irrationally as they convey and receive information about a specific phenomenon or group of people. Framing the media as a tool for conflict allows us to assess whether migrants’ discourses point at a causal relationship between

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digital, print or social media reporting and xenophobic violence, while the progressive social transformation aspect grapples with the extent to which different media platforms can either transcend or remedy the ‘us–them’ tension-ridden divide between South Africans and African migrants. The framework adopted in this chapter is informed by ‘the legacy of ignorance about the rest of the continent which blighted apartheid South Africa [and] lingers on into post-millennial, post-apartheid South Africa’ (Fick 2017). Tererai from Zimbabwe believes that he escaped the xenophobic attacks because of this ignorance: ‘What the general public does not understand is that with a permanent resident status, I am entitled to the same rights as a citizen, except that I cannot vote. I am sure if they knew, I would have been a victim of physical violence’ (Batisai 2016a, p. 127). This ignorance reinforces earlier findings from an analysis of newspaper articles that perpetrators of xenophobia are often ill-informed, with the result that their feelings are based on misrepresentations in the media of working-class conditions (Muswede 2015; Solomon and Kosaka 2013). The perpetrators of xenophobia see African migrants as a threat because they neither have adequate information about them nor know how to deal with them (Mogekwu 2005). Consequently, xenophobic South Africans, in the absence of an information frame, place ‘Zimbabweans in line with other migrants as bodies that destabilise the very foundation and survival of the nation’ (Batisai 2016a, p. 129). The notion of destabilisation explains in part why collectives and individuals, from ministers and politicians to kings, who are central to the nation-building process in the country, loosely convey xenophobic messages. These are then conveyed as subtly legitimising xenophobic sentiments on television and published in print and online newspapers (Kangwa 2016; Rasakanya and Sebola 2015; Tella 2016; Heleta 2019). What is worrisome is that the misrepresentation of African migrants happens in a context where xenophobic violence is not considered xenophobia by those occupying influential positions. This is not peculiar to South Africa; evidence from the USA reveals that ‘news media are filled with stories in which recent immigrants are denigrated, belittled and discriminated against’, but often the stories are not seen as being ‘connected by an underlying set of attitudes based on fear, dislike or hatred of foreigners: xenophobia’ (Yakushko 2009, p. 37). Hence, our approach in this chapter to suggest a way for re-engaging with progressive representation across the media in South Africa and beyond. This re-engagement

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should help to ensure that both influential people and ordinary citizens are alerted to the strong correlation between xenophobia and negative media reporting, and the need to eliminate, as proposed by Rasakanya and Sebola (2015) and Tevera (2013), the use of derogatory images and anti-migrant expressions and language in reports and articles. We envisage that the elimination of xenophobic elements from media representations will give birth to new perceptions about African migrants. The perceptions go beyond the dominant nationality-based stereotypes that narrowly reduce African migrants to alleged criminals. Negative reporting has reduced Nigerians to drug dealers, Zimbabweans to sex workers and Mozambicans to car hijackers (Njamnjoh 2006), even though statistics attribute these crimes mostly to South Africans (Kangwa 2016) and point to complex social ills as contributing to the crime problematic in the country (Solomon and Kosaka 2013). Migrants are mere scapegoats (Tevera 2013). Once xenophobic representations are out of the picture, progressive media reporting creates room for South Africans to perceive migrants in their true light and respect them for the positive contribution they make to the country. A fundamental question, of course, is the practicality of a progressive framework being able to be adopted by the media to promote social cohesion and peace in South Africa. How can this be achieved and what it will mean? The next section, which doubles as the conclusion, deals with this question by drawing on progressive arguments put forward by a range of scholars including Kalitanyi and Visser (2010), Kang’ethe and Duma (2013), Muswede (2015), Tevera (2013), and Zihindula et al. (2017).

Concluding Remarks Primacy in this chapter has been given to progressive (self)representations of African migrants that communicate in a positive and peaceful language and have the cognitive ability to relate to themselves and those in their environment. In a highly technological world where the youth are heavily present on different media platforms and the older generations to some extent stick to print media, we argue that progressive representations and progressive language in digital, print and social media can foster social cohesion between African migrants and South African citizens within and outside the confines of public spaces. This entails capitalising on existing notions that not only drive and determine the state of social cohesion in South Africa but influence

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‘an embrace of the other’ that trickles down to positive engagements with African migrants in the country. These notions, in addition to the philosophy of Ubuntu, include ‘the discourse of the “New South Africa” and the “rainbow nation” that conveys a different and inspiring message about inclusiveness and tolerance’ (Tevera 2013, p. 10). Closely related to pride in the ‘rainbow nation’ are the progressive and uniting words of influential people, mainly former presidents of South Africa, that often find their way into digital, print and social media. For instance, the all-embracing words of Nelson Mandela, ‘South Africa is for all those who live in it’ (Activate! Change Drivers 2017), include migrants whose right to live in South Africa should be guided only by the tenets of immigration (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013). Similar to Mandela, Thabo Mbeki said: We define ourselves as Africans because we belong within the family of the billion Africans who live in Africa and the African diaspora, who are linked to one another by a common destiny. (LeadSA@lead_sa 2015)

When living in South Africa, a country governed by a progressive constitution, Africans from outside the country are not only linked to its citizens by the politics of identity but by the rights of both parties inherently enshrined in the South African Constitution. However, it has been observed that the rights of migrants in previous contexts of xenophobia were no longer tenable (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013, pp. 160–161). As such, discriminatory xenophobic practices violated the rights of migrants under both domestic and international law obligations stipulated in the South African Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the World Health Organization, among others (Zihindula et al. 2017; Tevera 2013). The violence also compromised ‘the much acclaimed South African ideology of Ubuntu’ and destroyed the moral fibre of society in ways that have forced the government to increasingly advocate for more national cohesion in the interests of both migrants and citizens (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013, p. 161). Hence the need for progressive representations that are not only driven by ‘a greater sense of continentalism and internationalism through the media’ (Tevera 2013) but by the notions of African Renaissance (Tella 2016) and elements of Ubuntu and Africanism: ‘The golden rule: do unto others … We are all in this together. I am an African’

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(Fick 2017). Thought should also be given to our imagination of the future and how the next generation will view our actions: What will we tell our children about what we said, what we did, how we acted to stop this, or what we failed to do? (Fick 2017)

Fick’s thought-provoking and introspective questions are a good start, especially in the light of the need for ‘adequate discouragement in the form of advocacy and lobbying against xenophobia’ (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013, p. 159). Progressive representation in and through the media will serve to sensitise society and make it more conscious about the contributions of African migrants (Tevera 2013). It will promote progressive support for the migrants’ entrepreneurial initiatives and create awareness that these are the same activities that can benefit the economies of host countries and positively influence the lives of their citizens (Kalitanyi and Visser 2010). For this reason, there is an urgent global need to cultivate and promote ‘peaceful co-existence, stability and development among the people of the world’ (Kang’ethe and Duma 2013, p. 157). The media emerges as a strong part of a system of interconnected and interactive forces, joint action by whom can lead to a different state of social cohesion and peace.

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CHAPTER 17

‘They All Speak English So Well …’ a Decolonial Analysis of ‘Positive’ Representations of Zimbabwean Migrants by South Africans on Social Media Selina Linda Mudavanhu

Introduction In dominant South African public and media discourse, black migrants from the African continent are held to be the undesirable Other. Migrants are called by derogatory names like makwerekwere by some who dismiss them in an offhand manner because their languages sound like gibberish. The majority of working-class black South Africans detest African migrants for ‘stealing’ houses, jobs and women that ‘belong’ to locals. The dominant topic in news reports on black foreign nationals is the migrants’ criminality. Mkandawire (2015, p. 196) observes that: ‘… the South African media stereotypes Mozambicans as car thieves, Nigerians

S. L. Mudavanhu (B) University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_17

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as drug dealers and Somalis as corrupt cash-carrying entrepreneurs who do not put their money in the bank but save it at home instead …’ Writing about the representation of Zimbabweans in the South African media, Muzondidya (2010, p. 41) observes that newspapers such as the Daily Sun and the Sunday Times have ‘published inflammatory articles scapegoating Zimbabweans’. Most of the research conducted on the representation of migrants in South Africa has focused on the negative frames referred to above (Pineteh 2017; The Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa 2017; Mbetga 2014; Mawadza 2012; Wasserman 2010; Danso and McDonald 2001). Researchers have argued that by reporting on migrants predominantly in relation to crime, the media have inadvertently fuelled the erroneous idea that all black migrants in the country are delinquents. While it has been important to discuss the negative views held about the black foreign Other, little research has focused on the positive ways in which some South Africans talk about migrants. In the light of this, the current research has two objectives. The first is to highlight some ‘positive’ representations of Zimbabweans residing in South Africa as articulated by South African Facebook users. The second is to deconstruct some of the ‘positive’ frames precisely because they uphold coloniality. The comments that will be analysed were prompted by the administrator of ‘The Joburger’ Facebook page, who posted the following message on 21 November 2017: ‘South Africans, please comment something that you love about your Zimbabwean friends and neighbours’. This invitation attracted 2500 comments, 2500 ‘likes’ and 746 ‘loves’. Some respondents tagged their Zimbabwean friends and colleagues in the comments section of the post. While the response figures to the post are impressive, one cannot claim that they were only from South Africans since the page is open to being ‘liked’ by anyone regardless of nationality. For this reason, only comments that were posted by users with names appearing to be South African were considered for discussion. Key questions that I grappled with include: What ‘positive’ frames did South Africans responding to the post on ‘The Joburger’ page use to refer to Zimbabweans? In what ways were these ‘positive’ frames problematic? Although the xenophobic flare-ups that made media headlines in the past largely emanated from working-class townships, the people who responded to ‘The Joburger’ posts seem to belong to a different social

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class. The comments suggest that some of them hold formal postsecondary qualifications that have facilitated their ability to work in professional environments where they have access to the Internet. ‘The Joburger’ Facebook page was created in April 2016 by a white South African in his early twenties, Louwrence van Niekerk. A post on 5 November 2017 gives followers an indication of what the administrator of the page sought to promote. The lead-in photograph contains the words: ‘Joburger – Unite, Embrace Diversity and Laugh’. The section that follows discusses the othering theory, as well as ideas on decoloniality.

The Othering Theory The othering theory is the basic scaffold of the present chapter. Though Gayatri Spivak did not invent the word ‘othering’, Jensen (2009, p. 7) contends that she ‘first coined [the concept of othering] as a systematic theoretical conception’. In an article with the title ‘The Rani of Sirmur’, Jensen elaborates: ‘… the notion of othering draws on several philosophical and theoretical traditions. Importantly, the concept draws on an understanding of self which is a generalisation – and perhaps primordialisation – of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic as developed in Phänomenologie des Geistes ’. The key to othering is the construction of identities for those with and without power in society. Groups with greater political power usually take on the role of constructing the Other. Staszak (2008) argues that in constituting the Other, the dominant group is ascribed value and is depicted as personifying the norm, while the subordinate group is debased in ways that predispose it to discrimination and sometimes violence. Although the framing of less powerful groups is almost always negative according to the othering theory, our research demonstrates an interesting morphing of othering as a concept. Instead of the usual glorification of the self at the expense of the Other, South Africans responding to the post on ‘The Joburger’ Facebook page articulated the ‘value’ inherent in the foreign Other. Departing from what the classical othering theory suggests, the celebration of the Other was not for purposes of exoticisation but was somewhat of a sincere celebration. In a seeming contradiction in terms, what emerged was ‘positive othering’. While Zimbabweans were praised in this instance, there were other South Africans who overtly and covertly othered (in the conventional sense of the term) fellow South Africans, an apparent departure from one of the

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key ideas of the theory that contends that dominant groups often deride less powerful groups different to the self.

Coloniality and Decoloniality Prior to discussing decoloniality, it is necessary to briefly focus on coloniality. Mignolo (2005, p. 6) argues that ‘“Coloniality” … points toward and intends to unveil an embedded logic that enforces control, domination and exploitation disguised in the language of salvation, progress, modernisation and being good for everyone’. Differentiating between coloniality and colonialism, Maldonado-Torres (2007, p. 243) contends that: Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to longstanding patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism but that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the selfimage of peoples, in aspirations of self and so many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breath coloniality all the time and every day.

Grosfoguel (2007) argues that a ‘postcolonial’ world is a myth. Although colonial administrations were jettisoned, this was not synonymous with decolonisation. Grosfoguel (p. 219) contends that ‘we continue to live under the same “colonial power matrix”’. The old colonial pecking order of European vs non-European remains in force. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013, p. 11) contends that at the heart of ‘coloniality is race as an organising principle’, in which hierarchies and dichotomies such as ‘primitive vs civilised and developed vs underdeveloped’ are deployed. Recognising that coloniality is a reality long after the overthrow of colonialism, Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013, p. 11) encourages Africans to be attentive to tendencies of making coloniality normal, universal and natural. He calls on Africans to debunk, resist and shatter coloniality because ‘it produced a world order that can only be sustained through a combination of violence, deceit, hypocrisy and lies’. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

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(2015, p. 23) argues that at the core of decoloniality is the reformulation of the world in ways that people disenfranchised by slavery and colonialism can re-claim their ‘ontological density, voice, land, history, knowledge and power’. He argues that (2013, p. 11): Decoloniality is distinguished from an imperial version of history through its push for shifting of geography of reason from the West as the epistemic locale from which the “world is described, conceptualised and ranked” to the ex-colonised epistemic sites as legitimate points of departure in describing the construction of the modern world order.

As mentioned above, some of the ‘positive’ representations about Zimbabweans by South Africans on ‘The Joburger’ page were steeped in problematic thinking that buttresses coloniality. In that regard, beyond highlighting the frames, I critically deconstructed these ideas in this chapter.

Qualitative Content Analysis Qualitative content analysis was used to examine the representations of Zimbabweans on ‘The Joburger’ page. Zhang and Wildemuth (2009, p. 1) contend that: ‘Qualitative content analysis goes beyond merely counting words or extracting objective content from texts to examine meanings, themes and patterns that may be manifest or latent in a particular text’. While in reality the process of doing qualitative content analysis was iterative, the eight steps outlined by Zhang and Wildemuth (2009) provided a useful starting point. In preparing the data (Step 1), all comments related to ‘The Joburger’ post were copied and pasted into an MS Word document. I then identified all Facebook comments by South Africans that were germane to the post but excluded comments by people with non-South African names and responses in the ‘comments on comments’ section (Step 2). The following four categories were then developed after skimming through the data (Step 3): ‘Comments on the intellect of Zimbabweans’, ‘Comments on the personalities of Zimbabweans’, ‘Comments on the work ethic of Zimbabweans’ and a ‘Miscellaneous/Other’ category for content that did not fit neatly into the above. Step 4 involved the iterative process of coding sample data to test the clarity and consistency of the categories. After adequate consistency had been achieved, the coding rules

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were applied to the entire corpus of text (Step 5) (Zhang and Wildemuth 2009, p. 4). Step 6 entailed checking the consistency of the coding and Step 7 included ‘… making sense of the themes or categories identified and determining their properties. At this stage inferences were made, and reconstructions of meanings were derived from the data’. The final Step 8 involved presenting the findings of the research.

Highly Educated and Intelligent: Seeing Zimbabweans as Smart and Learned While dominant public discourse generally positions migrants as ‘takers’, the bulk of the comments on ‘The Joburger’ page painted a different picture. South Africans celebrated the intellectual contributions that Zimbabweans make to the country. They lauded them for being highly educated and intelligent. A sizeable number of respondents were grateful to Zimbabweans for teaching ‘us so much’. Another wanted her child to be like the Zimbabweans she knew, so she is sending her child to school in Zimbabwe. Chingwete (2016, p. 9) supports these views by stating that despite South Africans being ‘fairly intolerant of foreigners in their country’, South Africans ‘… express some level of tolerance for exceptionally skilled immigrants and foreign investors who could benefit their economy …’. Most respondents remarked that generally Zimbabweans were geniuses, even ‘ordinary’ people. ‘To say they are intelligent will be an understatement!’ one respondent commented. Some respondents observed that they were surprised by the level of intelligence of some Zimbabweans working as domestics and gardeners. These comments are hardly startling given the fact that some Zimbabweans who come to South Africa and fail to secure employment in line with their qualifications take up ‘survival’ jobs, even though they are holders of diplomas and degrees. The pattern of highly qualified Zimbabweans engaging in unskilled work is not peculiar to South Africa. Writing in the context of the United Kingdom, McGregor (2007) conducted interviews with women and men with tertiary qualifications who left Zimbabwe during the economic and political downturn and now worked as caregivers in the host country. This is work that many ridicule and shun. McGregor (2007, p. 803) elaborates:

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In Zimbabwe they had been teachers, accountants, engineers, mechanics, administrators, development professionals, marketing and sales agents, bankers, secretaries, hairdressers, students or had run their own businesses; two had Masters-level qualifications outside the health and social care sectors.

‘The Joburger’ respondents also commented that Zimbabweans were said to be fast learners. One recounted that he knew of Zimbabweans who learnt local languages in a short space of time. Another wrote about a person named Tendai, a ‘mathematics genius who started off as a cleaner in the company and ended up as the lead developer’. A respondent was amazed by how Zimbabweans who go around selling brooms and feather dusters remember their many customers even after several months. Some Facebook users confessed that they remembered studying with Zimbabweans who graduated top of their classes and ‘… they managed to get 95 per cent in a CA stream accounting test when I was wrestling for at least a 40 per cent …’. Commentators to the post are not the first to observe that Zimbabweans are generally a learned group of people. News24 (12 June 2014) reported that ‘Zimbabwe continues to fly high in Africa’s literacy rankings with the latest survey putting the country’s literacy rate at 90.7 per cent’. Other comments on the ‘The Joburger’ page include: ‘Most Zimbabweans I’ve met are hard-working, friendly and educated’; Zimbabweans are ‘soft spoken, highly educated and hard workers’; they are ‘Very educated. Very intelligent. Hustlers of note’; and ‘the most educated peeps I’ve ever met’. Despite already being ‘highly educated’, a number of respondents remarked that these migrants did not stop studying further. Zimbabweans they had studied with as undergraduates were now pursuing postgraduate degrees. Precisely because they place a lot of value on education, Zimbabweans in the country worked hard to give their children a good education. The fact that the South Africans even saw ‘superiority’ in a foreign African is interesting since they largely regard themselves as better educated than everyone else on the continent. Neocosmos (2010, p. 4) elaborates: There is of course a dominant arrogant political discourse held by many South Africans of all racial groups regarding the apparent exceptionalism

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of the country on the African continent, a discourse which forms part of South African nationalism. According to this perception, South Africa is somehow more akin to a southern European or Latin American country given its relative levels of industrialisation and now increasingly of liberal democracy (Mamdani 1996). In this view, Africa is some kind of strange backward continent characterised by primitivism, corruption, authoritarianism, poverty and ‘failed states’, so that its inhabitants wish only to partake of South African resources and wealth at the expense of its citizens. (Harris 2001)

Although the fact that Zimbabweans are well-read is largely positive as it allows most of those who emigrate to secure employment and opportunities to study further, the unreserved embrace of Western education by black people is not without its own challenges. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013, p. 11) contends that: African children and youth begin a journey of alienation from their African context the very moment they step into the school, church and university door. They begin the painful path of learning to hate their progenitors as demons, they begin to be taught that all the knowledge they possessed before coming to school was nothing but folk knowledge, barbarism and superstition that must be quickly be forgotten.

There are some scholars who have reflected on the kind of education that Zimbabweans received. Masaka (2016) contends that colonial education shifted the way society was organised, as well as the manner local people viewed their education and culture. He adds that as a means of subjugating indigenous people, colonisers vilified local systems of education. They also disregarded the existence of indigenous education prior to their arrival. According to Masaka, the end result was a people who were submissive to the colonial order. Beyond the unquestioning effect of colonial education in the pre1980s era, it can also be argued that it had consequences in post-1980 Zimbabwe. Faced with the repression presided over by Robert Mugabe, only a small number of civil society organisations, opposition political parties and activists dared to challenge the strongman. There were no sustained nationwide mass protests in which Zimbabweans registered their disgruntlement. In a speech, former war veterans minister, Tshinga Dube, accused Zimbabweans of being docile (NewsDay, 13 November 2017). He continued: ‘Just go around the cities and towns and see how

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people stand in queues day-in, day-out and not getting their money. They go home and do the same thing every day. And they don’t complain. Is that normal?’ While there might be myriad reasons that account for the ways Zimbabweans responded to Mugabe’s rule, it can be argued that the effects of colonial education, which created obedient subjects, still lingered on after 1980.

‘They All Speak English So Well …’ In juxtaposition with remarks that Zimbabweans are smart and highly educated, there were comments about their excellent command of the English language (also see Hungwe 2013): ‘Very well educated, excellent use of the English language’; ‘The most educated nation … English never parted ways with them …’; ‘Oh, and they have a lovely accent when speaking English!!’; and ‘They all speak English so well … just a refined batch of stunning people’. A respondent commented that Zimbabweans have a rich English vocabulary, while another admitted that he had been taught how to speak fluent and ‘good English’ by a Zimbabwean workmate. While the ‘they-speak-English-well’ applause is flattering for most Zimbabweans, it is interesting to note how the ability to speak the language fluently is regarded as something worthy of praise and a marker of intelligence. Inability to speak English flawlessly is often chided in South Africa. Former President Jacob Zuma was ridiculed and became the butt of many jokes for struggling with his English (Roper 2011). Some respondents contrasted the manner Zimbabweans spoke English to those who say /twElufu/ instead of /twElv/ (twelve) or /tri / instead of /θri / (three) in reference to the ways in which some black South Africans pronounce English words. Contesting the idea that articulating English well is an indicator of intelligence, Bari (2015), writing in the Daily Star, contends that English:  

 

… is simply a language. The most universally useful, accepted and respected language no doubt, but just a language, nonetheless. A well-oiled English vocabulary reflects in a person a sound educational background in the language. It means that they’ve been brought up and groomed in a way as to be well-spoken in English. It may also reflect the person’s love of English literature, language and culture. It does not, however, certify that

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person’s level of intelligence. To be intelligent is to know not to make fun of those who may be different from us, but no less smart.

While speaking English well is useful, on the African continent the language has a history of privilege not enjoyed by local languages. In his seminal work, Decolonising the Mind, wa Thiong’o (1986, p. 6) writes: ‘English, like French and Portuguese, was assumed to be the natural language of literary and even political mediation between African people in the same nation and between nations in Africa and other continents’. In Zimbabwe, the history of the language has been chequered. It is linked to colonialism and the colonial project. Kadenge and Nkomo (2011, pp. 248–249) argue that, ‘… given that Zimbabwe was a British colony for over a century, colonial policies ensured the entrenchment of English as the language of records and documentation. At independence, the position of English remained unchanged’. Mpondi (2004, p. 122) contends that after 1980 English remains the ‘… de facto language of power and economic advancement in Zimbabwe’. Like in many African countries this has meant that the indigenous languages have remained marginalised. This is of concern, given that ‘… language was the most important vehicle through which that power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation’ (wa Thiong’o 1986, p. 9). Although it appears from ‘The Joburger’ comments that foreigners who speak English articulately are always praised, Hungwe (2013, p. 150) contends that speaking the language has not always worked to the advantage of Zimbabweans. According to him, speaking ‘better English’ has ‘… sometimes landed them in trouble with locals who could easily tell that one was Zimbabwean because of the accent’.

‘Bayasebenza labantu! ’: These People Work Hard Another common remark by respondents was that Zimbabweans were industrious. Migrants were described by many as ‘the real hustlers’ or ‘hustlers of note’. A respondent was impressed by a petrol attendant who was willing to fix the bumper of her car after hours. Another recalled how a Zimbabwean man doing some construction work at her home was willing to work through the rain. A third said he had employed Zimbabweans for several years. Not only were they industrious but they hardly missed a day’s work. They were also not in the habit of borrowing money

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from their employer. A farmer attested to the fact that the Zimbabwean fruit pickers he worked with on his farm always worked hard: ‘They were doing three times more compared to their South African counterparts, earning three times the average wage’. Contracted to tile her bathroom, a Zimbabwean would refuse to take breaks so that he could finish quickly. Other respondent comments include: ‘They work like machines’ and ‘They are not afraid to work, [they are] reliable. At my previous job there was a Zimbabwean guy who washed cars across from our offices. He was hit by a car on his way to work but showed up in torn pants and wounds on his leg’. It is interesting to note that some of the respondents compared the Zimbabwean migrants to black South Africans who were covertly labelled as lethargic and entitled. This is borne out by comments such as: ‘… they don’t sit on their [behinds] and wait for money [or] jobs to be handed to them on a silver platter’; ‘They … prefer to work and be paid than be given free [things], like South Africans. They don’t expect free houses, grants and food like most of the South Africans’; ‘[I] just wish South Africans had the same mentality, instead of protesting for jobs’; ‘I always wish that one day South Africans can learn a few things from the Zimbabweans, i.e. [that] you must work hard to achieve success, not crying to government every day for everything’. Another respondent remarked that if ‘they’ (South Africans) could be like Zimbabweans [in terms of working hard], South Africa would be a much better place. Someone advised the #FeesMustFall activists to emulate Zimbabweans who worked hard to educate themselves and their children. Sharing an experience of working with an ‘all Zimbabwe team’ in a construction project, a respondent said the team was always punctual, polite and consistent in coming to work, unlike the South Africans he had worked with. Framing black South Africans as lazy is not peculiar to ‘The Joburger’ Facebook page. In research that discusses ‘how white wealthy South Africans mobilise meaning to maintain privilege’, Wale and Foster (2007, p. 57) observed that: ‘Black, poor South Africans are constructed as oversexed, unintelligent and lazy’. They further contended that the above discourses and others ‘… function to absolve wealthy white South Africans from taking moral responsibility for the dire situation of the poor in South Africa’. It was interesting to note from the profile pictures of ‘The Joburger’ users, not only white South Africans were responsible for making the ‘black-South-Africans-are-lazy’ comments. Some black South Africans also voiced this sentiment.

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Comparing black South Africans to Zimbabweans has the potential of exposing foreign nationals to xenophobic violence since some locals already consider that black migrants are competing with them over jobs. In a report by Pillay et al (2008, p. 7), one of the many reasons given for the aggravation of the conflict between migrants and locals is the ‘… local practice of preferring non-South African employees, particularly in the domestic, gardening and construction sectors’. Of interest also is that while the ‘hard work’ by Zimbabwean migrants was generally welcomed, some people who commented subtly pointed out that these foreign nationals did not belong in South Africa. They needed ‘to go home one day to be united with their families and prosper in their country’ (my emphasis); ‘I hope one day they can be able to go back home and work together towards building their beloved country’; ‘… I love the fact that they have NO plans of staying in South Africa … They wanna go home’; and ‘I love the fact that all of them are looking forward to going back home’.

Respectful, Resilient, Patient and Disciplined: Describing Zimbabweans Singing about the kinds of people Zimbabweans are, musician Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave, herself a Zimbabwean, relates: ‘Vanhu vekwedu vanotya Mwari, vanhu vokwedu vanosekerera, vanhu vekwedu vakangwarira’ (our people are God-fearing, our people are jovial, our people are intelligent) (Biri, Chitando and Mashiri 2014, p. 166). While not using the same adjectives, survey respondents affirmed that Zimbabweans were generally pleasant people. They were humble, respectful, kind, gentle and resilient. Many attested to the fact that this group of migrants were respectful colleagues, neighbours and tenants (also see Hungwe 2013). Respondents stated that over the years they had interacted with Zimbabweans they were never rude. ‘They are very respectful people and extremely hard working and loyal’ (my emphasis) and ‘Multiskilled, humble, hardworking people, respectful, easy to work with, highly educated’. Others stated that Zimbabweans together with Malawians were among their preferred tenants because of their respectful nature. Another observed how Zimbabweans remained respectful of their former president despite everything he had done to them. This is ‘unlike South Africans who call Jacob Zuma all

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sorts of names’. The adjective ‘respectful’ was almost always followed by other qualifiers, such as humble, kind, gentle, polite or friendly. A number of respondents mentioned how, despite tough economic challenges in their country, Zimbabweans were resilient. Even when they crossed the Limpopo River and encountered numerous problems, they remained strong. The term resilient has also been used to describe Zimbabwean children who work as migrants in Musina (Mahati 2012). ‘Despite everything that they have been through, they [are] truly resilient !!’ Others commented: ‘They are very resilient people, slow to anger, intelligent and loving’ and ‘Resilient and always positive’. One person stated that Zimbabweans sent money to their families every month despite some of them encountering occasional harassment by law enforcement agents (Matshaka 2009). As already mentioned, Zimbabweans were willing to do any job that allowed them to send money back home to their families (also see Bloch 2008). Another adjective that was used to describe Zimbabweans was patient. Respondents gave numerous examples of Zimbabwean teachers and private tutors who were not only knowledgeable about their subject area but were also very patient. One person detailed how her daughter used to get 50% in mathematics before meeting a patient and highly qualified Zimbabwean tutor. Now, her daughter was achieving an average of 90%. Another grateful parent was indebted to her children’s patient mathematics tutor from Zimbabwe who held a postgraduate degree in the subject. Other remarks included: ‘All I can say is that as South African citizens we should learn that patience is truly a virtue. My fellow brothers and sisters from Zimbabwe, thank you for teaching us that’; ‘… I pray God blessed me with half their patience … they will listen to nonsense for hours when I am losing my mind trying to get a move on’; and ‘Very patient and some too loyal … I mean one President for 37 years – THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS!?’ Zimbabweans were commended for being disciplined: ‘The ones I’m close to are very humble, educated and disciplined’. Several people mentioned that the way in which they carried themselves during the ‘military intervention’ of November 2018 that ended with President Mugabe resigning as head of state was a clear demonstration of their discipline. This was contrary to South Africans who were often ‘violent’ went they protested. ‘Not like South Africa, where protesters destroy their neighbour’s property’. Others said: ‘When they protest, they don’t burn or loot the shops. They don’t attack foreign shops. They don’t carry weapons

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to show their frustrations’ and ‘Zimbabweans who took part in the protest [of November 2017] neither threw garbage around nor intimidated motorists’. One respondent said that she was certain if the ‘coup’ had happened in South Africa, it would have been accompanied by a spate of looting and destruction of property. ‘I admire all Zimbabweans. They have been through so much and yet they can mass demonstrate with no violence and no looting’, was another view. One respondent urged the world to learn from Zimbabwe. In the ‘disciplined Zimbabwean protestors’ vs the ‘unruly and violent South African demonstrators’ argument, the commentators understandably did not mention the history of protests in South Africa that assists in understanding the conduct of South Africans. Bruce (2014) explains: … it was chiefly in the 1980s that a violent culture entrenched itself as part of resistance to apartheid in South Africa. The techniques of violent resistance to authority that became widespread at that time were encouraged by the ANC and its allies as part of the strategy of making the country “ungovernable”. Many of these practices remain part of our culture of protest and remain embedded within the political culture of the ANC in many areas.

In the absence of a discussion on the history of violence, the comparisons that characterised most comments have no basis. If anything, they contribute towards widening and deepening the resentment some locals harbour against migrants.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have discussed the ‘positive’ frames that were used by South African respondents to ‘The Joburger’ Facebook page to describe what they appreciated about Zimbabweans they knew. Zimbabweans were largely lauded for their intellect, ability to speak English well, hard work and pleasant personalities. In a way, the ‘positive’ representations of Zimbabweans worked to push back, albeit minimally, the dominant negative narratives about migrants in general. The comments served to affirm the value and contribution of Zimbabweans to South Africa and were also evidence of the existence of South Africans who appreciate migrants. By listening to dominant accounts alone, it is easy to conclude that all South Africans are anti-migrants.

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While the ‘positive’ comments are heart-warming for Zimbabweans, it was interesting to note how this celebration occurred concurrently with the disparagement and ‘othering’ of black South Africans. Locals were portrayed as being lazy and violent, and most respondents encouraged them to ‘emulate Zimbabweans’. I argue that this ‘counter-othering’ is problematic because it has the potential to fuel xenophobia. At the level of theory, I discussed the way in which tenets of the classical othering theory were disrupted by the comments. Instead of the usual lionising of the self at the expense of the Other, South Africans articulated the value embodied and embedded in the foreign Other for purposes of celebration. However, there were some respondents who othered fellow South Africans, which is a departure from a key idea encapsulated in the theory, namely that dominant groups often ridicule less powerful groups different to them. I have also discussed how some ‘positive’ comments, e.g. the valorisation of Zimbabweans because they are learned and speak English fluently, need to be interrogating because this upholds coloniality. As ‘positive’ as the comments discussed may have been, they are not the loudest and certainly not the most dominant in South Africa’s media. The mainstream media in the country are culpable of framing migrants as criminals and takers of opportunities that locals perceive as theirs. In view of the above, it is critical that there is a continuation of current initiatives to ensure that the mainstream media in South Africa portray Zimbabweans and other foreign nationals positively. With the possibilities offered by social media, migrants can organise systematic and sustained campaigns directly at South Africans to detail the not-so-conspicuous contributions made by them to the country. Friendly supporters, such as the ones who commented on the post by ‘The Joburger’, can play an integral part in the campaign.

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CHAPTER 18

Picturing Xenophobia: Photojournalism and Xenophobic Violence in South Africa Dumisani Moyo

Introduction This chapter is a record of a personal interview I held with two leading South African photojournalists, Alon Skuy and James Oatway, who have both been photographing incidences of xenophobic violence in the country for over a decade. Their acclaimed work has appeared in the country’s mainstream newspapers, including those of the Times Media (now Arena Holdings) and Independent Media groups. Between them, Skuy and Oatway have captured some of the most graphic and disturbing moments of violence in post-apartheid South Africa, including during service delivery, labour and other protests. In May 2018, the two jointly hosted an exhibition of their work titled, ‘Killing the Other’, at the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre to commemorate ten years since the gruesome xenophobic attacks of 2008, when over 60 people were killed.

D. Moyo (B) Department of Journalism, Film & Television, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8_18

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This interview was held at the same venue on 22 October 2019, where parts of that exhibition are still in place. It delves, among other things, into the two photojournalists’ ambivalent fascination with xenophobic violence, the ethical questions around the publication of some of their work, and how to balance the power of photography to persuade and change societal views with what society is prepared to accept, and their own coping mechanisms in dealing with the traumatic and psychologically disturbing moments they recorded. In addition, the interview interrogates some of the normative perceptions about the role of photography in storytelling, including assumptions that are made around ‘seeing as believing’ and the power of selection, not only in relation to the person behind the camera but also in the newsrooms where the aim is to sell newspapers through captivating images. The interview is accompanied by some of the iconic photographs by the two photojournalists, which are reproduced with their permission. Dumisani Moyo: Most studies of the media, migration and xenophobia have tended to focus on analysing texts, especially the various ways in which newspapers frame and represent migrants. Little attention has been given to the role of images that could shape public opinion. Yet, it is increasingly evident that our society now reacts more to visual images than ever before. Photography is a powerful tool for disseminating messages and meanings, especially because of the almost universal appeal images have for audiences from diverse cultures and the apparent capacity images have to convey evidence in an objective manner. Both of you have carried out quite some iconic photojournalism on xenophobia in South Africa and you put together a joint photo exhibition in 2018 at the Genocide and Holocaust Centre in Johannesburg, which you titled ‘Killing the Other’. Why has xenophobia become one of the key subjects of your photojournalism? Alon Skuy: Well, I think both of us embarked on covering xenophobia in 2008 when we had the first major outbreak. At the time, I was working for The Times newspaper and there were these numerous outbreaks of violence, some of which were quite prolonged and went on for nearly a month. It was completely shocking how there were these things that we were not really aware of before, and the severe implications for and effect it had on people that had come to make their homes in this country. For me, that was the catalyst to continue working on the story and explore it in subsequent outbreaks. And there was that Daily Sun type of reporting that was very inflammatory, with headlines that were kind of derogatory.

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I was trying to sense what was going on and cover it in the most holistic way at the time. James Oatway: So, just to follow up on and what Alon is saying, what I remember in the years from around 2003 up until 2008, and even beyond, is that it was very common to see posters on the lamp poles, especially for the Daily Sun, referring to ‘aliens’. I had just moved to Johannesburg and seeing posters that said: ‘Aliens kidnap my child’ and things like that made me wonder whether they were talking about the little guys from the moon or wherever. But when I read the articles, I noticed that the aliens they were talking about were Nigerians or Zimbabweans or Mozambicans. And almost every day, one would see a poster with ‘aliens this, aliens that’. And, to me, when that 2008 violence happened, it suddenly clicked that there must definitely be a link between [the xenophobia] and this sort of language that was being used on a daily basis in the Daily Sun. This was at a time when newspapers were widely read; before they started to decline as much as they have now. I think the Daily Sun’s circulation back then was more than a million, which made it the most widely read newspaper in the country. And every day they were using this kind of language. Like Alon said, when that violence hit in 2008, it took a lot of us offguard, especially people like ourselves who were not living in townships. I did not know that there was this strong xenophobic sentiment and I certainly did not expect that it could translate into such violence [see, for example Fig. 18.1]. I was so shocked by how quickly the townships had turned into war zones, yet for the white people and the black middle-class driving to work on the M1 past Alex [Alexandra Township], it was business as usual. Just on the other side of the road there were people being killed, burnt to death and stuff like that. So, it became clear to me how divided South Africa was economically into two different worlds: the poor and the rich. That is partly why we decided to carry on with this project; both of us became extremely affected by the really terrible and shocking violence that we saw. Dumisani Moyo: So, the Daily Sun was quite unapologetic when people started accusing it of fanning hatred, and so on? James Oatway: Yes, but then they did stop using the term ‘aliens’ to describe non-South African nationals. Dumisani Moyo: I think the argument suggesting that the Daily Sun’s reports were among the causal factors for xenophobia were quite strong.

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Fig. 18.1 20 May 2008. A man leads a mob of men on a main road near Reiger Park in search of foreigners they believed were hiding near a mine dump (Photo by Alon Skuy)

In fact, Anton Harbour brings that out quite strongly in his book, Go Home or Die Here, for which you, Alon, contributed the powerful images. I think that this forced the paper to reconsider how they reported on migrants and the violence. In the light of all this, how do you see the broader impact of your photography on the discourse of xenophobia in South Africa? James Oatway: I think the way the mainstream media has treated xenophobia since 2008 has been quite lazy. What it has done, and I include myself in that, is to respond only to those moments when there are outbreaks of violence. It only becomes big news when someone gets killed, or when there is an actual outbreak of violence. But as soon as there is peace, the story is neglected. That means there is no follow-up, no in-depth reporting, no features and no effort to get to the bottom of why this is happening. Alon Skuy: Even though there is this underlying xenophobia, which includes the ostracising of other people and calling them makwerekwere,

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this goes on unreported, probably on a daily basis. It is just when there is that spark that kicks it off that the media become interested. James Oatway: It is like the media puts out the fire but then just immediately forgets about it until there is another violent incident. So, there is nothing in between. To me that leaves big gaps that demonstrate some kind of laziness on the part of the media. I think that knowing what I know now, I am more experienced and perhaps a bit wiser than I was in 2008, when I first started seeing this. I feel that there should have been a sustained focus on xenophobia, looking into possible reasons why it keeps coming up, and also at the less inflammatory and smaller incidents, not necessarily at those resulting in deaths. What we have seen a lot more now is politicians using inflammatory language and blatantly blaming ‘foreign nationals’, which is another problematic term, as being the root cause of a lot of the problems here in South Africa, and the media not interrogating that. That is one of the biggest gaping holes in the coverage; the tendency of just responding and not actually trying to plot or to dig deeper. In the end, the coverage is a bit too superficial. Alon Skuy: Even with the last major outbreak, which happened a month or two ago [in August 2019], it also seemed to be quite underreported by various media houses. It is not clear whether it is because of a lack of resources, or people are disinterested, or I do not want to get involved in the story. But it definitely felt to be less reported than previous outbreaks. James Oatway: At a lot of these scenes lately, you are sometimes the only guy there, whereas in 2008 all the newspapers would have a representative; all the TV stations and radio would have representatives at the various scenes. But, in this more recent one, there was hardly anyone going out. Dumisani Moyo: Is it to do, do you think, with the shrinking newsrooms or sheer tiredness with the story? Alon Skuy: Partly. But people may also be reluctant to engage with a subject that is becoming so highly politicised. Is it xenophobia; crime; is it opportunism? It is hard to position. James Oatway: I think it is, to be frank, bad journalism, and it trickles down from the editors to the line editors. In the most recent outbreak, it took ages before newspapers were even using the word ‘xenophobia’. Several people were killed and what newspapers were doing was just regurgitating what the police were saying: that it is just criminality or looting. The media did not report it as anti-migrant or xenophobic

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violence. It was only when it became too obvious that newspapers started to say that migrants seemed to be targeted. In fact, not migrants but ‘foreign nationals’. The police still denied it; to this day they deny that it was xenophobic violence. But I think what was problematic is that newspapers were adopting the language and the narrative from the police and from government. So, even just using the term ‘foreign nationals’ is using the language of politicians, and that is quite a loaded term. ‘Migrants’ would be a more correct term, in my view. Alon Skuy: And also, I mean, in Katlehong, there were whole communities that were literally kicked out overnight; of people that had come here and been here for ages, had businesses and homes. James Oatway: You cannot say that the violence targeted only migrants from other African countries. Bangladeshi and Pakistani shopkeepers and South Africans were also targeted [see, for example Fig. 18.2]. It is as if the media were just using the same speech as the police and the politicians. There was a lack of critical thinking, a lack of leadership in

Fig. 18.2 24 February 2017. A man produces his South African identity document after being attacked by a group of men during an organised ‘anti-foreigner’ incident (Photo by James Oatway)

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the newsroom. I think editors were scared to say: ‘This is xenophobic violence. Let’s call it what it is. Let’s ask the right questions’. Dumisani Moyo: I think it is a very important point you are both raising, that the media seems to be losing the battle of defining the problem. Actually, they have a lot of power to be the primary definers and not just to take definitions from the politicians, who are self-interested actors anyway. So how these politicians define a problem is very much for their own purposes. It is self-serving for them to define it as criminality rather than xenophobia because once you define it as xenophobia, it means you have to have a different kind of approach to dealing with it. Alon Skuy: The fear of diplomatic fallout is quite big. Dumisani Moyo: One of the things I have noticed is that photojournalism is underestimated and yet it makes quite a huge impact in terms of making the choices of what the world sees in terms of a crisis or conflict. How would you explain your role to a world that does not quite comprehend what you do and the power that you have in selecting and shaping stories? Alon Skuy: I think our role is, hopefully, to reflect the reality on the ground, to create some sort of an awareness and engagement around the things that are affecting the various communities. I think it is an important role for people around the world to have access to the reality of the situation on the ground. James Oatway: I agree. Simple reporting, just describing with words, is one thing. I think that the strength of photojournalism lies in allowing people to actually see the faces of the victims or the perpetrators of the violence, it suddenly is a lot more powerful for viewers because it is bringing the words to life. It is like showing you the emotion. You can see the pain; you can see the anger on the faces of perpetrators and victims. And it just brings that reality even though it is difficult to look at. It is painful to look at these images, but it brings that reality into people’s immediate world. Text does it but I think not as immediately and not with as much power, I suppose. I think that this is where photojournalism is very powerful. Some of the pictures that we have photographed are really shockingly violent images that show people on the worst day they have ever had. People react differently to this as well. For some of the pictures that we have taken, you see a full array of different reactions from people, from being upset with what they see to being angry with us as the photographers. And I think that is our job actually because we do not go out there

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with a view, saying: ‘This is what we want to show’. We just photograph what we see. And then we hold it out there and then you as the viewer will make up your own mind. Obviously, we will frame it within the right context in our captions that we write. But we are not trying to push an agenda or anything like that. Dumisani Moyo: One of the famous sayings about journalism is that ‘If it bleeds it leads’. To what extent does that consideration influence photojournalism? For instance, the criticism of journalism for sensationalising stories has been quite strong. As you correctly say, you get criticised for some of the images you take for shocking the world. Would you say that it is one of the driving imperatives for you to get some of those strong visuals, to shock the world so that you get real change? If you look historically, there have been some iconic images that have actually changed public discourse completely, such as the award-winning Hector Peterson picture, the picture of the body of a three-year-old boy [Alan Kurdi] from Syria who drowned while he and his family tried to reach Europe as refugees, the napalmed girl in Vietnam and so on. I am thinking of those turning points in a conflict, forced by powerful imagery. Would you say it is something that is embedded in the photojournalist’s mind when they go out to cover some of these moments? Alon Skuy: I think effecting change in a positive way is a hugely satisfying thing for me. If you think of James’s picture of Emmanuel Sithole after he was stabbed: not long after that there was a huge initiative to clamp down on the situation, which was quite obviously spiralling out of control. There were various raids; there was much more police presence. So that is obviously something hugely rewarding, even though it is such a tragic thing to photograph. Dumisani Moyo: James, I would like to ask you to speak to that because you took the Emmanuel Sithole photograph. I am sure you received praise and flak in equal measures. James Oatway: A lot of flak, yes, [and praise] but not in equal measure. I think what you said about the saying ‘If it bleeds it leads’ is very true, especially in the past with regard to stories on Africa. Mainstream [Western] media have been using pictures of violence too easily or too casually, so that it has become a bit of a crutch to fall back on. For instance, pictures of some rebels doing some terrible acts of violence would become a stereotype of the African story. I think mainstream media has been guilty of using that. At the same time, they will not give it the same weight if there is a school shooting in America. I mean, you will

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rarely see pictures of white bodies and blood in European or American stories. I mean, I remember when there was that shooting in Norway. That crazy Anders Breivik who went and shot all those children on the island. And I remember seeing it on CNN; they showed you the bodies, but they were all blurred out and fuzzy. Alon Skuy: Even the Paris attacks. James Oatway: The Paris attacks, yes. The images are blurry and fuzzed out, but you never ever see that with African stories. There you will see the body straight, unfiltered. So, there are double standards. I do think it is necessary to use those pictures sometimes. With xenophobic violence, referring to the Emmanuel Sithole pictures specifically [see, for example, Fig. 18.3], I do not have any regrets that those pictures were used. I think it is very important that those images were used on the front page rather prominently. Because up until then, people were not really giving the story enough attention. And suddenly it was out there and impossible to ignore. The next day the government deployed the

Fig. 18.3 18 April 2015, Alexandra Township. Mthintha Bhengu (21) about to stab Mozambican trader Emmanuel Sithole. Sithole later died from his wounds (Photo by James Oatway)

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army, even though the xenophobia had died down. What does that tell you? If there is no xenophobic violence, why are you deploying the army? People organised protests and things like that after the publishing of the Emmanuel Sithole murder photograph. A lot of people did criticise me personally, asking: ‘What kind of person stands by and photographs someone being killed?’ I must back up there that the pictures I took of the attack only take up 27 or 28 seconds. It is not as if I was there for 10 or 20 minutes watching the attack. It happened very quickly, and I took those pictures. And then, when the attackers saw me, they moved away. I do not think if they had seen me, they would have finished him off like right there and then. My colleague and I did try to take him to a nearby clinic. Ironically, the doctor who was on duty that day was from the Congo and he did not come to work that day because of the violence. So, we had to take him to another hospital but, unfortunately, he passed away on the way. I understand that on seeing that image people will have an emotional reaction. Some attack me as the photographer, others look at the picture and say: ‘Jeez, this is terrible! Look at those people attacking this guy’. Others will cry because it shows the pain of Sithole. But ultimately the image did its job by making people aware of exactly how brutal this violence had been, in a way that written reports had not been able to do until then. So, there is value in using images of violence, but there should not be over-dependence on it. I do not think these pictures should be used lightly without asking: ‘Is this necessary to show this?’ To its credit, The Sunday Times that day had a long and vigorous discussion about using the picture before they decided to publish it. The picture was not used lightly. But I do think that other images are used a bit too lightly. But in this case, I think it was the right thing to do, to use that picture. Dumisani Moyo: How do you deal with this at the personal level—I mean, the kind of criticism that you get? I am reminded of that awardwinning Kevin Carter picture of the young girl and the vulture, and how, according to the story, he could not live with it much longer after getting the Pulitzer Prize. James Oatway: This is difficult to deal with from a personal point of view because with this guy, I did not think he was going to die, and then he did die. It is very painful that we were not able to get him medical attention in time. It is extremely painful, and I do question myself sometimes: ‘Was it the right thing to take his picture?’, and all of that. But

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I still do not regret having taken those pictures. I think it was the right photos to have taken. On a personal level, it is difficult seeing acts of violence take place, seeing dead bodies and people suffering| and hearing terrible stories. It feels like each time you are a witness to such events a weight is being placed onto your back. Each incident is another weight and it starts to weigh you down. And I do think that everyone has a breaking point. People also respond differently to such scenes. Some take it in their stride and do not feel too bad about it. Others get upset by seeing a dead dog on the side of the road. People have different levels of tolerance. It does have a toll on your personal life. I am sure that we are all traumatised by what we see, and it does sometimes come out in the wrong way, such as drinking too much or being moody. Sometimes it can even affect one’s personal relationships. Dumisani Moyo: Do you take any counselling after some of those traumatising experiences? James Oatway: Indeed. After the Emmanuel Sithole incident I did have some counselling. Lately, I have been going for quite a lot of counselling. Unfortunately, you cannot ‘un-see’ the things that you have seen. At the same time, this is a chosen career and it is not as if I am photographing this stuff against my will. To me, the most important thing is that I am not doing this for nothing. People are seeing the work and engaging in the work—that is the most important thing. If I had to see this stuff as just a normal member of the public who was not there to do a job, I think it would be a lot different. Alon, you have your own experiences as well … Dumisani Moyo: Yes, Alon, which would you say were some of your most controversial photographs used in the media that sparked this kind of reaction. Alon Skuy: There were some images from the Marikana massacre where 34 people lost their lives. There was a lot of debate and engagement around those images, which were seen all over the world. There were debates, for instance, about dead black bodies that were shown without being covered. Because of the immediacy of the news event, for me it was important to get those pictures out there. So those would probably be the most traumatic experiences for me. Dumisani Moyo: There is a point that both of you make about the casualness with which images of dead bodies of black people can be splashed in the media across the world without much restraint. Why do you think

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it is the case that the world society generally has become accustomed to the fact that it is fair play to display black bodies and not so much for white bodies? James Oatway: I think that if the incident warrants it, those pictures should be used, but they should be used uniformly. They should not just be the images of black bodies. It should be based on the principle that if the story warrants it, and if there is a proper debate and a justification for using certain images, then they should be used. There should be no double standards of covering up of a white body and then using an open photo of a black body. Alon Skuy: There was a heated debate recently in the New York Times about this, when the paper used images from the massacre in Kenya following the Al-Shabaab attack at the Westgate shopping mall. But there were events in parts of Europe where there was access to images of uncovered white bodies, but they did not run with those images. The debate was not so much about the fact that they were showing the news event from the mall. Rather, it was about the censoring of an event that happened elsewhere. James Oatway: Take, for example, that image of Hector Peterson. In my opinion that is possibly the most important photograph to come out of South Africa. It was used world-wide and it really put the 1976 uprising on the world agenda. Now can you imagine if that picture had not been used, or it had been blocked out or something like that? [The story] would not have had the same kind of power. In the same way, as you mentioned earlier, the napalmed girl. It is a terrible picture; there is a young woman in a lot of pain, suffering, having just been burnt. It drove the point home in the civilian population about the effects of the Vietnam War and it shifted people’s perceptions. Dumisani Moyo: I also want us to talk about training. Both of you are trained photojournalists. In a world that is changing so fast, where you now have almost everyone as a potential photojournalist or citizen photojournalist, what do you see as the value of training in photojournalism? Alon Skuy: Training is imperative to acquire ethical parameters and guidelines on technical aspects. I think there is still a great need to have schools for photojournalism, even though there are a lot of citizen photojournalists around. There needs to be an awareness about the ethical constraints on photojournalism, even though a lot more people are becoming more media literate and access to images is a lot greater.

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James Oatway: Training is critical. It is not only about the pictures you take and about how you take those pictures, it is about how you behave in certain situations and how you treat the people you are photographing. It is also about what you do with the images you shot. You need to not only have been trained around all the concepts of the media and whatever goes hand in hand with it, but you also need to have an understanding of the world we live in. You do not always see that these days. I suppose the big thing that is changing now is our pictures; we saw how pictures, purportedly from this year’s [2019] xenophobic violence, are being circulated on WhatsApp, only to find that these are pictures of something else, maybe a mob violence incident from a completely unrelated context. I have seen a lot of my own pictures taken in years gone by being circulated as though it is happening right now, today. That is so extremely dangerous. This kind of misinformation certainly fuelled more violence. Dumisani Moyo: There seems to be something that the camera does in a context of violence: that sometimes people perform for the camera. I do not know if you have seen a documentary by Sorious Samura on the conflict in Sierra Leone called ‘Cry Freetown’, which was shown by CNN many years ago. What you see in that documentary is how people seem to perform crazy acts of violence because there is a camera actually filming them: shooting and killing in cold blood just like that. In your experience with still photography, do you find that people have got this excitement when they see a photojournalist? And how do you deal with that? Alon Skuy: There can at times be an element of that. As photographers, even though we want to be completely invisible, there is going to be that interaction and our presence is going to affect people’s behaviour. But it is up to us to read the situation and be as much in the background as possible, not to have any interference whatsoever in those moments. The minute the photographer sees that he is influencing behaviour, it is time for him to step back, move away and not be involved whatsoever in that scene. So, there is that big responsibility not to fuel any dangerous situations. James Oatway: That is when the training comes in as well; that if you are aware that this is happening just as a show for you, you should be aware enough to step back and not take the picture. I will give you an example: I was once sent out to photograph a protest march and when I arrived there it was a small group of people, maybe 50, all sitting under a tree, relaxing. But when I got out of my car and they saw me with a

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camera, everyone suddenly jumped up and started toy-toying. So, there is that element [of acting for the camera]. But if I take the Emmanuel Sithole incident, those attackers had no idea I was there. In fact, they were shocked when they saw me. I think that is possibly what saved my life. Because they did not have it in their comprehension that there can be some white guy with a camera here at 7 am or whatever on a Saturday morning. When they saw me, they got such a fright and their reaction was to move away. I thought they were going to come for me next; nothing actually stopped them. Instead, they walked past me and looked me in the eye, with their knives in their hands still. Those were very very nervous moments. Their reaction, luckily for me, was to move away and not to attack me. So, in that instance there was no performance or anything like that. But, definitely, it can happen. What we have seen more with xenophobic violence is that people are going to do what they are going to do anyway, and our presence has been almost more of a deterrent for them carrying out stuff. There have been a few times where we have managed to infiltrate mobs running in the streets of Johannesburg. It is clear that they are going to smash windows and loot shops, whether we are there on not. So, in that way we are not influencing their behaviour at all. Although sometimes they do turn to us say: ‘Hey, don’t take our picture! Don’t take our picture!’, or whatever. [Fig. 18.4 captures a moment during one of the protests.] Dumisani Moyo: You have touched upon the issue of selection. Let us say you go out and take a bunch of photographs of xenophobic violence and it is now time for the newsroom to select the pictures that they want to use. Are you involved in that process? And are there moments where you feel that the media actually got it wrong in terms of their selection processes, in terms of what you as the photographer believe is the true story? Alon Skuy: Well, from a scene we will go out and maybe do an audit of the images. I would probably use 10 images or so that I believe are representative of the general sense of that day’s events. And then it will be up to the editor on duty to select maybe two or three, or even one, to go with that story. James Oatway: In the past, the picture editor would normally do that. We do not have the same level of picture editors in newsrooms in South Africa at the moment as we did 15 to 20 years ago. That is a big gap. I have often had the experience where I felt they had chosen the wrong

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Fig. 18.4 24 February 2017. A man peers through a gap in a fence while angry locals shout outside. Furious South Africans protested outside a building, claiming that the foreigners inside had weapons. A march took place with a backdrop of attacks against foreigners across select sections of Johannesburg and Pretoria (Photograph: Alon Skuy)

one, or of ‘why didn’t they include that one?’ But back to the Emmanuel Sithole one: I was included in that process, which was actually quite a good example of how to select an image. There were about six people in there, including the editor, chief sub, deputy editor, politics editor, news editor and myself. We debated why to use it, why not to use it. That is what should happen, but it does not always happen, especially these days. Many of the mainstream publications do not have a proper picture editor anymore. But I cannot really say that I have ever thought that they have purposefully tried to use pictures that misinterpret the incident. I cannot say that I have had that experience where I feel that they are trying to reflect a false narrative or something like that. Alon Skuy: Social media tend to do that, using pictures misrepresenting the time when an incident happened. But I do not recall a newspaper using an image to misrepresent a story.

374

D. MOYO

James Oatway: One thing that I have not mentioned, and I would like to speak about, is that with our exhibition, we were very conscious of the fact that we have many pictures showing very terrible violence. Being conscious of that, we wanted to balance that by using some other images that did not show people only as victims. That is why in the exhibition we have also included several portraits of people under more normal, daily sort of conditions where they are not in a stressed situation. To me, that has been lacking in mainstream media coverage; you do not see pictures that balance it out—pictures where a person is not running for their life or pleading for their life or something; pictures that show shopkeepers in their daily environments. We thought it was important that we balance out the exhibition by using those pictures. Alon Skuy: Even one or two pictures of guys fighting back. Dumisani Moyo: I think that could be an interesting balance. There have also been those anti-xenophobia campaigns where people carry placards that say: ‘Everyone is a foreigner somewhere’, or something like that. I think the media could take that approach to provide a balance of the extreme. Let me take this opportunity to thank both of you for a most enlightening and stimulating conversation.

Index

A African Centre for Cities, 331, 332 for Migration and Society, 29 Xenowatch, 29–30 African diaspora, 186, 336 African foreigners excluded by the media, 44 negative frames of foreigners, 57 politics of fear, 256 posing a threat, 25, 26, 30–33 African immigrants See immigrants Africanism, 336 African migrants See migrants African National Congress (ANC), 79, 127 Afrophobia, 23 and violence, 54, 354 African Renaissance, 6, 336 Africans, 335, 336 contributions by migrants, 335, 336

desirability as immigrants, 33, 256, 346 disproportionate targets, 30, 32–34, 252 ‘perpetual criminals’, 22 search for a better life, 254 African Union Nigerian intervention request, 187, 195, 196, 316 united, borderless Africa, 7 Afrophobia, 9, 149 African nationalists, 24, 200 against black Africans only, 17–20, 25–27 colonial/apartheid influence, 19–21, 24–26 definition of Afrophobia, 18 fear of a specific Other, 213 Mantashe, Gwede, 24 myths, 17 questioning Afrophobia hypothesis, 17 self-hate, 17–21, 24–26, 31, 35

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Moyo and S. Mpofu (eds.), Mediating Xenophobia in Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61236-8

375

376

INDEX

and South Africa, 17–21, 23–28, 31, 34–36 support by empirical evidence, 28 versus xenophobia, 17–36 Afrophobic violence, 17–20 Alexandra Township (Alex), 361, 367 aliens, 20, 22–23, 272 Aliens Compliance Order, Ghana, 154–156 blaming the immigrants, 159 Daily Sun, 360–362 Al-Shabaab, 286, 292, 298–300, 311 Anderson, Benedict imagined community, 45, 48–49, 56 anti-immigrant hate crime, 59, 99, 107–111 media influence, 104 anti-immigrant sentiment, 105 anti-xenophobia activists and policymakers, 100, 110 campaigns, 10 central African public education campaign, 110 apartheid and black immigration, 254 explaining xenophobia, 18–21, 23–26, 173, 174, 187, 188, 253 ignorance about of Africa, 334 inherited problems, 7, 127 neo-apartheid, 188 violent resistance to authority, 354 Asians 1972 Uganda expulsion, 209, 210 2008 violence, 361 2015 census data, 83 chain migration practices, 259 targets of violent attacks, 17, 30–32 asylum seekers disproportionally targeted in attacks, 30

legal entitlement, 278 perpetuation of stereotypes, 70 potential helplessness, 81, 162

B Bangladesh, 30, 253 Bangladeshi nationals, 252 target of xenophobia, 27, 28, 30, 133, 252, 364 Basotho, 9, 32 BBC Africa, 93, 155, 296 belonging and identity, 8, 12, 29, 44, 171, 207, 276, 285–287 citizenship and belonging, 3 claiming geographical and cultural space, 20–21 complexities of identity, 35 contradiction of the rainbow nation, 326 identity formation, 151, 160 politics of identity and belonging, 43, 336 Bengalis, 22 Benin, 8, 155 Black Africans. See Africans Blackness, 20, 329 Botswana, 8, 70 Batswana, 9, 254–256, 32 Burkina Faso and xenophobia, 154–157 Burundi, 110, 209 Buthelezi, Mangosuthu entrenched xenophobic thinking, 272

C Cameroon and xenophobia, 155 Chad and xenophobia, 155 China, 210, 211, 253, 307, 311 See also Uganda

INDEX

Chinese investors/migrants, 12–13, 27, 30 See also Uganda Chinese in Uganda, 207–221 colonialism in Africa, 7, 19, 76, 148, 151, 162, 327, 344–345, 350 arbitrary borders, 7–8, 25, 151–153 coloniality survives colonialism, 344, 355 role of English, 349 subjugation through education, 350 victimhood for South Africans, 25 comparative media studies Kenya law and policy, 86 pull factors, 85, 86 South Africa focus on politics and events, 92 negligible superficial coverage, 92 Tanzania law and policy, 86 push factors, 86 Zimbabwe media highly polarised, 81 migration laws and policies, 79 Congolese, 130, 212, 327 Consortium on Refugees and Migrants, 129 corporate interests access to skilled/unskilled labour, 8 Côte d’Ivoire, 11, 152, 160 state-sponsored xenophobia, 153, 154–157, 159 xenophobia in Côte d’Ivoire, 149, 152, 154–157, 160, 162 Amnesty International, 158 Ivoirité, 151, 157 Togo, 155 critical discourse analysis (CDA), 168, 173–174

377

D Democratic Alliance, 130 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) migrants from DRC, 208 Deutsche Welle, 93 Djibouti, 309–311 DRC See Democratic Republic of Congo Durban Chatsworth, 127, 140 eThekwini, 140 Ethiopian and Eritrean migrants, 308 xenophobic attacks, 46, 127, 171

E ECOWAS free movement of persons, 7, 149, 151–154, 156, 162 media misrepresentation, 11, 148, 160–163 regional integration, 11, 148–149, 152, 161–163 resurgence of nationalism, 148 xenophobia in West Africa, 11, 149, 153, 162 Egyptians, 251, 253, 257–263 looking for a future, 257 views on South Africans, 260 Employment Equity Act, 330 and ‘designated groups’, 330 Eritrea, 308–311, 316 Eritreans, 13, 308 Ethical Journalism Network, 69 Ethiopia, 252, 308–311 Ethiopian(s), 13, 308 migration, 314–316 change in societal perceptions, 316 shopkeepers, 13, 30–32, 127

378

INDEX

statistics, 21, 312 target of SA attacks, 30–32, 133 Europe Africa-to-Europe migration, 6, 101, 307, 308, 311–313, 315 media and foreign migration, 87–89, 92–94 racist stereotyping in Europe, 69 Europeans colonial pecking order, 344 safe Europeans, 20, 22, 30 F Facebook, 14 influence on migration, 312–315 Joburger Facebook page, 342–344, 346–347, 351, 354 trusted source, 106 feminisation of migration, 230 media texts of Zimbabwean migrants, 229–231 victimhood and vulnerability, 233, 234 victims of sexual violence, 239 vulnerability to destitution, 239 feminist theory, 230 Simone de Beauvoir, 230, 231, 244 Fordsburg, 256–262 foreigners Afrophobia explains violence, 23, 24 South Africans are victims, 26 threat to gains made, 25 anti-foreign actions in West Africa, 154–157, 159 denial of basic services, 241, 276 good and bad foreigners, 32–34 Kenyan state must take action, 87 media driving animosity, 101, 160–161 myths about foreigners, 23, 104, 215, 277, 324, 331

perpetrators of crime, 22–23, 192 welcoming foreigners, 105–109 foreign national(s) Afrophobia, 17, 18, 26, 27, 35 deconstructing negative stereotypes, 62 progressive self-representation, 13 spaza shops, 133 foreign nationals and media coverage implied criminality, 35, 133, 341 lumping migrants together, 70 negative stereotyping, 21, 159, 260–262 negligible coverage, 92 unreferenced context, 94 foreign ‘Other’. See ‘Other’ foreign-owned shops, 30–32 Bangladeshi, 30, 133, 364 burning and looting of shops, 61, 127, 141 Eritreans, 13 Ethiopians, 13, 30, 133 exclusion of locals, 186, 270 Pakistani, 30, 252, 364 Somalis, 13, 30, 33, 212 spaza shops, 30, 127–133, 142, 332 Free State xenophobic violence, 133 G Gauteng xenophobic violence, 28–30, 43, 252, 254 Ghana and ECOWAS protocol on free movement, 153, 154 Nkrumah, Kwame, 154–155, 162, 200 opening of borders, 155 xenophobia in Ghana, 155–161 Aliens Compliance Order, 154–156 Ghanaian Business Promotion policy, 156

INDEX

Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act, 156 Ghanaian media, 148, 155, 160 ‘Ghana-Must-Go’, 151, 160 globalisation, 5, 148 Grahamstown xenophobic violence, 30

H Habermas, Jurgen, 48 Habermasian public sphere, 45 Harbour, Anton Go Home or Die Here, 362 hate crime See anti-immigrant hate crime hate speech, 245 hatred of immigrants, 4, 7, 52, 57, 326 defining xenophobia, 149, 186, 196, 255, 324 health care. See public health care Horn of Africa complexities of conflict, 13, 308, 309, 312, 313, 317 migration a family enterprise, 315 migration to South Africa, 307, 315 perpetuation of migration in region, 311 role of social media, 13, 307–308, 311–317 hostility towards immigrants. See xenophobia human rights, 269, 276 Human Rights Commission (HRC), 24, 47 Watch, 129, 293 Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), 104 South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), 100, 104–109

379

I identity illegal immigrants, 134, 156, 256, 311 labelling by the media, 261–262 Lindela Refugee Centre, 126, 133 negative representations, 8, 21–23, 57–58, 70, 104, 126, 169 Somalis in Kenya, 292 See belonging and identity immigrants as a threat, 25, 27, 58, 59, 80, 87, 91, 126, 150, 158, 161, 167–170 as scapegoats, 150, 255, 276, 335 association with illegality, 10, 22, 57, 70, 141 businesspeople, 135, 142, 294, 327, 332 contribution to host community, 12, 337 to South Africa, 14, 327–328, 330–333, 334, 346, 354 definition of immigrants, 69 entrepreneurship, 142, 210, 216, 262, 293, 330–333, 337 equal privileges, 162, 255, 262, 331, 350, 351 farm labour, 33, 126, 133, 254, 351 identity. See belonging and identity international migration statistics, 14n1, 208, 311 irregular migrants, 311–314, 316 least desirable migrants, 34 new perceptions about migrants, 335 positive contribution, 14, 69, 328, 335 public discourse on, 51, 69, 91, 142, 286–287, 346, 366 public perception of immigrants

380

INDEX

crime, 5, 22–23, 57, 104, 141, 185–188, 192, 252, 253, 271, 342 disease, 104, 169, 255 health, 5, 245, 279 job-stealing, 7–8, 55, 57, 60, 68–70, 104, 185, 252, 259, 262, 327, 341 unemployment, 5, 104, 213 representation in the media, 3, 69, 92, 117–122, 139–141, 252, 269, 323–327, 331–337 misrepresentation, 11, 93, 161, 334–335 Mozambican television, 173–175 theory on representation, 158 Zimbabwean migrants, 231, 234, 235, 242, 243, 342, 345, 354, 355 right to dignity, 4 safety and security, 87, 93, 175, 195, 258 secondary victimisation, 4 self-representation in the media, 13, 325 asset to the economy, 328 contributions as migrants, 330–332, 337 debunking mainstream negative images, 332–334 employing South Africans, 332 paying taxes, 327–328 supplying critical skills, 328 transferring skills, 328 sexual abuse, 313 shopkeepers and traders, 30–33, 127, 252, 256, 259, 261, 328 Uganda, 208–210, 214, 220–222 West Africa, 153–155

social networks and social capital, 12, 253, 287, 288, 331 South Africa a destination of choice, 7, 125, 257, 307 stereotyping immigrants, 9–13, 69, 91–94, 159–161, 270 victimhood and vulnerability, 25, 192, 233–235, 241 victims of extortion, 313 victims of prejudice, 4–5, 18, 22, 99–100, 118, 270, 275, 279, 333 violence by powerless insiders/outsiders, 4 See also belonging and identity immigration. See migration Indians, 12, 30, 46, 83, 252–253, 256, 257, 259, 261 and Uganda, 6, 208–210, 213, 216–218 informal settlements, 27, 30, 186, 199 Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC), 6, 13 International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 154 interpersonal information networks, 106–109, 111 Ivory Coast. See Côte d’Ivoire J Joburger Facebook page, 14, 342–348, 350–352, 354 buttressing coloniality, 345–346 positive representations of Zimbabwe migrants, 14, 342, 354 Johannesburg and migrants, 12, 231, 242–243, 244–246, 253–255, 256, 259, 308, 331–332 and xenophobic violence, 43, 44, 47, 50, 123, 167, 230

INDEX

journalists norms and practices, 11, 168 wielding power, 51 K Kenya Al-Shabaab, 286, 292, 298–300 Department of Refugee Affairs, 292 counter-terrorism policy, 292 Kenyatta, Uhuru, 286, 292 migration to/from Tanzania, 10, 71, 72, 78 North Eastern Province, 285, 289 and Somalis deportations, 293, 297, 298 in Eastleigh, Nairobi, 13 kinship, 297–298 largest shelters, 290–292 marginalisation of minority voices, 296–298 marginalisation of Somali population, 292, 294, 295, 301 national security threat, 288 refugees, 285–287, 288–292, 296–300 terrorism, 286–287, 289, 292–294, 300 UNHCR mandate, 291 Westgate Mall attack, 292–295 xenophobic violence, 287. See 300-301. See also Nairobi Kenyan Defence Forces, 286 Operation Linda Nchi, 286, 292 Kenyan media, 85, 218, 286–289, 292–296, 299–301 social media, 13–14, 285–288, 294–296, 300 Kenyan National Police, 285–287, 290–294 Kenyan security forces, 286, 290, 292–294, 298

381

encampment and deportation, 296–300 historical tensions, 289–290 Operation Usalama Watch, 286–289, 292–294, 296, 299–301 refugee camps, 290–292, 298 securitisation of Somali community, 287–289, 301 security operations, 13–14, 123 ‘War on Terror’, 286 King Goodwill Zwelithini, 46, 52–53, 58–61, 127, 252 cleared of hate speech, 47 Human Rights Commission (HRC), 46 KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), 43, 53, 55, 252 L Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), 126, 244 Leratong Hospital, 240–242, 245 Lesotho, 32, 254–256 Libya, 312–313, 315, 316 Limpopo Province, 28, 133 Lindela Refugee Centre. See illegal immigrants linguistic analysis, 117, 125, 129, 131–136, 139 corpus linguistic approach, 119–121, 140–142 litigation, 123, 139–141 M makwerekwere. See xenophobia Malawian migrants, 257–262, 331 critical views of South Africans, 260 Mandela, Nelson, 336 Media influence

382

INDEX

on migration policy, 69 media, 100, 158 adopting the language of government, 21–23, 35–36, 364 agenda setting, 68, 70, 85, 92, 101, 158, 162, 163, 168, 273 and Afrophobia, 18, 20, 21, 23–24, 28, 35–36 and human rights, 80, 81, 85–87, 93, 123, 124, 172, 277–280 anti-immigration sentiments, 11, 62, 70, 99, 262, 267, 334 Ghanaian and Nigerian, 148–149, 151 Ugandans and Chinese investors, 209, 215 anti-immigration sentiments, 161, 270–272 biased reporting, 36, 83, 86, 89, 117, 118, 158–160, 262 complicity and condonation, 157, 267 covering anti-xenophobia activities, 23 crime and foreign nationals, 5, 22–23, 35, 69, 104, 140–141, 192, 240, 261–262, 271, 342 denialism about xenophobia, 9, 24, 36 development media theory, 262 digital media, 13, 47, 101 emotive language, 21, 193 framing by the media, 9–11, 56, 57, 62, 68, 69, 167, 180, 342, 355 South African xenophobia, 185, 193, 196–197, 198 theory, 188–190 gender bias, 76, 84, 89 influence

on decision-making, 68–69, 158 on migration policy, 3–5 on public perceptions, 45, 62, 104, 158, 168, 189, 262, 269, 272, 296 lack of in-depth analysis, 93, 188 main news themes criminalisation of migration, 233 institutionalised xenophobia, 233 liminal existence, 233 prostitution, 233 victimhood and vulnerability, 233 mainstream media, 4, 92, 190, 261, 270, 288, 327, 332–333, 355, 362, 366, 374 mass media, 99, 106, 109–111, 161, 170, 190, 239, 269, 272 Media Monitoring Project (MMP), 169 migrant vulnerability, 87, 194, 239–243, 327 See also Zimbabwe victimhood and vulnerability negative narratives, 101, 104, 168, 246, 327, 333, 354 othering by the media, 44, 69, 244, 279, 355 stereotyping, 9–13, 21, 22, 36, 159, 270 negotiating social meaning, 5 online newspapers, 215, 218, 334 patriotism and journalistic norms, 11, 168 ‘pavement radio’, 10, 102, 106, 111 primary definers of migration, 4 print media, 117

INDEX

and health communication, 269–270 elite interests and audiences, 62 growing professionalism, 8 influence social change, 270 negative portrayal, 57, 261 reinforcing xenophobic sentiment, 52, 150 similar framing patterns to talk radio, 57 print media, 44–45 promoting social cohesion, 335–337 re-engaging with progressive representation, 334 elimination of xenophobic elements, 335 representations in South African print media, 117 broad quantitative trends, 141 quantitative linguistic analysis, 117 space and time limitations, 119 terms, phrases and labels, 119 reproducing ideologies and discourses, 142, 158, 180 disadvantaging South Africans, 34, 142 shaping perceptions about migrants, 4, 13, 91, 155, 158, 180, 197, 270, 335 elite cueing, 102 peer influence, 102 universal media perspectives, 142 shaping perceptions about migrants, 9–11 social media, 110–111, 308, 326, 335, 336, 341, 355, 373 contributing to xenophobia, 308 increasingly influential, 10 social transformation, 333

383

South African legislative issues detention, 138 enforcement of valid entry papers, 138 visa rules, 138 story sources, 35, 76, 82–84, 88–89, 93, 141, 173, 179, 198 domination by political elite, 9, 44, 91, 93, 102, 173 influence of white male voices, 10, 83, 89, 93 migrants underrepresented, 85, 94 uncritical and shallow, 9, 23–24, 36, 94, 188 under-reporting sociopolitical issues, 94 use of derogatory phrases, 104, 150, 335, 360 xenophobia in the SA press, 26–29 See also tabloid press; talk radio; Twitter; YouTube mediation, 3–5, 8 and talk radio, 44, 49–51, 62 interpretation by opinion leaders, 111 Mediterranean Sea, 6, 101, 159, 312, 316 Middle East, 307–308, 312 migrant labour, 133, 135–138, 154 migrants. See immigrants migration, 3–6, 8–9, 148, 149 Africa to Europe, 6 and education, 5, 111, 135, 140 irregular, 161, 307–309, 314, 317 networks, 287, 314–315 pattern of constant migration, 173 policy, 4, 111, 127, 268, 278, 290 problems and dangers, 80, 308, 313, 316 pull factors for migration, 79, 126–129, 140, 254, 308–311

384

INDEX

social media, 314–317 push factors for migration, 68, 173, 257, 310 armed conflict, 310 climate change, 6 conflict and violence, 6 culture of migration, 310, 315 economic factors, 6, 140 natural disasters, 310 persecution, 310 political instability, 6, 160 poor governance, 6 population pressure, 310 poverty, 310 resource scarcity, 310 social instability, 254 socio-economic inequalities, 6 statistics, 311 mining. See South Africa Moroccans, 327 Mozambican media, 11, 167–169, 174–178, 179, 180 Mozambicans, 22, 32, 167, 174–179, 212, 251, 335, 361 killing of Alfabeto Ernesto Nhamuave, 185, 251 Machangana people, 175 President Nyusi, Filipe, 176 Mozambique, 167, 172, 173, 180, 254–256, 313, 327 Pedagogical University, 177 representation in private and public television, 167 multiculturalism, 172, 323

N Nairobi Eastleigh Business Community (EBC), 286, 301 channels of communication, 288–289

exclusion of Somali minority groups, 286, 296–299 political and economic elite, 288–289, 296 Somali solidarity, 286, 296–298 Eastleigh Business Community (EBC), 292–298 Eastleigh neighbourhood, 13, 285–289, 291–295, 296–299 harassment and extortion, 286, 291, 293, 300 Eastleighwood Youth Forum (EYF), 295–297 national identity, 11, 262 and xenophobia, 18, 43, 44, 215 in Côte d’Ivoire, 156, 160 in Mozambican media, 11, 174, 179–180 nationalism, 5, 11, 47, 118, 213, 215, 256, 348 manifestation as extreme nationalism, 147, 151, 153, 158, 160–161 nativism and intolerance, 5 nationalism in West Africa, 11, 148, 153 Nigeria, 11, 126, 154, 316, 326, 327 Nigerian Trade Union Congress, 196, 197 reaction to South African xenophobia, 186, 194–195, 197–199 state-sponsored xenophobia, 154–156, 159 xenophobia in Nigeria, 151–152 comparison with South Africa, 188 Ghana-Must-Go, 151, 160 Nigerian press framing South African xenophobia, 11, 185–187, 190–200

INDEX

anecdotal and impressionistic coverage, 188 dominant frames, 191 emotive reporting, 193 episodic not thematic frames, 199 frames of hatred, 197–198 positive self-presentation, 192 media, 189–192, 196–199 Nigerians, 32, 57, 160, 252, 361 and Ghanaians, 150–152, 154–155, 159–161 discouraging stereotyping, 54 immigrant numbers, 186, 187 migrant contribution to South Africa, 330 activity excludes local, 186 traffic in narcotics, 186, 271, 335 non-governmental organisations and the media, 82, 124, 293 North America, 31, 118 North Americans, 22 North West Province xenophobic violence Mahikeng, 30 O opinion surveys, 35 findings dispute Afrophobia, 9, 27, 28, 31, 34 most undesirable migrant group, 32 South African Reconciliation Barometer, 32 South African Social Attitudes Survey, 100 Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP), 31, 252 othering, 14, 18, 21, 34, 44, 69, 214–215, 217–218, 221–222, 244, 247, 275, 279, 343, 355 counter-othering, 355 internal othering, 14, 18

385

othering fellow South Africans, 355 positive othering, 354, 355 theory, 343–344 otherness, 207, 213–218, 221, 244 objectified otherness, 215–216, 218 P Pakistanis, 22, 27, 30–32, 130, 252–254, 261, 364 Pan-Africanism, 7, 151, 155, 162 People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (Passop), 125, 133 photojournalism, 14, 359, 360, 365, 370 ‘If it bleeds it leads’, 366–367 censoring photo selection by race, 370 power of selection, 360, 365 and xenophobia, 359–361 performing for camera, 371–372 conveying evidence objectively, 360 changing societal views, 360 mediating reality, 14, 365 powerful medium, 365 ethical dimensions, 14, 360 photography and storytelling, 360 training as a photojournalist, 266–371 photojournalists, 14, 366, 370–371 coping with trauma, 14, 369 Emmanuel Sithole photo, 366–369 hugely satisfying, 366 ‘Killing the Other’ exhibition, 359–361, 374 press freedom in Africa, 103 See media, print media Pretoria and xenophobia, 43, 58, 167, 186, 191, 192, 198–200, 252 promoting social cohesion, 109–111, 326, 333–337

386

INDEX

public health care, 328 access by immigrants, 118, 129, 235–239, 240–243 and the tabloid press, 12, 270, 272 paucity of reportage, 12, 275 behaviour of healthcare workers, 241, 244–245, 268 communication through media, 269–270, 273 Department of Health statements, 278 discriminatory tendencies, 278–279 encroaching xenophobic tendencies, 268 exclusion from health care, 243–244, 272 Gauteng Department of Health, 244–245 interpreting the National Health Act, 244, 275 legitimising acts of negligence, 269 overcrowding the health system, 271, 279–280

R Racism, 92, 127, 149, 151, 221, 255, 329 racist stereotyping, 69 radio, 10, 47–49 affinity for radio and television, 110 burgeoning of listener numbers, 47 common space for national dialogue, 62 digital and online radio, 47 most consumed media, 47 ‘pavement radio’. See media powerful public health educator, 269 significant influence, 44 See also talk radio Radio 702, 44–45, 47–48

audience of affluent suburban dwellers, 45 input by politicians, 48 Living Standard Measure, 45 premium talk brand in South Africa, 45 radio host See talk radio host Ramaphosa, Cyril, 9, 104, 271, 272 refugees asylum seekers, 70, 94, 139, 162, 187, 235–240, 252, 277–279 detention of immigrants, 46, 130, 133, 138, 286, 313 Lindela Refugee Centre, 126, 133, 138 Kenya and Somali, 285–287, 288–291, 296–300 South African policies, 175, 260 Ugandan policies, 208 research methodologies empirical evidence, 9, 18, 28, 118, 141, 232, 331 qualitative, 10, 50, 117–118, 140–142, 186, 188–190, 253, 256, 274, 325, 345 quantitative, 10, 129, 188 cluster analysis, 119, 129 correlational analysis, 118 cross-sectional and multicountry research technique, 118 Lexis Nexis portal, 121 longitudinal time series research techniques, 118 principal-component analysis, 118 RASIM corpus linguistic approach, 120–122, 131 T-Lab software, 121, 127–130, 136

INDEX

quantitative, 117–119, 121–122, 131–136, 139–141 Rwanda, 8, 110, 209 S SABC News, 110 SADC. See Southern African Development Community SAfm After Eight Debate, 44 SASAS. See South African Social Attitudes Survey Shangaans, 28 Sierra Leone, 155, 371 small business owners. See foreign-owned shops social media, 6, 10, 311, 312, 341, 355 and migration, 8, 13 fostering social cohesion, 326, 333, 335 holding authorities to account, 286 important source of information, 106 in Kenya, 13–14 in South Africa, 111, 252 in the Horn of Africa, 307–309, 311–317 provides wider attention, 6 (re)defining Somali identity, 285–288, 294–296, 299–301 ‘sensationalisation’, 316 social representation theory (SRT), 169 moral panic concept, 169, 170 Somalia, 286, 288–294, 296–299, 309 Somali Cushitic, 298–299 Somali-Kenyans, 295–297, 300 Somalis, 13, 22, 30, 33, 127, 130–133, 136, 140, 212, 312, 331, 341 in Kenya, 285–301

387

South Africa, 6, 307, 308 2018 anti-foreign protest March, 252 Africa as a threat, 256 and Afrophobia, 17–21, 23–32, 33–36, 311 and south Asians, 251, 256, 263 and Zimbabwe feminisation of migration, 230 history of human exchange, 229 number of migrants, 71 similarity of languages, 229 anti-immigrant hate crime, 100, 108, 109 anti-hate campaigns, 110–111 anti-immigrant sentiment, 70, 99, 105, 109, 252, 262 apartheid, 7, 19–20, 47, 53–55, 59, 102, 103, 127, 168, 174, 178, 188, 199, 252–254, 327, 334, 354 access to resources and wealth redistribution, 7, 262 blaming foreigners, 149–151 colonialism and apartheid, 19–21, 25–27, 327 Constitution, 46, 54, 123, 336 constitutional protection of rights, 103, 137, 336 control over migrants, 23, 110, 135, 186 destination of choice, 7, 257, 307 detention and deportation, 46, 130, 133, 138 Lindela Refugee Centre, 126 economic crisis and increasing hostility, 308 fostering social cohesion, 333 ‘new’ South Africa, 20, 335 Ubuntu, 7, 60, 336–337

388

INDEX

inclusiveness and tolerance, 336, 346 rainbow nation, 54, 59, 251, 326, 336 homeless migrants, 251 hub of Africa, 257 human rights, 123–126, 276, 278, 280 ill-informed public, 104, 334 knowledge of foreigners, 107, 110 information sources on immigrants, 106–112 media and non-media sources, 100 South African Social Attitudes Survey. See SASAS lazy and violent population, 14, 58, 260, 351, 355 migrant access to healthcare, 129, 234–239, 240–243 migrant labour, 133, 135, 138 Operation Fiela, 23, 243 ‘to sweep clean’, 246 People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty, 125 political and community leaders, 31 elite cueing, 102, 110 furthering influence, 34, 79 ‘poster child’ of xenophobia, 147 pro-immigrant sentiment, 8, 105, 106, 110–111 repaying apartheid indebtedness, 255 source of information, 10, 106, 178 threat to international standing, 9 unwilling or unable to address the scourge, 186, 268 visas, 137–139 xenophobia, 6, 7, 9, 13–14, 17–36, 43, 44, 79, 100, 168, 186, 233, 268, 355, 360

xenophobic attacks 2008, 22–24, 28, 43, 46, 57, 60, 61, 104–106, 167, 185, 251, 254–256, 268, 292 2015, 9, 11, 23, 28–30, 43–47, 50, 104, 167–169, 252, 255, 275, 277, 324 2017, 11, 43, 46, 104, 186, 190, 195 2019, 104, 316, 363, 371 South African(s) black South Africans, 14, 18–20, 25–27, 31, 32, 127, 167, 254, 256, 260, 329, 349–352, 354 working class black South Africans, 274, 341 Cabinet, 123 census 2011 national census, 30, 71, 105, 253 2015 census data, 83 coloured South Africans, 32, 261 commercial farms, 126, 133 compared to Zimbabweans, 350–352, 353 history of protest, 354 unruly and violent, 354 Constitution, 46, 54, 103, 123, 138, 278, 336 crime, 22, 28, 59, 140, 141, 240, 246, 271, 335, 363 and immigrants, 21–23, 56, 57, 68, 104, 140, 141, 185–188, 192, 252, 255, 260–262, 271, 342 hate crime. See anti-immigrant hate crime Defence Force, 123 Department of Home Affairs, 122, 126, 246, 330

INDEX

change of government attitude, 8 documented and undocumented, 71, 131, 245, 330 Gigaba, Malusi, 328 social policy to combat xenophobia, 127 Department of Home Affairs, 130–134, 138–140 Development Community, 71, 177 dominant arrogant political discourse, 255, 347 faith-based organisations, 124 Central Methodist Church, 123 Hawks, 123 Human Rights Commission, 24, 47, 126, 277–278 Indian(s), 12, 30, 46, 83, 209, 252–254, 256, 257, 259, 261 judiciary, 123, 126, 218 Constitutional Court, 126, 139 High Court, 126, 133, 292 Supreme Court of Appeal, 126, 139 Kish Grid method, 105 legacy of ignorance of Africa, 334 loathing of foreign nationals, 19 disdain for other Africans, 32, 245 favouring some foreigners, 9 makwerekwere, 151, 159 Migration Programme (SAMP), 31, 252 media, 24, 26, 30, 231–232, 235–240, 274, 280, 329–330, 341 ‘Media must be biased’, 160 migration to Zimbabwe, 71, 229 mining, 46, 126, 133, 140 cheap labour, 173, 254 corporate welfare, 135

389

Lonmin, 135 Marikana, 135 social responsibility, 135 National Assembly, 123, 328 nationalism, 47, 118, 256, 348 Police Service, 43, 46, 175, 186, 199, 252, 366 complicity of police, 193 driving response to immigration, 122, 127, 246 ‘just’ criminality, 9, 363 morally and organisationally weak, 186 police minister Nathi Nhleko, 24 race relations since transition, 255 Reconciliation Barometer findings, 32 response to immigration, 122, 123 implementation/enforcement methods, 112, 123, 136–138, 186, 353 policies, 53, 68–69, 93, 122–124, 130, 173, 239, 260 security operations, 123 Social Attitudes Survey, 100, 104–109 small area layers, 105 white(s), 10, 19, 25, 34, 83, 254, 351, 361, 372 white foreign nationals, 256 whiteness, 19–21, 255 South Sudan, 207–209, 309 Soweto, 30, 127, 140, 252 Spaza shops, 30, 127–133, 142, 262 financial value of rentals, 332 looting, 136, 141 Statistics South Africa, 83 2011 population census data, 105 Sudan, 309–310, 312

390

INDEX

Swaziland, 32, 254–256 Swazis, 9, 32

T tabloid press Daily Sun, 22, 103, 231, 274–275, 279, 342, 360–362 migrants and public health, 267, 277–279 roles and functions, 273–275 complicity and condonation, 267–269, 277 inflaming intolerant behaviour, 267 platform of popular culture, 274 sensational or narrative format, 103, 273, 279 Taiwanese, 22 talk radio stations, 9–10, 43–46 broad aims, 44 aspiring to ‘strong democracy’, 48 imagined community, 48 listenership, 5, 47–48, 51–53, 56, 57, 60, 158 mediated discourse on xenophobia, 44 moderate voices, 61 moderator. See talk radio host public sphere, 48 Radio 702, 44–50, 52, 56–57, 60, 62–63 listeners, 45–46, 57, 62 similar framing of xenophobia, 57 stereotyping of immigrants, 10, 54, 69 talk show host free expression and violation of rights, 10, 51 gatekeeping powers, 9, 51

host-caller interaction, 51–52, 54–56 political correctness of host, 52 prominent media personalities, 48 rules of engagement, 52 safe space, 48 tampering with anti-xenophobia sentiments, 57 voice of authority, 54–55 talk shows, 44, 54–56, 58–62 united through discourse, 49, 56 See also radio Tanzania migration to/from Kenya, 10, 71, 72, 78 prisons, 316 television, 10, 49, 99, 106–110, 200, 326, 334 Miramar TV, 168, 173–178 powerful modifier of perceptions, 262 promoting inclusive understanding, 181 Television of Mozambique, 168, 176–177, 180 emotional anchoring, 170–171, 180–181 national identity, 167, 171–172, 179–180 pacification and hope in crisis, 177–178 promoting understanding, 178 representation of xenophobia, 167 television versus social media, 110 video clip summaries, 174–177 terrorism, 5, 7, 147, 286–287, 292–294, 289, 300, 311 religious extremism, 5

INDEX

the Other, 5, 9–14, 44, 57, 156–157, 193, 213, 217, 256, 263, 333, 360 crisis of representing the Other, 3 dominant group, 216, 218, 355 personifying the norm, 343 framing the other, 147 insiders and outsiders, 4, 17–20, 28, 33–34, 36, 56, 149–151, 155, 161, 216, 275 subordinate group debased, 343 undesirable other, 341 townships, 24, 27, 45, 55–57, 199, 254, 275, 342, 361 foreigners in townships, 30, 127, 136, 140, 186, 271, 308 Tutu, Desmond, 59 Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation, 59 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 59 Twitter, 106, 159, 200, 294–296, 300, 312 #refugeesNOTwelcome, 159 U Ubuntu, 7, 60, 336–337 Uganda Amin, Idi, 6, 209, 208 Asian investment, 12 expulsion of Indians, 209–210, 219 Indian investors, 218 investors of Asian descent, 210 Chinese investment, 210 competing with Ugandans, 208, 209, 213, 215 instrumental to development, 218 investors, 12–13, 207–210, 212–215, 217, 219, 221–222

391

model economic entrepreneurs, 210 possible political aspirations, 212 preferential treatment, 219–222 protection offered, 208–210, 212, 215, 222 public protests, 209, 214, 219–222 unequal trade relationship with China, 211 xenophobic sentiment, 11–13, 208–209, 215 xenophobic sentiment: objectified Others, 214–216, 218 xenophobic sentiment: Victims and Ugandan villains, 219 Investment Authority, 210, 214, 222 Investment Code Act, 208–210 othering practices in Uganda, 214, 218, 221 and refugees inward and internal migration, 208 progressive policies Ugandan migration to Kenya, 72 UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 137, 291, 299–300 United Kingdom (UK), 69–70, 120, 142, 308 United Nations (UN), 5, 67, 79, 89, 253 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 336 University of Cape Town (UCT), 27, 328–331 University of Johannesburg, 330 Upper Volta. See Burkina Faso USA, 4, 5, 142, 255, 307–311, 334

392

INDEX

V V-Dem series, 102 visa requirements, 125, 152–154, 311 Visa Facilitation Services, 138 W West Africa, 11, 148, 149, 152–155, 160–163 See also ECOWAS West African regional integration inter and intra-state conflict, 147 intolerance of foreign nationals, 99, 148–150, 159, 161–163 See ECOWAS West Africans, 33, 147–149, 151–154, 156, 159, 161–163, 330 WhatsApp, 311, 314, 315, 326, 371 World Health Organization, 336 X xenophilia, 45 xenophobia, 3–11, 13–14, 17–21, 149–151, 155, 255–256, 275–277 access to public health. See public health care and afrophobia. See afrophobia belonging and identity. See belonging and identity challenge to regional integration, 11 destruction of moral fibre, 336 discrimination, 18, 19, 23, 27, 45–46, 80, 157, 186, 245, 270, 272, 277, 343 displacement of immigrants, 47, 93, 140, 186, 297 economic divide, 361 ethnic and tribal identities, 187, 229 euphemistic device for authors, 137 ‘evict all foreigners’, 255

exploitative behaviour by officials, 268 exploitative employers, 12, 216–217 and fear, 5, 150–152, 158, 189, 213, 255–256, 260, 311, 315, 323, 326, 334 reinforced by media frames, 68, 104, 174, 180, 192, 253 fearful of black South Africans, 260 focus on South Africa, 6–7 hostility, 26, 60, 87, 99, 149, 308 negative attitudes, 60–61, 159, 275 hostility, 159–161 increasing tendency in Africa, 11 inflammatory language by politicians, 252, 342, 363 intervention by state and civic society, 179, 195, 268 marginalised and poor communities, 14, 45, 60, 62, 254, 288 migrants killed, 17, 28, 31, 136, 251, 286, 292, 311, 361, 363 nationality of victims, 27–30 overview of xenophobia, 149 and place of the media, 158 political factors, 47, 62, 68, 85, 91–93, 119, 154, 167, 168, 170, 310 political rhetoric, 5, 81, 159, 261 reason for xenophobia corruption, 159, 187, 348 crime, 5, 22–23, 57, 104, 155, 185–187, 252, 255, 262, 271, 335 cultural values, 5, 161, 170 political domination, 187 prostitution, 160 psycho-social reasons, 18 resentment, 156, 161, 210, 259, 261, 324, 354 resurgent nationalism, 5, 11

INDEX

scarce resources, 25, 43, 44, 56–59, 151, 157, 161, 185, 212, 213, 215, 243, 244, 275–278 service delivery, 31, 185, 187 social ills and socio-economic dysfunctions, 150, 335 socio-economic benefits, 43–46, 62, 150, 188, 268, 276, 311 unemployment, 5, 23, 104, 155, 185, 213, 254. See also job-stealing refuge, 43 rising tendency in Africa, 11 South African denialism, 9, 24, 35–36 violence causes of violence, 22, 27, 34, 43, 44, 127, 176, 193 culture of violence, 171, 174 See also South–Africa, xenophobia Y YouTube, 173, 296, 314 Z Zaire, 155 Zambia, 150, 327 Zambian media, 218 Zimbabwe, 126, 133, 252, 254–256, 313, 327 collapse of border controls, 23 colonial education, 349 long history of human exchange, 229 Zimbabweans, 138, 334, 361 Community in South Africa, 79 feminisation of migration, 229–231 government should take action, 81 institutionalised xenophobia

393

exclusion from healthcare, 241, 243–246 sex workers, 335 ‘You foreigners are stupid’, 245 ‘You foreigners are trouble’, 245 involvement in crime, 22, 57 media coverage of migration patterns, 12, 32, 33, 72, 79–91 negligible South African reporting, 85 scapegoating, 342 Zimbabwean media highly polarised, 81 positive representations of migrants, 13–14, 342 in comparison with South Africans, 353–355 disciplined, 353 excellent command of English, 349 exceptionally skilled, 327–328, 331, 346 fast learners, 347 highly educated, 347 industrious, 350–352 Joburger Facebook page, 342–355 pleasant, respectful and patient, 352–354 Project Zim, 130 sometimes seen as foreigners, 33 target of attacks, 32, 252 victimhood and vulnerability, 233–246 denial of healthcare, 241, 244–245, 268 emotional turmoil, 234, 241 helplessness and defeat, 234 losing their children, 234, 240 loss of social status, 235 Operation Fiela, 246

394

INDEX

poverty hunger and starvation, 234, 242 single parenthood, 234, 240 victims of sexual violence, 234, 239 vulnerability to destitution, 234

Zimbabwe Special Permits (ZPS), 138 Zulu King Goodwill Zwelinthini. See King Goodwill Zwelinthini Zulu people, 175 Zuma, President Jacob, 24, 53–54, 58, 104, 139, 349, 352