Racial Undertones on Violence and Human Bodies: White Migrants' Online Epistemologies of Insecurity and Discomfort in Post-Apartheid South Africa

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intecritdivestud.2.2.0006
• Pages: 6-21
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Author: Primus Tazanu
• Subject Matter: racism online,violence and insecurity,post-apartheid South Africa,whiteness,white South African migrants

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 2.2 December 2019

Racial Undertones on Violence and

Human Bodies

White Migrants’ Online Epistemologies of Insecurity

and Discomfort in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Primus Tazanu

Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon

Primus M. Tazanu holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Freiburg,

Germany. He teaches at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University

of Buea, Cameroon. He is also a guest researcher at the Centre of African Studies,

University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focuses on social practices and the

production of meanings through media technologies: new/social media and social

relationships, implications of social media/smartphones on socioeconomic and politi-

cal life, media/social media and Pentecostalism as well as media and racism. Dr Tazanu

has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of

the Witwatersrand in South Africa as well as a guest lecturer at the universities of

Basel and Freiburg. He is a member of the editorial board of Spears Books.

ABSTRACT

Violence and insecurity in post-apartheid South Africa are recurrent themes in online

messages by white South Africans who have either migrated or wish to leave the

country. These online authors position white people as victims or potential victims

of crime committed by black people. It is a narrative which references apartheid as

a period of safety and security, presupposing life is no longer what it used to be for

white people. Through comparing the pre-1994 with the post-apartheid period and

particularly emphasising that the black leadership is failing the country, the white

migrants construct an epistemology – with racist undertones – of an unliveable South

Africa. Narratives of black violence enacted upon white people, as well as white inno-

cence and benevolence, are central features of the migrants’ online complaints of an

unliveable South Africa which I take up as a point of focus in this article.

KEYWORDS

racism online, violence and insecurity, post-apartheid South Africa, whiteness,

white South African migrants

Racial UndeRtones on Violence and HUman Bodies 7

International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 2.2 December 2019

Introduction

More than 25 years following the end of apartheid in South Africa, intense debates about

identity and belonging continue to dominate public conversations in the country. Underlying

the question of belonging is the extent to which people feel at home in South Africa. Writing

about the challenges white South Africans face in adjusting in the post-apartheid period,

Griffiths and Prozesky (2010) observe that white people leaving the country do so under the

pretext of violence, insecurity and affirmative action. Violence and insecurity resonate in

the online posts and comments by white South Africans who have migrated to New Zealand,

Australia and USA. They frame their relocation to these white-majority countries as induced

by a post-apartheid South Africa that is hostile to its white citizens. The racial undertones

underlying these epistemologies position white bodies as exceptional and requiring special

attention, thus the necessity to flee violence.

To suggest that the white body is exceptional draws from the construction of race, a

belief in classifying human beings according to “biologically discrete and exclusive groups

based on physical and cultural traits” (Golash-Boza, 2016, p. 130). Racism is a complex

system of socioeconomic and political expressions that places some human groups at a dis-

advantage primarily because of their physical appearance. The idea of race developed with

European conquest of the Americas (and other parts of the world) and the subsequent

enslavement of Africans in a period which saw European identity shift from Christians to

whites (Mignolo, 2000; Golash-Boza 2016). These historical constructions are undergirded

by the “economic and political advantage” gained by people of European descent “during

and subsequent to European colonial expansion” (Steyn, 2005, p. 121; Grosfoguel, Oso &

Christou, 2015). Skin colour is an important ingredient in racial construction and Europeans

have historically used Africans as the “main foil against which they [Europeans] defined

themselves” (Steyn, 2001, p. 5). Consequently, when classifying humans, white people posi-

tioned themselves at the top, and suggested they were more human than people of colour

which means attributing greater humanity to people with lighter skin (Maldonado-Torres,

2007; Fanon, 1967; Gordon, 1995).

We thus understand racist expressions as encompassing beliefs and practices that sug-

gest or imply the superiority of whites or inferiority of people of colour in South Africa.

The internet is a fertile space for reproducing these racist ideas. Research on online racism

is abundant and many trajectories are in line with this article. There have been studies on

sublimated racism on websites that use liberal language to mimic inclusiveness and toler-

ance (Daniels, 2009a/b, 2012). There is also research focusing on overt online racism,

including people using internet fora to foster the idea of white supremacy (Back, 2002;

Atton, 2006). In one way or the other, these studies reveal how racism circulates online

unregulated. Other works on online racism use discursive psychology to look at how peo-

ple use “rhetorical work to avoid being labelled as being prejudicial” (Goodman and Rowe,

2014, p. 33). Goodman and Rowe (2014) write about strategies used by online participants

to deny racism in the United Kingdom; they reject accusations of racism against Roma

people even as their remarks are apparently racist. Denying racism is a prudent strategy for

those who fear being labelled biased or irrational (Durrheim, Greener & Whitehead, 2015;

Van Dijk, 1992). Similarly, Cresswell, Whitehead and Durrheim (2014, p. 2513) have