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The outbreak of anti-immigrant violence in May 2008 in South Africa has prompted a set of theoretical questions and a reappraisal of theoretical suppositions. While the attacks have in the main pervasively been presented as xenophobia, I argue in this paper that what is termed xenophobia is in fact racism - New Racism - practised by people of the same population group, which has characterised post-apartheid South African black social relations. These are implications of decolonisation and difficulties of assimilating and integrating black African immigrants into the new South Africa. On the other hand there is increased culture contact and intermixing as a result of the accelerated presence of people of other identities. There are of course conceptual and definitional limitations of the term xenophobia in describing the complex social realities occurring in South African black communities. I therefore call for the deconstruction of the term xenophobia and propose that we begin to see it as culturally-based racism. The article explains that this kind of racism is heavily entrenched in cultural differences enunciated by dissimilarities in nationality, ethnicity, language, dress, customs, social and territorial origins, speech patterns and accents. These differences are deepened by social and economic inequalities, and frustrations among local people are expressed thorough economic grievances, which however mask the preceding cultural contempt and disdain. In addition, some current black on black practices are reminiscent of apartheid white anti-black racism. Drawing on my fieldwork in Alexandra, I then discuss a wide range of labels which are used to refer to African immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 14-17 November 2009 an estimated 3000 Zimbabweans were violently and forcefully displaced from their dwellings in a rural farming area, De Dooms, in the Western Cape, South Africa. This study looks into a discourse of decency to contribute, through symbolic interpretation, to an understanding of discriminatory motives behind the aggressive expulsion of Zimbabweans from Stofland, a shack settlement in De Dooms. An analysis of one of the prominent discourses used by residents after displacement reveals the logic behind discrimination and also illustrates the ways in which discrimination manifests and is perpetuated through language and action. This discourse of decency is also discussed in relation to findings that suggest that, far from being the result of a common identity, displacement motives are based on perceived difference and constructed entitlement identities. Constructed entitlement identities need to be understood in relation to desires for material emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on xenophobia directed towards citizens of other African countries in various areas of South Africa, including the informal sector, appear sporadically in the media. With this in mind a study on the relationships between street traders was conducted during 1999 in a section of Govan Mbeki Avenue in the city centre of Port Elizabeth. The research population included both black non-South Africans and black South Africans. The animosity that was evident was far less than the goodwill expressed between these two groups of informal street traders. The primary reason for this can be ascribed to the fact that they were not in direct competition with each other for customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]