Afrophobia in Mzansi? Evidence from the 2013 South African Social Attitudes Survey

The term ‘Afrophobia’, implying fear of the African, has come to mean the hatred of the African other, and is increasingly being used in the literature and popular media to describe the negative attitudes of black South Africans towards African immigrants. These negative attitudes towards other Africans are in contrast to the more positive attitudes towards white immigrants from Europe and America. This emerging literature also suggests that black South Africans have more positive attitudes towards black foreigners with whom they share a language. This article uses data from the 2013 Social Attitudes Survey to assess the evidence for Afrophobia, with further analysis of gender and ethnicity. The results suggest that the term Afrophobia does not usefully describe black South Africans’ attitudes towards African immigrants. This article argues that South Africans have different attitudes towards immigrants from different countries. Also, the relationship between black South Africans’ attitudes and the immigrants’ ethnicity was not a straightforward one. Some immigrant groups that spoke a ‘South African language’ were among the black foreigners most disliked by those black South Africans with whom they shared a language. The study suggests the need for a more detailed and nuanced analysis of attitudes that understands the heterogeneous nature of black South Africans (and African immigrants) and goes beyond generalising terms such as ‘Afrophobia’ and ‘ethnic affinity’, which, based on the evidence, may be of limited use in understanding why some African immigrants are more disliked than others.