Theorizing Afrophobia Beyond Apartheid: Conflict Cultures in Neill Blomkamp's District 9

ABSTRACT

The persistent Afrophobic attacks on black African immigrants in South Africa since the 1990s alert us to a new cultural watershed. Just when the country had done away with apartheid, the black-on-black attacks reified the emergence of a new cultural crisis. This article reflects on the emergent cultural identities enabled by practices of black-black violence. It takes conflict cultures as a frame to discuss Afrophobia in the context of new identity consciousness. This is achieved through a critique of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), a film where racial antipathies are supplanted with a nebulous culture of aversion. Theorising this scenario as a euphemism for struggles with post-apartheid cultural reorganisation, the article suggests conflict culture as a theory that can account for incomplete identity transformation among all races of the South African nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Afrophobia
• conflict culture
• xenophobia
• visual ethnography
• District 9
• South African cinema
• post-apartheid black cultures

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt gratitude goes to Distinguished Professor Keyan Tomaselli and Professor Lauren Dyll for proofreading this article; and for their generous comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Translating to “Chase Out”, it refers to the assemblage of organised community vigilante mobs targeting black African migrants in South African cities—mostly on accusations of criminality and economic competition.

2 In South Africa, apartheid was a system of racial segregation which lasted between 1948 and 1994. It is attributed to the policies of the National Party which created and enforced segregation laws such as the Population Registration Act (1950), Group Areas Act (1950), Bantu Authorities Act (1951); among others.

3 The setting of the diegetic community inhabited by citizens and migrants, humans and aliens.