‘Strangers in their own country’: interpreting xenophobic symbology and gang subcultures in vulnerable coloured communities

Abstract

In South Africa, xenophobia is most used and understood in relation to people from different nationalities, cultures or languages other than South African. Xenophobia is often interpreted as South Africans exhibiting prejudice or discrimination against people of other nationalities. This article seeks to reconstruct this “externality” notion, by arguing that xenophobic attitudes can also be directed internally. Du Pre (1992) in Strangers in their Own Country provided a political history of the coloured people of South Africa. A dominant feature of his analysis is the stigmatisation and marginalisation of coloured people throughout their history. This article posits that the stigmatisation and marginalisation of vulnerable coloured communities continue, and should be regarded as xenophobia. With reference to gang subcultures, the article shows how this xenophobia manifests in vulnerable gang-affected coloured communities, not only from the outside, but even within coloured communities themselves.

Keywords

• coloured identities
• gang subcultures
• xenophobic symbology
• vulnerable communities