CHAPTER 5: AN OVERVIEW OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SOUTH
5.4. Looking beyond xenophobia
African immigrants have a long history of migrating to South Africa that predates 1994 and since then they have been arriving in large numbers. Many of these migrants have studied
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and worked and successfully made a living for themselves and their families since 1994. The question then is: are there relations between African migrants and South Africans that are not primarily xenophobic? Some migrants have become permanent residents and others citizens.
Many have married South Africans, raised children and established different types of networks with South Africans which continue to sustain their stay in South Africa in different ways. Unfortunately, these stories are often not told in mainstream media and are also neglected in the literature. As noted in Chapter two, the various responses to migration range from exclusion, to assimilation, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, hybridity and entanglement and conviviality. South Africans have deployed all these strategies in responding to African immigration (see Adeagbo 2013; Isike and Isike 2012; and Kirshner 2012). Indeed, the dynamics of migration have evolved to the extent that the lines that demarcate insiders and outsiders are renegotiated.
One of the ways to capture this is to analyse migrants’ integration through the development of conviviality and entanglement which foster the formation of social networks and a sense of belonging to the community which African migrants feel.Nyamnjoh (2011: 11) states that migrants “negotiate marginality through relationships (networks), often romantic, that might make them more accepted and engage in spaces of popular culture and conviviality.”
Although there is a paucity of literature on social networks and the integration of African migrants in the context of South Africa, one study that highlights this issue is Kirshner’s (2012) which was described in the preceding chapter, while another is Brudvig’s (2013) study in Bellville, a small mining town close to Cape Town. The author argues that rather than the exclusion and hostility that many African migrants face in South Africa, those in Bellville have experienced conviviality and tolerance. According to her, “Bellville is a place where economic interdependency, social networks and bonding and bridging social capital prove the resilience of migrants in the face of trends towards exclusion” (Brudvig 2013: 28).
She further argues that this tolerance and hospitality is the result of physical space due to the economic interdependency and social capital that exist in Bellville (Brudvig 2013: 29).
Economic interdependency is the result of the nature of economic practices in the area. The area is a well-known migration spot that thrives on the economic benefits provided to host members, like employment, skills and provision of services, while migrants are allowed to carry on their various businesses without xenophobic attacks (Brudvig 2013). This space
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encourages increased contact and interaction with migrants which eliminates hostility and breeds conviviality. This supports the contact hypothesis, discussed in Chapter two, that posits that prejudice and hostility towards a group will eventually decrease when there is increased contact in public spaces (Grim et al 2005). However, scholars such as Amin (2002) argue that spaces of interaction should move beyond public spaces to micro public spaces where interactions are more frequent, long-lasting and unavoidable, as this would foster convivial interactions and the formation of ties among diverse peoples. According to Brudvig (2013), Bellville is a typical example of a micro public space that brews convivial relations between migrants and members of the host community. In her words, “business operations compel conviviality in Bellville… Groups work together not based on trust but on necessity”
(Brudvig 2013: 38-39). The town’s migrants thus develop ties with members of the host communities that are convivial, that is, beyond the outsider and insider divide, and find a middle space for interaction in order to gain mutual benefits.
Another study by Adeagbo (2013) explains how Nigerian migrants in South Africa integrated into their host communities in Johannesburg. Marriage not only unites people but cultures. It is one of the indicators used to measure the level of migrants’ integration into the host society. She explains how marriage was a bridging tool between Nigerian migrants and South Africans:
the world is full of ethnic, racial and religious divisions and intermarriage between members of different groups can be seen as an indication that divisions are overcome… Intermarriage is considered to be a major pointer of overcoming social distance among groups and cohesion of societies. In other words, intermarriage has been argued to be a channel through which members of different groups relate and interact with one another (Adeagbo 2013: 1).
She does not deny the existence of xenophobic attitudes towards Nigerian migrants in South Africa or hostile attitudes on the part of Nigerians towards South Africans, but argues that inter-marriage entangles them in a web of social relations. Adeagbo (2013) argues that, in the initial stages of the union, Nigerian migrants experienced prejudice from the social networks of their South African spouses but due to increased contact, they changed their perceptions
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and accepted them into the family. Therefore, marriage has enabled the creation of kinship between Nigerian migrants and South Africans, fostering their integration.
Apart from network ties which drive interaction between African immigrants and South African relationships and foster the integration of the former, South Africans have supported African immigrants in many ways. For example, in the thick of the xenophobic violence in 2008 and 2015, South Africans came out in large numbers to decry the violence and express support for African migrants to remain in the country15. Some community-based organisations assisted with food and shelter for the displaced while at the individual level, South Africans were also reported to have rescued, sheltered and protected African immigrants during the violence16. These acts of kindness are not completely disconnected from the networks and ties that both groups have developed and sustained over time in the course of their interaction. They underline the point that, alongside xenophobia and exclusion lie hospitality and tolerance in the study of relations between African immigrants and their South African hosts. Loren Landau (Mail and Guardian, 17 May 2013) cites an example in Bushbuckridge, a township where African migrants and South Africans coexist without discrimination and suspicion.