Conflict and Concord

Migrants’ experiences in South Africa are layered and viewed through the treatment they receive and live through in different South African spaces. This chapter focuses on the experiences of African migrants in and through these different South African spaces. Through narratives of African migrant families, whose children serve as language brokers in various families, the author delves on the behavioral expectations of black bodies in South African spaces. The implications of failing to behave in these expected ways is also imperative to this chapter. The author argues that, as English is the lingua franca in South Africa, brokering and translating in general are not necessary in any South African spaces. However, the South African context is unique to highlight how discrimination, black on black racism through ‘othering’ of blackness and black bodies by local South Africans brings to light the daily realities of Afrophobia. The nature of the resistance to English in South Africa plays a historically influenced power dynamic that shapes and influences interactions. These interactions create boarders of belonging for South Africans and non-belonging for all black people who are not South African marked through the politics of language and evidenced in violence interactions.

While the dominant understanding on the relationship between African migrants and local South Africans is framed around xenophobia, migrants are not always victims, rather they engage in socio-economic relations with the local people. We assert that African migrants do have agency to act and think beyond xenophobia. In this chapter, we examine how different spaces provides a vantage point for such migrant-locals socialities. Thus, this chapter focuses on how both local South Africans and migrants find ways of living together without necessarily resorting to violence. This chapter is based on the ethnography of being in particular places of interaction in the everyday lives of migrants.

This chapter analysed the nature of dyadic (two-way) relations that exist between Congolese migrants and South Africans in Empangeni, a small town North of KwaZulu-Natal. It examined the nature of the linkages/ties between both groups and argues in line with the objectives of the book that beyond the hostility/xenophobia discourse, there is a conviviality/integration reality which should also be presented in literature. To foreground this argument, the chapter used data generated from a social network method which was used to interview 8 Congolese immigrants and their close South African ties (making a total of 16 respondents) in Empangeni. Out of these 16 respondents, 4 (2 Congolese migrants and 2 South Africans) were then selected for a biographical examination and thematic analysis of their dyadic relationships. One of the main findings show that intergroup contact in varying spaces created an enabling environment for interactions between Congolese migrants and South Africans which produce concord or discord depending on prevailing conditions such as socio-cultural stereotypes and class. This chapter concludes that although the relationship in some instances between the Congolese migrants and their South African ties is characterised by mixed responses ranging from exclusion to assimilation, cosmopolitanism and conviviality, the binary of friends or foes misses the grey line in between, making it too narrow to fully capture everyday realities. Therefore, a network analysis of multiple relationships between African migrants and South Africans would be more revealing of the nuances that shape relations between these groups.