Vabvakure, people from far away

This half-thesis has developed as a supporting document to an exhibition titled Vabvakure, people from far away, which responds to the growing trends of violence perpetrated against African foreign nationals living in South Africa. This violence which has generally been termed as 'xenophobia' has been framed within this discourse as 'afrophobia', as it is fraught with complexities of race, ethnicity and class. Evidently, not all foreign nationals are at risk but selective targeting of working class black African foreign nationals seems to be the modus operandi. Fanning these flames of prejudice are stereotypes and negative perceptions of Africa and African immigrants that have permeated into the national consciousness of South Africa, which the mainstream media has been complicit in cultivating. My practice is concerned with challenging this politic of representation in relation to the image of the African foreign national within South African society, who have been presented negatively and labelled as the 'Makwerekwere', the 'bogeymen' that have been blamed for the country’s current woes. In response to this, my research adopts the premise that forms of cultural mediation such as visual and performance art can offer further insights and possibly yield solutions that can be used to address these sentiments. As globalisation and neoliberal ideologies reshape the world, there is a growing need in the post-colonial state to revisit and re-construct notions of individual and collective identity, especially that of the nation. Nations, nationalisms and citizenry can no longer be defined solely through indigeneity, for as a result of radical shifts in the flow of migration and immigration policies that allow for naturalisation of aliens and foreign nationals, we are now faced with burgeoning levels of social diversity to the extent that constructions of nationhood that are based on the concept of autochthony have resulted in the persecution of the ‘other’