Xenophobia and Civil Society: Durban's Structured Social Divisions

Abstract

Xenophobia in Durban was of a lower intensity than in South Africa's other two main metropolises, Johannesburg and Cape Town, in the 2008–10 period, and yet was just as durable, with incidents continuing to reflect underlying social antagonism. The roots of the conflict are, we argue, to be found in the material processes of ‘uneven and combined development’ that are too rarely tackled in the public or policy spheres. These processes have been difficult for researchers and critical civil society forces to comprehend and counteract because they are structural in form. In the context of an overall economic crisis and rising inequality and urban poverty, these processes include a glutted labour market, housing shortages, township retail competition, highly gendered cultural differences, and apparently intractable regional geopolitical tensions. These root-cause pressures continue—as will xenophobia—because short of a national political shift in power and interests, they are extremely difficult to resolve. As a result, civil society will continue band-aiding the problems when they surface as social crises, or be compelled to generate much more explicit politics of regional solidarity, including in Durban, whose port and traditions of community politics already offer examples of the kinds of alliances required in future.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank The Atlantic Philanthropies for financial support, Dr David Fig for overall guidance, and two anonymous Politikon reviewers for constructive suggestions.

Notes

Some of them worked without work permits. Most of these got their permits after the May 2008 attacks in South Africa.

This was not a unique event. In Durban, police officers who arrested one author for distributing an anti-xenophobia leaflet on 2 July 2010, just before the World Cup's Ghana-Uruguay match—the crime was termed ‘ambush marketing’—confirmed in a taped conversation that City Manager Sutcliffe had explicitly ordered, ‘No distribution of pamphlets, especially which mention xenophobia.’ The reasoning, according to a police superintendent, was that ‘You are reminding [people] of xenophobia. Even myself I had forgot about that thing, but now you write it down’ (Bond, 2010).

See http://www.lhr.org.za/about-lawyers-human-rights/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Baruti Amisi

School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Patrick Bond

School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Email: [email protected].

Nokuthula Cele

School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Email: [email protected].

Trevor Ngwane

School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Email: [email protected].