The laws of (in)hospitality: Black Africans in South Africa

While politicians and business leaders applaud South Africa's new cosmopolitanism, conflicts over rights to space, services, and livelihoods are emerging as South Africans and African immigrants converge on the streets of previously 'forbidden' cities. Encouraged by presumed links between a significant foreigner presence and many of the country's social ills—disease, unemployment, and crime—South Africans are increasingly invoking nationalist rhetoric in their efforts to resolve these disputes.

Calling on secondary sources, interviews, and new survey research, this paper argues that instead of promoting South Africans' safety and prosperity, the new forms of bias, administrative discrimination, and anti-immigrant policing campaigns legitimised by this nationalism are fuelling networks of corruption and privatised violence that ultimately jeopardize the rights and welfare of all city residents.