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

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 innocence 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.