They Don’t Deserve to be South African: Examining Autochthony, Citizenship, and Belonging in Contemporary South African Society

Colonialism, as well as the apartheid classificatory system, entrenched notions of the (internal) ‘other’ in South Africa. Twenty years after the democratic transition, questions of citizenship and belonging are still at the forefront of contemporary struggles in South African society.  Xenophobia expressed towards refugees and immigrants from the African continent, as well as fellow South African citizens seen as unwelcome ‘foreigners’, provide evidence of a society that is still deeply divided along lines of ‘race’ and ethnicity. This nativist discourse with claims of indigeneity raises questions about who ‘qualifies’ to ‘legitimately’ belong to the social body. I argue in this paper that this notion of autochthony is not just specific to new immigrants but also to fifth and sixth generation South Africans of Indian descent. I demonstrate empirically that the language of xenophobia was consistently employed in the hegemonic discourse from the time the first group of indentured Indians arrived on the shores of Natal in 1860. In addition, I argue that the othering of South Africans of Indian descent as ‘foreigner’ and the question of where ‘they’ belong has been perpetuated in one form or another throughout the decades, and continues in contemporary society. This implies that very same process of ‘othering’ and exclusion fabricated under colonialism and apartheid continues in various forms, including but not limited to, xenophobia, which can be viewed as being inextricably connected to notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, of inclusivity and exclusivity, entitlement and ineligibility, and of the existence of ‘citizens’ and ‘foreigners/others’.