Xenophobia and the Social Construction of the “African Other” In Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Xenophobia has remained a persistent and destabilizing feature of South Africa’s post-apartheid social landscape, manifesting most visibly in recurrent episodes of violence against migrants from other African countries. This study examined xenophobia as a socially constructed phenomenon through which African migrants are constituted as the “African Other” and positioned outside the moral boundaries of national belonging. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, the study conceptualized hostility toward migrants as an outcome of social categorization, in-group consolidation, and out-group derogation embedded in historical legacies, institutional practices, and everyday discourses of citizenship and entitlement. Using a qualitative interpretive design and secondary data drawn from academic literature, policy documents, and institutional reports covering the period 1994–2024, the study employed thematic analysis to identify dominant patterns in the construction of migrant identity. The findings indicated that African migrants are systematically produced as non-belonging subjects through legal and symbolic classifications, framed as economic and moral threats through scapegoating narratives, and subjected to normalized forms of exclusion and episodic violence legitimized by weak institutional accountability and community-level moral justifications. The study further demonstrated that these processes serve important identity-stabilizing functions by reinforcing national in-group cohesion under conditions of socio-economic insecurity. Beyond their domestic consequences, such constructions undermine the symbolic and practical foundations of African integration by weakening Pan-African identity, eroding inter-state trust, and constraining support for free movement and regional cooperation frameworks. The article concludes that xenophobia in South Africa constitutes not merely a social pathology but a patterned form of identity politics that reflects unresolved tensions in post-apartheid nation-building and poses a structural challenge to the realization of continental integration goals.