Foreigners in the South African Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis

ABSTRACT

This article used a critical discourse approach to understand how linguistic practices in the South African media construct international immigrants of African origin. We created an 88 000-word corpus of online South African news articles on immigrants from 2008 to 2020, which we then uploaded onto a corpus analysis software, Sketch Engine. Through the software, we were able to generate patterns of language use in the construction of immigrant identity and subject position in the media. While most literature on South Africa has focused on the violence associated with xenophobia, this paper zeroes in on ‘the language of xenophobia’ to provide a good reflection of the sociological construction of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in the country. By examining the discursive practices of the media on foreign nationals, the paper maps out not only the circulation but also the reproduction of power, social relations and other sociologies behind the prejudices that inform xenophobia in all its various forms.

KEYWORDS:

• discourse analysis
• xenophobia
• media
• immigrants
• South Africa

Background and context

South Africa is the biggest host of immigrants in Africa and the fifteenth largest host in the world (Pison 2019). South Africa is home to 4.2 million international migrants (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) 2019), an increase of more than 3 million from 1.16 million in 1990. The country also hosts 280 000 refugees. The estimated 4.2 million international migrants make up about 7 per cent of the South African population. The share of international migrants is above the Sub-Saharan Africa and world averages of 2.2 per cent and 3.5 per cent. The surge in the flow of immigrants is a result of various factors, namely the worsening economic crises in neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Mozambique (which has pushed millions of people away) and the post-apartheid demilitarisation of the border, which has made it more porous (Crush 2008; Crush & Ramachandran 2010).

Figure 1: Number of immigrants in South Africa 1990-2019

Source: UN DESA (2019) https://www.un.org/en/development/desa

The increase in the number of immigrants has not been well-received by some sections of the native South African population. Their anger and indignation towards immigrants manifests in widespread negative attitudes and, at times, outright violence against them. Xenowatch, a group of researchers monitoring xenophobic violence in South Africa, notes that between 1994 and 2021, there were 796 incidents of xenophobic violence across South Africa – resulting in deaths, displacement, injuries and damage to property.

As Table 1 shows, incidents of xenophobic violence meted out against foreign nationals is exceptionally high in South Africa.

Figure 2: Number of xenophobic incidents in South Africa by year (1994–2021)

Source: Xenowatch (2021)

Table 1. Xenophobic incidents in South Africa (1994–2021)

Category	Total number
Total incidents	796
Persons killed	588
Persons displaced	121 945
Physical assaults	1 118
Shops looted	4 693
Property damaged	1 386

Source: Xenowatch (2021)

Most notable from the information illustrated above, xenophobic violence in South Africa shot up in 2008, when it reached an annual total of 149 incidents. Between 1994 and 2007, the average number of xenophobic incidents was at a low 3.6 per year. However, between 2008 and 2021 there were on average 53.7 incidents per year. This may have been caused by the increasing number of immigrants coupled with the advent of social media in the late 2000s that has made it easier to mobilise anti-foreign sentiments among South African citizens. While xenophobic violence is directed at immigrants in general, some of it is aimed at specific groups of foreigners. For example, the violence targeted at foreign truck drivers from countries such as Zambia and Zimbabwe is reported to have resulted in the loss of 213 lives between 2018 and 2020 (Human Rights Watch 2019). The violence the South African All Truck Drivers Foundation instigated against foreign drivers is believed to be an adverse outcome of frustrated demands by the association – that local companies hire at least 60 per cent South African drivers (Maeko 2019). Other studies have revealed that foreign spaza shop owners were equally vulnerable to xenophobic violence (Piper & Charman 2016).

Xenophobia does not only present itself in the form of violence but also through institutional discrimination and marginalisation of foreigners in the workplaces or in the provision of public services such as health, housing, education and policing (Crush & Ramachandran 2010). Jonathan Crush and Godfrey Tawodzera (2014) observe how Zimbabwean immigrants were discriminated against in South Africa’s public health institutions on the basis of documentation, language and foreign status. They were denied treatment, subjected to lengthy waits and forced to speak local languages. In our previous study (see Sikanyiso Masuku and Sizo Nkala 2021), we note how foreign skilled workers such as medical doctors, nurses, teachers, academics, and engineers often faced discrimination, particularly denial of employment and/or employee rights.

The xenophobic tendencies in South Africa also have an attitudinal dimension. A 2013 survey by Afro barometer notes that about 44 per cent of South Africans did not assent to granting asylum to refugees, 45 per cent were of the view that foreigners should not be allowed to live in the country because they take jobs and benefits away from citizens, and 67 per cent indicated that they do not trust foreigners at all (Mataure 2013). The Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC) 2019 South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) also notes high levels of zero-sum thinking among South Africans when it comes to foreigners. Using a nationally representative survey of 3 500 adults, the SASAS showed that almost 30 per cent of citizens think immigrants’ access to welfare services meant fewer services for South Africans, about 12 per cent thought immigrant-run businesses meant low business opportunities for citizens, and 30 per cent were of the view that the employment of immigrants meant less employment for citizens (HSRC 2019). Distressingly, 38 per cent of SASAS respondents said immigrants should never have the same rights to welfare services as citizens, while 23 per cent said immigrants should first obtain citizenship before they access services. Only 12 per cent of the respondents agreed with unconditional access to welfare services for immigrants.

In another study, when asked to mention the motivations behind anti-immigrant hate crimes, 51 per cent of the respondents blamed foreigners while only 23 per cent thought the locals were to blame (Gordon, 2022). Moreover, 22 per cent of the respondents were of the view that expelling immigrants from the country was their preferred intervention to stop xenophobic attacks. Thus, while the outgroup is burdened with responsibility for the violence, the ingroup manages to evade accountability and violence is often justified. Hashtags such as #PutSouthAfricansFirst and #OperationDudula trended for months on popular social media platforms such as Twitter, showing that foreigners have become a topical issue in the South African society. The supporters of the hashtags are of the view that foreigners are taking up jobs and overwhelming the social service system, thereby inhibiting South African citizens from accessing public services. Between 2020 and 2022, the #PutSouthAfricansFirst and other associated hashtags and keywords garnered a total of 2.5 million mentions from 261 000 accounts while also receiving 2.6 million retweets on the Twitter platform (Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change 2022).

Xenophobia and the media: A literature review

The effect of the media on political and social outcomes (attitudes and behaviour) has long been the subject of scholarly interest. Indeed, the media, as the purveyor of information at both micro and macro levels, has been found to have an impact on social norms, political and social behaviour, (Arias 2019; Enikolopov & Petrova 2017). In South Africa, scholars have been grappling with the connection between the prevalence of xenophobia and the media (Danso & McDonald 2001; Gordon 2020a; Ngwane 2018). The overwhelming verdict across the existing scholarship is that the South African media has been a site of the dissemination and reproduction of xenophobic and discriminatory language towards African non-nationals. In an analysis of 132 print media articles reporting on xenophobia in South Africa, Ransford Danso & David McDonald (2001) note that 33 per cent of the articles were anti-immigration, while 29 per cent and 38 per cent were classified as pro-immigration and neutral respectively. Seventy per cent of the articles were found to be uncritical and unanalytical in their reporting. Kudakwashe Vanyoro and Lyton Ncube (2018) analyse the Sowetan and Mail&Guardian newspapers’ reportage of xenophobia and immigration. From their sample of articles between 2008 and 2013, they found that only 7 per cent and 11 per cent of articles in the Sowetan and Mail & Guardian newspapers incorporated academic research respectively. Reluctance to defer giving space to academic research is noted as the reason for the lack of analytic depth (Vanyoro & Ncube 2018). Moreover, 56 per cent of the articles used negative terms to describe non-nationals such as illegals, aliens or undocumented. A follow-up study by David McDonald and Sean Jacobs (2005) observes an improvement in South African newspapers’ coverage of immigration between 2001 and 2005, although the authors note 44 per cent of the news articles still carried negative terms about immigrants. The scholars attribute media xenophobia to attitudes within the press, prevalence of xenophobia in the society, government rhetoric, the proliferation of tabloids, and the heavy reliance on wire services for economic reasons.

The deployment of predominantly negative language in the South African tabloid and mainstream print media presenting foreigners as a threat, aliens and outsiders has been corroborated in numerous studies (Els 2013; Mgogo & Osunkunle 2021; Tarisayi & Manik 2020). For example, South Africa’s largest tabloid, Daily Sun, with a readership of almost 4 million, was found to be associating immigrants with social vices such as crime, prostitution and diseases, which makes the violence meted out on them legitimate and justifiable (Els 2013; Mgogo & Osunkunle 2021). Bethuel Ngcamu and Evangelos Mantzaris (2019) note that the voices of the foreigners and victims of xenophobia are overlooked by the media. One of the interviewees in their study (who works with refugees), said journalists often come to ask them a few questions but often misrepresent or omit their comments altogether. Journalists also ignore the efforts and the input of South Africans who are arguably sympathetic to immigrants – preferring the sensational stories of those who are anti-immigrant.

Danford Zirugo (2022) employs a political economy approach in his analysis of how South African newspapers report on xenophobia. He concludes that the newspapers adopt a pro-immigration stance, perhaps reflecting the preferences of their owners whose businesses may be benefitting from immigrant labour and also having operations in other African countries. Taking a different approach, Simphiwe Ngwane (2018) examines how an IsiZulu newspaper, iLanga, covered the 2008 xenophobic riots in South Africa. In isiZulu, foreigners are referred to as abokufika, which means people who came from elsewhere. While such a designation may not necessarily be underpinned by malicious intentions, it classifies foreigners as outsiders who do not belong to their adopted communities. However, the author notes how iLanga deals with the treatment of foreigners through the prism of ubuntu, arguing that foreigners are part of South Africa and should be treated as human beings.

Going beyond the print media, Michele Tager and Mcebisi Ngwenya (2011) use reception analysis to conduct a study of how Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa feel about the portrayal of a Zimbabwean immigrant in the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) television series Usindiso. Most of the respondents said that the way the Zimbabwean character, Tongai, was portrayed was stereotypical. Tongai lives a poor and miserable life of fear and isolation. While the character is reflective of real lived experiences of some Zimbabweans in South Africa, not every foreigner struggles. A study of YouTube videos featuring reports of xenophobic incidents in South Africa (Asakitikpi & Gadzikwa 2020), shows discourse on xenophobia is based on an us/them dichotomy emphasising the positive traits of the ingroup and the negative traits of the outgroup (foreigners).

Precisely how the media contributes to xenophobic behaviour including discrimination and violence against foreigners remains a moot point. Traditional media still dominate as sources of news and knowledge about immigrants in South Africa (Gordon’s 2020b). Although the internet and social media are becoming increasingly popular, they still trail the traditional media in terms of the level of public trust on information about immigrants (Gordon 2020b).

Table 2: South Africans’ trust of media types according to immigrant attitudes (per cent)

Media type	Pro-immigrants	Middle ground	Anti-immigrants	Total
Radio	49	53	50	51
Television	58	70	67	66
Newspapers	27	32	27	30
Internet and social media	11	15	8	12

Source: Adapted from Gordon (2020a) based on SASAS (2018)

The distribution of the public across different forms of media, perhaps reflects the wide reach of radio and television across rural and urban areas. Newspapers and social media tend to be more popular in the urban areas with limited reach in the rural areas. There is a positive correlation between a perceived immigrant threat and the probability to participate in xenophobic attacks among South African citizens (Gordon 2020b). While it is not clear whether public perceptions of immigrants have been influenced by the media’s xenophobic discourse, the South African media’s reportage of immigration has possibly exacerbated tensions between native South Africans and African immigrants in the country (see Ngcamu & Mantzaris 2019). Although the media’s agenda-setting function influences the things consumers think about, it does not necessarily control how they think about these things (Erjavec 2003). Writing on discourse in the colonial context, in which the media played a major role – Sara Mills (1997, 96) notes how the ‘linguistic and textual decisions about racial grouping had far-reaching material consequences [… .] resulting in certain groups of people being denied human status, others being used as slave labour, and still others being hunted and killed like animals’. However, even though previous studies on xenophobia and the media have proved rather convincingly that the media has deployed xenophobic terminology, they have failed to prove the existence of a causal link between the linguistic choices and the xenophobic violence targeting foreigners (Matthew Smith 2010). This article does not seek to prove a causal link between the media discourse and xenophobic violence but rather offers an innovative and objective approach to understanding how the South African print media discursively constructs foreign nationals using critical discourse analysis (CDA).

Critical discourse theory

CDA problematises the relationship between language use and social structure. Based on a non-deterministic and post-structural approach placing language use within its socio-cultural and historical milieu (Jahedi, Abdullah & Mukundan 2014), CDA assumes discourse (language use) is a social practice or a social phenomenon dialectically connected to the non-discursive parts of the social structure (Jorgensen & Phillips 2002). As such, CDA research is based on an amalgamation of linguistic and social theory, using linguistic tools to draw insights into social problems. Language users or participants in discourse exercise varying degrees of freedom, choice, and creativity in their linguistic practices. The freedom exercised by language users in social interaction means that the meaning and interpretation of linguistic signs is negotiated and flexible (Jan & Bulcaen 2000). Hence situated text and talk and other non-verbal or non-linguistic semiotic items such as visuals, photographs and videos constitute the basic unit of analysis for CDA. The framework focuses on a systematic study of discursive structures or textual feature (Van Dijk 2006), such as pronouns, active and passive voices, grammatical moods and so forth.

That said, the critical bone of the CDA lies perhaps not only in describing people’s linguistic choices, but in revealing how and why those choices are made and their social consequences. In that light, one of the central concepts in the CDA framework is power and its inherent currency and presence in text and talk. Power, understood as the ‘privileged access to socially valued resources such as wealth, income, status, position, force, group membership, education and knowledge’ is a pervasive force in the social structure (Van Dijk 1993, 254). Its unequal distribution and abuse underlie social relations of inequality, dominance, discrimination, injustice, and exploitation along the dimensions of race, gender, class, ethnicity and, in this case, nationality. Articulating the imbrication of power and discourse, Ruth Wodak (2001, 11) points out that ‘language indexes power, expresses power, is involved where there is contention over and a challenge to power’. Thus, discourse is not only an instrument that can serve to maintain existing power relations but can also serve to challenge, subvert, or contest them. Hence Norman Fairclough’s argument that discourse is both the site and object of power struggles. Power dynamics in discourse have far-reaching consequences for the contents of the discourse, social relations and subject positions or identity of participants within the discourse and the groups outside the discourse.

Alongside power, ideology – ‘basic frameworks for organising social cognitions shared by members of a social group, organization or institution’ – is also a fundamental part of the CDA framework (Van Dijk 2005, 18). In this respect, ideologies are both cognitive and social. They are shared mental representations within a particular social group with regard to its existence, identity, values, relations with other groups, goals, and norms. For example, racists, feminists, environmentalists, socialists are all social groups whose members share mental representations of reality. What makes ideology so central to CDA is that it is chiefly, though not exclusively, acquired, expressed, and reproduced through discursive practices. Ideological assumptions underlie discursive structures and conventions in a way that may legitimise, explain, justify, or deny racism, colonialism, sexism, and discrimination. In the context of the present paper, our analysis of media discourse on foreigners and xenophobia in South Africa will scrutinise text – for any ideological innuendos and assumptions regarding foreigners and foreign nationhood in South Africa.

Methodology

This article explores the discourse of foreigners, immigrants, and xenophobia in South Africa with a view to understanding the construction, expression, and reproduction of media discourses on foreigners. We compiled a specialised corpus (delimited to English-language media) of 144 news articles with a total of 88 650 words published between 2008 and 2020. In choosing English language media, we did not only choose a language we are both conversant with but also a language understood by more than 50 per cent of the South African population (Posel, Hunter & Rudwick 2020).

A corpus is defined as a ‘principled collection of naturally occurring texts which are stored on a computer to permit investigation using special software’ (Evans 2007, 1) defines. In selecting these news articles, we used an online search engine and customised the range to include only the years in question. In ensuring that our findings were not a mere reflection of our sample, the search words had to be neutral, for example searching for non-suggestive keywords such as immigration and foreign nationals instead of xenophobia or Afrophobia. This helped the study retain its construct validity, internal as well as external validity. The search engine produced relevant articles from the tabloid press and news websites such News24 and IOL News, which publish stories from a variety of sources. We also found articles from some of South Africa’s biggest mainstream newspapers like the Mail&Guardian, the Sowetan, Times Live and Daily Maverick (after collation, this invariably averaged fewer than 20 relevant articles per year).

The corpus file was then uploaded on one of the most widely used corpus linguistics analysis software: Sketch Engine. The software was chosen mainly because it was more affordable and user friendly yet sophisticated enough for a comprehensive analysis. Through frequency, word clusters, and keyword lists, corpus analysis enables the use of quantitative information in tracing and identifying the range of discourses followed in the material making up the corpus (Hunston 2002). By producing collocation and concordance patterns, corpus analysis allowed us to view the keywords and terms in a broader context and thus yield richer insights into the discourse on immigrants in South Africa. Sketch Engine also has features for the identification and analysis of grammatical features like nominalisation, modality, transitivity, use of nouns, verbs, adverbs and so forth. Grammatical features are important as mechanisms of producing, expressing, and interpreting discourses. The analysis of global topics or macrostructures like the headlines was done manually.

Since corpus analysis does not allow the analyst to subjectively pick what they believe to be salient features of the text (based on their own interpretation), this helped protect against researcher bias (Baker 2006). Secondly, this approach to discourse analysis allowed the incorporation of a huge amount of material unlike the traditional analysis in which the researcher can only deal with a few texts. Thus, we were able to trace and analyse the patterns of language use over time in a large number of texts. Thirdly, the empirical nature of the corpus method strengthened the external validity of the study given how the data is based on language use in real life environments. Corpus also combines both qualitative and quantitative techniques that add to its methodological rigour and enriches analysis (Bennett 2010). More importantly, the computer-assisted method of corpus analysis that uses public data (which was the case for this article) can be replicated and the study can be reinforced or challenged (retrievability and verifiability) by other scholars (Stubbs 2015).

The content of the discourse: Keywords list

The Sketch Engine software has a program to determine keywords and terms in the corpus. Keywords include words that appear in our specialised corpus with more frequency than in the English Web 2013 reference corpus. The keywords list gives an accurate estimate of lexical focus of the corpus with implications on discourse structure. The keywords program provides a list of both single word and multi-word expressions. The table below shows the keyword list of single and multi-words as derived by Sketch Engine software.

Of immediate interest in both single and multiple keyword lists is the dominance of state actors such as government officials Aaron Motsoaledi (Home Affairs Minister from 2019 until the time of writing), Herman Mashaba (mayor of Johannesburg from 2016 to 2019), State President Cyril Ramaphosa, police spokespeople and state institutions such as the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee, police stations and government generally. This reflects the media’s tendency to transmit and reproduce the government discourse on xenophobia and foreigners. The media gives acres of space to the hegemonic discourse or the views of the most powerful in society (see Asakitikpi & Gadzikwa 2020; McDonald & Jacobs 2005). The actions/opinions of the elite (in an elite-centred news communication system) usually bears more consequential value than the opinions of marginal subjects (Galtung & Ruge 1965). The media’s deference to government perpetuates the scapegoating of immigrants as being responsible for the problems facing the country. For example, Motsoaledi decried the fact that ‘our hospitals are full of foreigners, we can’t control them’ (Mbhele 2018). Speaking on undocumented immigrants, Mashaba said, ‘When I call these (immigrants) criminals I want them to understand that they are criminals […] they are holding our country to ransom, and I am going to be the last South African to allow it’. These statements from public officials were published uncritiqued by the media. The media hides behind the idea of objectivity when reproducing government leaders’ statements but in actual fact it is complicit in reproducing the dominant discourse that further suppresses the weakest groups in society (Erjavec 2003).

Table 3: Top ten keyword list: Words and multi-words

Words	Multi-words
Xenophobic	Xenophobic violence
Xenophobia	South African government
Gauteng	African government
Mashaba	Public violence
Johannesburg	Police spokesperson
Migrant	Illegal immigration
Foreigner	Informal settlement
Motsoaledi	Police station
Ramaphosa	Portfolio committee
Looting	South African society

Further, the appearance of xenophobic violence at the top of the key terms confirms the media’s fascination with the sensational stories rather than investigating underlying factors concerning immigration. The media becomes interested in the plight of foreigners when there are xenophobic attacks (Ngcamu & Mantzaris’s 2019), with ‘something negative’ always seemingly having ‘a higher news value’ (Gemi, Ulasiuk & Triandafyllidou 2013, 266). These patterns of language use, if scrutinised further, reveal underlying cognitive and ideological dispositions that sustain the prevailing power relations.

Concordance: Representation of foreigners, foreign nationals, immigrants

Concordance reveals the language patterns around the dominant words in a collection of texts that tells us more about discourse and meaning. We generated concordances of the terms foreigners, foreign nationals, and immigrants used to refer to the immigrant population. These terms also appear at the top of the keywords list presented in the last section. The word immigrant and its lemma migrant have frequency values of 137 and 244 respectively. The term foreign and its word form, foreigners, stood at 352 and 289 respectively while nationals and national featured 293 and 126 times. The labels foreigners, foreign nationals and immigrant attached to non-citizens are not ideologically neutral. They inform and also reinforce how non-citizens are represented.

The term foreigner is deployed in the South African discourse as ‘stigma against other African immigrants to reinforce their otherness’ (Tagwirei 2016, 7). This concept can easily be extended to individuals living outside their countries. The ascription of foreignness invites distrust and those who occupy the subject position of a foreigner are always suspected of being ill-intentioned (Naicker 2016). In other studies, the use of terminology such as laowai in Mandarin (translated to ‘foreigner’ in English and used in reference to Westerners in mainland China) has also been conceptualised as a discourse of othering (Liu & Shelf 2020). While the consequences of such othering in China were observed as encompassing stereotyping, exclusion, and alienation of the ‘foreign other’, variant and more far-reaching consequences of othering do exist and can lead to the dehumanisation of those perceived as outsiders. In South Africa, such dehumanisation lowers the moral bar and can partly be the basis upon which the discrimination and perennial xenophobic harassment of non-citizens is perpetrated.

Concordance also provided our study with more detail in the construction or representation of foreigners in the South African media. The search term ‘foreigners’ generated 289 concordance lines, ‘foreign nationals’ yielded 250 and the term ‘immigrants’ appeared in 137 lines. The total number of concordance lines generated by our search terms was 676. We then scanned the concordance lines to identify language patterns that make up the context of the chosen terms by examining the words and phrases that occur before and after them. We observed a prominent trend in the way the media describes the immigrant population in South Africa. For instance, in 123 concordance lines across all the terms, the adjectives ‘undocumented’ or ‘illegal’ were used to indiscriminately describe the generality of foreigners in South Africa. The term ‘undocumented’ when used in reference to immigrants is usually meant to imply that they do not have legal permission to be in the country. While this is a genuine cause for concern, the challenges in collating undocumented/illegal immigrant data have robbed the discourse of any semblance of factuality.

In the absence of a clear methodology on calculating illegal/undocumented immigrant statistics in the country, conflated figures of citizens and immigrants without proof of legal identity as well as border entry forms (where entry statistics are captured but not necessarily recorded when they immigrants exit) have been used (Crush & Ramachandran 2010; Moultrie 2017). In contradiction with Statistics South Africa’s figure of only 3.9 million foreign born people living in the country in 2020 (EWN 2019), speculative data such as these, have led to estimates of some 11 million strong illegal/undocumented immigrant population in the country. The generalised attribution of a lack of documentation and legality among immigrants has been used to paint all of them with a single brush (despite their diverse legal statuses).

Table 4: Quantification of immigrants in South African news articles

10  leads to a large number of undocumented illegal immigrants from various countries having access to our land.

26  to control the number of undocumented and illegal immigrants in the country’. </s> <s > Last week, the Gauteng Dep

88  has damaged his legacy? </s> <s > Over 300 illegal foreigners arrested for trying to enter SA during lockdown.

105 that the city of Johannesburg was taken over by foreigners, with 80 per cent of the city controlled by them.

12  country census showed approximately 2.2 million foreign nationals living in the country legally

70  SAPS) said on Sunday. ‘A large group of foreign nationals were arrested for residing on and operating a fac

23  before the first democratic elections, a vast number of foreigners entered the country masquerading as locally born

Another emergent pattern in the concordance is the quantification of immigrants that occurs in 129 concordance lines of the search terms under investigation. The media uses expressions like ‘huge numbers’, ‘many foreigners’, ‘thousands of immigrants’, ‘millions of foreign nationals’, ‘over 300 illegal foreigners. Using such imprecise statements on the size of immigrant population creates the impression that South Africa has an overwhelming immigrant population that may be a threat to its stability (Crush & Ramachandran 2010; Danso & McDonald 2001). The alarmist quantification is complemented by the metaphors used to describe foreigners and their movements as shown in Table 5. As already mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, although bad nouns such as ‘foreigner’ are in themselves ideologically potent, they become even more dehumanising when coupled with certain metaphors likening them to water, things, cargo, and natural disasters among others. Much like the problematisation of immigrants as invaders and a cause for alarm in the Western media (Esses, Medianu & Lawson 2013) the movement of foreigners in South Africa is also described as a ‘massive influx’, ‘abnormal influx’, ‘flooding to South Africa’, and ‘trickling into’. Very much akin to the discursively constructed threat and fear generation mechanisms adopted in Britain during Brexit (Cap 2017), foreigners in South Africa are also said to be ‘roaming free’ and have ‘descended’, ‘fled’, ‘flocked’ and ‘trickled into’. These metaphors feed into the discourse of immigration being a zero-sum affair for locals (Gordon 2020b).

Table 5: Metaphors describing foreigners in South Africa

280  Cape Town, where people queue from 3am. </s> <s > Foreigners descended on the UN High Commission for Refugee

193  Hillbrow. </s> <s > More than 300 undocumented foreign nationals were discovered in a hijacked building in Hillbro

50   examination of the root causes of why so many foreign nationals from the continent are flooding to South Africa in

15   that South Africa has ‘porous borders’ that allow foreign nationals and migrants to come and go without much regulation

234  drivers warned that its ‘war’ will continue ‘until all foreigners are gone’. </s> <s > This is domestic terrorism.

224  be made for transportation ‘to transport the foreigners to Lindela holding facility in Krugersdorp,’ he added.

187  that there has been a massive influx of African foreigners into South Africa who are ‘stealing our jobs’

172  convoluted … ‘people simply need to understand that foreigners are an asset and this needs political leadership,’ he

164  Diepsloot, Thokoza and Tembisa. About 300 foreigners had flocked to the Thokoza community hall on Saturday

146  respond to reports of disturbances. He said foreigners were still ‘trickling into’ Rabie Ridge police station in

109  by the end of 2018.The party claims that foreigners plan to take over the country in a few years and thus

107  right-wing Freedom Front Plus promised to place foreigners in camps rather than letting them roam free in South Africa

105  ed that the city of Johannesburg was taken over by foreigners, with 80 per cent of the city controlled by them.

102  atmosphere of crisis. Politicians claim that foreigners are flooding South Africa and undermining country’s

100  me.. while companies in South Africa are employing foreigners … [because] its cheap labour. We are hungry

50   re to be a fight against the ‘abnormal influx of illegal foreigners in our country’ and that hospitals and schools were

135  ‘leading the charge against undocumented immigrants’. </s> <s > Last week Gauteng premier David Makhu

136  Yet there is little empirical evidence that immigrants are driving problems like crime or unemployment.

133  to help it to protect its porous borders from illegal immigrants. Defense minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqak

132  to use drones to keep borders safe from illegal immigrants. SA will look to technology to help protect

123  In a bid to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants in the city of Johannesburg’ officials have conducted

109  work without protection. A group of illegal immigrants have fled from the Lindela Repatriation Centre in Kr

83   to six-year operation to rid the country of illegal immigrants; * August 7 2019: messages calling for South Africa

61   is for government to accept that this population of immigrants is a permanent feature of South Africa’s demography

63   looted and torched as locals attempted to drive out immigrants from other African states. Since then, the vi

44   Labour department closes factories using illegal immigrants as cheap labour A joint law enforcement operation p

31   affairs on addressing the issue of undocumented immigrants were ignored. </s> <s > Mashaba said he wrote to Bo

33   can ‘assist us in dealing with this problem of illegal immigrants’. </s> <s > Cwele said the government had demonstrated

32   government has vowed to crack down on undocumented immigrants, some of whom are involved in illegal activities

1    The main opposition party says undocumented immigrants are not only an added burden to the state, but are re

In other instances, foreign nationals are also said to be ‘an asset’, ‘discovered’ and ‘transported’ as if they constitute inanimate matter. The term ‘asset’ or references to the ‘collective value’ of foreigners constructs non-citizens as people who must be beneficial to the citizens (Jearey-Graham & Böhmke 2013). Moreover, war terms and phrases such as ‘crackdown’, ‘leading the charge’, ‘operation to rid’ and ‘protect porous borders’ reinforce the notion of immigration being an invasion of the country and foreigners being invaders.

Grammatical representation of immigrants and foreigners

The discourse of immigrants and foreigners can also be examined by studying the grammatical features of the texts under investigation. Through a collocation program, Sketch Engine was able to generate how certain words are grammatically linked with the word’s immigrant and foreigner, the most frequently used terms in South African news articles to identify non-citizens. Figure 3 shows the words associated with the different grammatical uses of the term’s immigrant and foreigner as subjects, objects, and noun modifiers.

Figure 3. Grammatical positions of the terms immigrant and foreigner

Source: Derived from the corpus created by the authors for this study.

The verbs in Figure 4 below provide a lens into the attitudes and congruous treatment of immigrants. Words like deport, kick, prevent – are part of the discourse of getting rid of foreigners through deportation or violent displacement or instituting stringent visa requirements. Between 2012 and 2017, South Africa deported more than 400 000 non-citizens (DHA 2017). Verbs like arrest, suspect, and hold are under-lied by the discourse of foreigners being on the wrong side of the law. There are, however, two aspects to the immigrant legality discourse and the subsequent contextual use of the verb arrest and others: ‘illegal’ immigration and ‘illegal’ activity inside SA. While the former implies disrespect (to the South African law and culture), the latter refers to the anti-social, delinquent and troublesome nature of immigrants through involvement in illegal activity such as drugs and so forth.

Figure 4. Verbs grammatically linked with the words immigrant and foreigner

Source: Derived from the corpus created by the authors for this study.

Verbs such as blame, dislike and treat highlight the negative attitudes of locals towards non-citizens while scapegoat represents the deflection of slow service delivery, economic and social problems on the presence of foreigners by some citizens and politicians (Naicker 2016). While non-citizens are predominantly represented in a negative light (which expresses and reproduces anti-foreigner predilections) (Smith 2010), our study also found a few cases of immigrant positive representations in the media. The verb ‘protect’ for instance (which is synonymous with help and defend) indicates the existence of a counter-discourse sympathetic to the plight of immigrants. This shows that print media discourse on foreigners is not entirely negative and has increasingly become more sympathetic since South Africa’s attainment of independence. Between 1994 and 1998, and 2000 and 2005 around 56 per cent and 44 per cent of news articles carried at least one negative reference on immigrants respectively – referencing them as illegals, stealing jobs, criminals and inflating their numbers (see McDonald & Jacobs 2005, 304).

Just as other studies on Belgium and Britain (Debrael, d’Haenens, De Cock & De Coninck 2021) have shown, the discourse of the illegality of foreigners in the media is a pervasive one. In our own findings, within the discourses of foreigners in the media the most dominant modifiers of the terms immigrant and foreigner were illegal and undocumented. Escape was used to describe how foreigners elude detention or attacks by locals to seek help from the government, civil society, churches and international organisations like the United Nations. In this way, they are represented as weak and vulnerable. While modifiers like African, non-African and Black might be used to imply an expectation of solidarity and shared identity, they are also deeply imbedded within the discourse of Afrophobia. This is a perceived fear and hatred of Black African immigrants that results in among other things attacks on Black foreigners only (whom in 2012, constituted 79 per cent of international migrants in South Africa, while 17 per cent were white and 3 per cent Indian or Asian) (Budlender 2014). Correspondingly, due to a higher social presence in the newly trans-nationalised communities, Black African immigrants are more commonly referred to in negative terms as they are perceived to be too many (Mataure 2013). Thus, race has become a problematic dimension in the discourse on foreigners in South Africa.

Victims of agentless violence?

In most cases, the responsibility to report impartially and objectively is inadvertently undermined by how news as we know it is an outcome of routine bureaucratic systems (Berkowitz 1997), whose reportage must mirror or preserve the interests, newsroom policies and ethos (ideology) of the constituencies that they serve/represent. The very fact that the news construction process starts off with a highly partial range of daily current affairs (Tuchman 1978), which is then further synthesised into what is deemed newsworthy and what is not (a construction of reality rather than a picture of reality) (Downing, McQuail, Schlesinger & Wartella 2004) presents several challenges. One of the most glaring challenges is that, in the case where reporting negatively on a dominant culture is not popular/newsworthy (as opposed to negatively reporting on marginal subjects such as immigrants), the impartiality and truthfulness of the news risks being compromised. That impartiality is also at risk of variables that more or less shape news-making practices: political views, ideologies as well as educational attainment among reporters. Our corpus validated these fears and showed that violence against immigrants by dominant cultures was carefully reported so that it seemed agentless.

In empirically illustrating the above, an examination of the grammatical and syntactical structures revealed a biased construction of sentences and clauses, both in headlines and within the stories – through nominalisation and the selective use of passive and active voices. The nominalisation of acts such as looting, violence and attacks tends to blur the agency or identities of the people/groups responsible for these actions. This is the case with the majority of the headlines in the 144 news stories that were used in this study. The following headlines provide some examples:

‘Peace restored after series of xenophobic attacks in Vredenburg’ (IOL, 10 July 2020)

‘Xenophobic attacks spread in Gauteng’ (Mail&Guardian, 17 May 2008)

‘Night of horror for Malawians as attacks on foreigners hit Durban’ (IOL, 31 March 2019)

‘Overnight xenophobic violence rocks Johannesburg’ (EWN, 17 April 2015)

‘Scores arrested in looting, xenophobic protests’ (Mail&Guardian, 3 September 2019)

The terms xenophobic attacks, xenophobic violence, attacks, looting are turned into nouns (nominalisation) that masks the agency of these actions. This gives the violent actions a much lesser emotional appeal to whomever is reading the news. Those who are responsible for these actions are often not mentioned, with contemporary studies on language and violence showing that when this occurs, the objective varies and can serve to either (i) conceal the violence, (ii) mitigate perpetrators’ responsibility (iii) conceal victims’ resistance or (iv) blame or pathologise victims (Coates & Wade 2004; 2007). Given how the term ‘foreigner’ in South Africa has come to constitute a bad noun due to the systematic attempts at dehumanising that population (see excerpt below) – any mention of such a bad noun, next to alleged acts of violence perpetrated against populations in that profile, is akin to blaming or pathologizing victims. Further to this, ensuring that the acts of violence remain faceless also appears to be more of an attempt at systematically obfuscating or mitigating the perpetrators’ responsibility for the violence (Mangwiro 2018). This is in direct contrast to the specific agency of foreigners where negative reports are involved:

‘Undocumented foreigners in SA put a strain on social services: Tokozile Xasa’ (Times Live, 3 March 2019)

‘More than half of violent crimes in Gauteng committed by illegal immigrants’ (Sowetan Live, 14 November 2017)

‘Foreigners pose big challenge for Gauteng human settlements’ (Sowetan Live, 13 March 2019)

‘Undocumented migrants escape from Lindela as guards refuse to work without protection’ (Times Live, 6 May 2020)

The agency of foreigners is clearly highlighted in negative reports. This is consistent with Van Dijk’s (2006) understanding of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ structure of ideologies. The negative traits of the in-group (South Africans) are minimised and their positive traits emphasised. While the positive traits of the out-group (non-citizens) are minimised and their negative traits emphasised. This does not only happen in the headlines but in the stories as well. Also, a systematic attempt to conceal the victims resistance is achieved by not mentioning any attempts they may have made to protect themselves from the violence. Such defensive and adaptive tactics are not a prominent feature whenever the bouts of violence are reported in the media and as argued in the previous section, the defencelessness of the foreigners (see excerpt below) is foregrounded, projecting them as weak and vulnerable. This has several implications in not only furthering the subordinate social hierarchy occupied by foreigners in the country, but it also helps in maintaining the power relations/societal patterns of domination. Noting a research void on the tactics adopted by immigrants in evading xenophobic attacks in South Africa, Emanuel Tewolde (2021, 186) also argues that foreigners in the country are not just passive victims of xenophobic violence ‘but creative and agential social actors who perform a multiplicity of tactics to avoid succumbing to xenophobia’.

The violent attacks on foreigners started in Alexandra and by Saturday had spread from Alexandra to Diepsloot, Thokoza and Tembisa. About 300 foreigners had flocked to the Thokoza community hall on Saturday, seeking safety after attacks broke out in the East Rand township. (Staff reporter 2008)

The excerpt from the story reeks with nominalisation that masks the agency of the violent attacks. ‘Violent attacks on foreigners started’, and ‘had spread from’ ‘After attacks broke out’, the attacks are presented as nouns with agency of their own. It blurs the likelihood that the attacks were perpetrated by South African residents.

More than 600 Nigerians have signed up for free flights back to Nigeria from SA following xenophobic attacks on foreigners. Deadly riots last week in Pretoria and Johannesburg which targeted foreign-owned businesses left at least 12 people dead. (‘Watch: Xenophobic Attacks: Hundreds of Nigerians Leaving SA’ 2019)

The above story also displays the same issues. The first sentence says Nigerians signed up for free flights back home after ‘xenophobic attacks on foreigners. The perpetrators of the attacks are not stated. The second sentence states that ‘deadly riots […] left at least 12 people dead’, again the riots are nominalised and, in the process, mask the agents of those riots. The negative actions of locals are systematically presented in passive sentences that obscure their responsibility. As such, the media can propagate dominant ideologies through the strategies they employ in constructing their clauses and sentences.

Unequal access to the media

A study of the role of the media discourse on foreigners and their plight in South Africa should also pay attention to the issue of access to the media. Given how the media relies on different sources for their stories, it is important to note who is quoted in the media and who is not (especially in situations of domination and conflict), as is the case in South Africa regarding xenophobic attitudes against foreigners. Quotation marks were the seventh most frequent item (2 135) in the frequency list generated by Sketch Engine. The verb ‘said’, which indicates reported speech, appeared 751 times. We ran a concordance of the verb ‘said’, which helped reveal the subject of the verb or the person or organisation to whom the speech is attributed (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Aggregate access to the South African media for different groups

Source: Derived from the corpus created by the authors for this study.

State representatives dominate the narrative on foreigners in the media, followed by the elites in the civil society. The non-citizen population that is the most affected by discrimination and violence is the second-least quoted with South African citizens being the least quoted. This unequal access to the media reflects the balance of power behind the discourse (Fairclough 1992) and represents a form of epistemic violence or ‘the failure, owing to pernicious ignorance, of hearers to meet the vulnerabilities of speakers in linguistic exchanges’ (Dotson 2011, 236). A previous study on refugee groups, their access to public institutions and social protection in South Africa (Masuku 2018) also identifies what is typically theorised as institutional biases (Lukes 1974) and how this significantly contributes to the skewed conditions of participation (presented here as invisibilisation) of marginal subjects in the South African media. Social and institutional closure is thus experienced in varying extents with the degree of participation being dependent upon an appropriated right, varying from relative to absolute methods of closure and regulation (Morrow 1990). In the same way this leads to an underrepresentation of immigrant voices in the media, elites use their influence to gain and retain access to the media.

Further afield, studies on the European mass media and the news-making routines of mainstream newspapers and television channels also support the above as they not only reveal an under reportage of immigration (as a topic) but also the normative absence of immigrant voices in those spaces (Gemi et al. 2013). The research and effort that often goes into finding as well as interviewing immigrant populations that, in the case of South Africa, mostly constitute a hidden population (Bollaert 2008) is often an uphill task for reporters who are not well networked with migrant sources and other marginal subjects. Although the outcome of this is still a normative absence of immigrant voices in the media, it differs from epistemic violence as the agency of reporters in such instances is not driven by a calculated motive to exclude marginal subjects, but rather, the challenge of accessing such a constituency.

In the wake of the abovementioned challenges, news coverage of immigrants in South Africa and elsewhere has become characterised by fixed repertoire (Law 2013), that is, when the coverage of news events heavily relies on the employ of a repetitive chain of statements, actions and set conclusions as opposed to well researched investigative accounts of the contextual factors at hand. The way in which immigrant matters are predominantly reported without the input of that constituency in South Africa, is thus quite illustrative of media reporting on migrants elsewhere in the world. The implications of which are far-reaching and in the case of the West, this has led to depictions of those who do not have a voice in the immigration discourse being ascribed tags such as ‘carriers of infectious diseases’, ‘aiders and abettors of terrorism’ and so forth (Esses et al. 2013).

Limitations of the study

Despite its research contribution to understanding the construction of immigrants in media discourse, this study has several limitations. We faced limitations in obtaining a bigger sample of articles to make the sample more representative. This mostly stemmed from how (i) some news websites had a paywall, (ii) some newspapers were only available in print and the authors had no access, and (iii) media coverage of immigrant matters appeared to be incident based. Hence, a total corpus of 144 articles (over twelve years) was achieved instead of the initially intended 500 articles. Secondly, our study only focused on the discursive construction of immigrants in the South African print media excluding other forms of media such as television, radio, and digital media. Past research has shown how print media trails behind radio and television in terms of reach and retaining public trust (Gordon 2020b; Smith 2010). Significant insights could be illuminated by including other forms of media. As such, future research should consider including television, radio and digital media in analysing South African media discourse on immigrants.

Thirdly, our study included only English language newspapers. There are indigenous language newspapers such as Isolezwe and iLanga and Afrikaans newspapers that were not considered for the study. This was motivated by the methodological convenience of using English language newspapers – especially considering that the Sketch Engine software only reads an English corpus. However, future studies should consider incorporating newspapers printing in languages other than English, for a bigger and more representative sample (McDonald & Jacobs 2005). Further to this, our article would have been more robust had we interviewed media personnel. The treatment of foreigners as a homogenous category is one of the weaknesses of this paper. Future studies should be sensitive to the fact that foreigners in South Africa are not a homogenous group as they differ in terms of gender, race, occupation, education, and income among other things. That being said however, based on how African foreigners (whether skilled or unskilled), have been subjected to the same stereotypes in South Africa – race may be the principal sociological factor influencing the discursive constructions of African foreigners in the country (Masuku & Nkala 2021).

Conclusion

By generating the patterns of language utilised in the daily construction of toxic immigrant identities and subject positions (the language of xenophobia), we have sufficiently contributed knowledge to an otherwise understudied phenomenon. Towards this end, our paper purposively explored the rationale behind the formation of prejudices and the sociological construction of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in South Africa. By means of studying the discursive or linguistic practices at various levels of the South African social order, we were able to map out not only the circulation but also the reproduction of power, social relations, and the proliferation of xenophobic predilections. The employ of a highly specialised linguistics analysis software afforded our analysis a higher sensitivity to grammatical linkages. As a result, our focus on the media (news articles) in South Africa contributed to the development of a deeper understanding of how language-patterns from these outlets propagate the reproduction of xenophobic and anti-immigrant ideologies. Due to their wide reach, news articles were argued as having the ability to communicate and circulate discourses that may harbour anti-immigrant ideologies. Their potential in adversely contributing to the proliferation of xenophobic attitudes, (manifest through discrimination and violence against foreigners) has been illustrated in the paper.

Through the lens of CDA, we examined the linguistic patterns emerging in the corpus of 144 news articles from the period covering 2008-2020. Our findings revealed the use of ideologically charged terms: discursive master signifiers (an ascription for meaning and identity) in narrative setting. The discursive ascription of positive values to dominant social groups and vice versa for subordinate ones, is essential in the furtherance of hegemonic processes. While Francis Nyamnjoh (2006) and Cuthbeth Tagwirei (2016) identified labels such as criminals, outsiders, strangers and so forth, our own study only found little explicit reference (sometimes negligible) use of these specific modifiers (see Table 3), with the discourse on foreigners increasingly hovering around their legality of stay/documentation and from thereon – disputations surrounding their rights to socio-economic participation, inclusion in the country etc. Although negative labels can set the tone for the construction of an unfavourable identity for non-citizens, we have brought attention to the fluidity of the terms used to refer to the ‘foreign other’ as well as the circumstantial nature of meaning that is always implied to such terms by actors in their pursuit of agency. Our data has shown that even the term ‘foreigner’ (without any negative adjectives) can still be deployed to stigmatise others and reinforce their otherness, yet we acknowledge the limits to our evidence and arguments.

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful for the constructive and detailed feedback from the anonymous reviewers. Also, a special thanks to Professor Jeremy Seekings, whose constructive critique and feedback added much value to this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was declared by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sizo Nkala

Dr Sizo Nkala holds a PhD in political science from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He also served as a lecturer at the same institution teaching various courses on global politics, African politics, international relations and ethics. He is currently a research fellow at the Centre for Africa-China Studies, University of Johannesburg. His research interests include China-Africa relations, African political economy, party politics and immigration.

Sikanyiso Masuku

Dr Sikanyiso Masuku graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy in Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies from the University of KwaZulu Natal. Sikanyiso Masuku has worked as a development and humanitarian practitioner for both regional and international Non-Governmental Organisations. Dr Masuku also teaches both undergraduate and post-graduate classes with a general interest in areas such as social development and welfare, poverty/inequality, social theory and development economics. A published author in international, peer reviewed journals and monographs, Dr. Masuku has particular research interests in social protection, the politics of belonging/citizenship, human mobility and migration.