This article—an edited version of Chapter 4 of my forthcoming book First Among Unequals: South African Security Discourses on Southern Africa—focuses on the ideological conceptualization, and brutal treatment, of foreign migrants in post-apartheid South Africa. Notwithstanding the sacrifices of Africa's people to the cause of South Africa's liberation or the reality that South Africa was made by migrants, foreign African migrants in 'liberated' and 'democratic' South Africa have been subjected to a regime of violent othering. Contribution to this rising tide of xenophobia, the so-called 'think-tank' arm of the security industry, has woven a discourse around the idea that migration to South Africa constitutes a threat to national security which, in turn, has watered the notion that post-apartheid South Africa needs a powerful, modern and well-armed military. The end result is that the received understandings of the apartheid era as to what constitutes the state and its security have been neither changed nor discarded, but reinvented and reinforced, in what was once imagined would be a new beginning to thinking about security in this region.
Reprints and Corporate Permissions
Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?
To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:
Academic Permissions
Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?
Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:
If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.
Related Research Data
Related research
People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.
Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.
Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.