Why intergroup contact alone will not end xenophobia and racial prejudice in South Africa

Introduction

The idea behind contact theory is easy to like. People who get to know members of another group tend to like them better, so put them in the same street, classroom or workplace and prejudice should wear down. South Africa looks like an obvious place to test it. After apartheid kept groups apart by law, it seems natural that mixing would help. And there is some support. Swart et al. (2023) surveyed 317 Black South African adults in a Cape Town township, and found that cross-group friendships went with lower perceived realistic threat and with more empathy towards immigrants. Yet that township had itself seen conflict with immigrants, and national survey work suggests that anti-immigrant feeling in the country is tied up with racial animosity, not just with the presence of newcomers (Gordon, 2022).

This paper argues that contact is useful here but cannot carry the whole job. Contact works on the relationship between individuals, and a lot of what drives xenophobia and racial prejudice in South Africa sits somewhere else: in experiences of discrimination, in group threat, in the emotions attached to group identities, and in organised movements that supply a story about who is to blame (Gordon, 2023; Dratwa, 2023). A recent review also warns that contact can sometimes quiet the very protest that would challenge unequal arrangements (Cocco et al., 2024). I take that to mean contact programmes and reconciliation efforts need to deal with injustice and threat directly. The paper first looks at what contact evidence from South Africa shows, then at xenophobia as part of racial prejudice, then at emotion, identity and narrative, and finally at the ways contact can sedate or avoid the question of race.

What the South African contact evidence shows

The Cape Town township study is probably the clearest local test of contact ideas in the recent literature. Swart et al. (2023) asked residents about perceived neighbourhood diversity, cross-group friendships, realistic and symbolic threat, empathy, trust and orientation towards African immigrants, and analysed the answers with structural equation modelling. Perceived diversity was linked to more threat, which is what one would expect in a poor neighbourhood where people feel they compete for jobs and housing. But diversity was also linked to more cross-group friendships, and friendships were linked to lower realistic threat and to more empathy, which in turn went with a more positive orientation towards immigrants (indirect effect b = .42). So the mechanism is a plausible one. Friendship gives people a reason to doubt the threat story, and empathy does some of the rest, which fits the broader sense that positive racial interaction matters for how people fare in a diverse society (Adedeji et al., 2021).

There are limits, and the authors say so themselves. The data are cross-sectional, they come from one township, they cover only South Africans and not the immigrants, and perceived diversity is not the same as actual diversity (Swart et al., 2023). Symbolic threat was not clearly linked to trust or orientation, and empathy did not predict trust. That leaves a piece of the puzzle unexplained, since trust is what people would probably need before they can live and trade alongside each other. A second source adds a broader but thinner picture. Adedeji et al. (2021) analysed the 2017 South African Social Attitudes Survey (n = 3,135) and found that positive racial interaction predicted life satisfaction for Black African and coloured respondents, and for the sample as a whole. It did not do so for Indian or white respondents, for whom other variables such as living standard, age and education stood out. The outcome there is wellbeing, not prejudice, so it speaks only indirectly to contact theory (Adedeji et al., 2021; Swart et al., 2023).

Another gap is worth naming. What Swart et al. (2023) measured was attitude, meaning trust and a positive orientation towards immigrants, and they note that future research should test whether such attitudes carry over into support for egalitarian immigration policy. That is a fair point. Warm feelings in a township do not by themselves produce a change in how people vote, how they treat a neighbour’s shop, or whether they join a march, and the contact literature has been slower to follow people that far. Cocco et al. (2024) is one of the few reviews that does, and I come back to it below (Swart et al., 2023; Cocco et al., 2024).

Xenophobia as part of racial prejudice

A common explanation for xenophobia in South Africa is competition for scarce resources, a position that the African National Congress adopted at its 1997 national conference. Gordon (2022) tests that thesis against South African Social Attitudes Survey data from 2003 to 2018. His chapter reports that socio-economic status was not a good predictor of attitudes towards migrants, that trends in anti-immigrant sentiment did not seem to follow changes in macro-economic conditions or the growth of the foreign-born population, and that xenophobia was correlated with interracial animosity. He reads this as a reason to see xenophobia as one part of a larger problem of racism and racialisation. It is a provocative claim, and it suggests that more jobs alone would not settle the matter (Gordon, 2022; Hlatshwayo, 2023).

The same author later tested two social-psychological accounts of what happens when people of colour experience discrimination. The Common Ingroup Identity model predicts that shared experiences of discrimination build tolerance across groups. The Social Identity Threats account predicts that discrimination erodes norms and produces stress that can turn into aggression. Gordon (2023) found, in nationally representative survey data, that perceived personal and collective discrimination increased participation in anti-immigrant violence, which fits the second account better than the first. Socio-economic status softened the effect. He ties the pattern to the legacy of white settler colonialism. One reading, which is mine and not a finding, is that anti-immigrant hostility may partly redirect racial injury onto people who are even less protected (Gordon, 2023; Gordon, 2022).

Two cautions apply to this line of work. Both studies rest on survey items, so they show associations and cannot show that discrimination causes violence, and self-reported participation in hate crime is a hard thing to measure. And Gordon’s findings do not sit entirely comfortably with Hlatshwayo (2023), who argues that crime, economic decay, unemployment and poverty, together with a wider organic crisis, have led to the formation of anti-immigrant organisations. The two can be reconciled if economic hardship shapes who organises and when while racial grievance shapes who the target is, though that is my reading, not something either author tests. It does suggest that contact between individuals is up against a mix of causes, some of them economic, some racial, and some organisational, and no single survey has yet sorted out how they combine (Gordon, 2023; Hlatshwayo, 2023).

Emotion, identity and the stories groups tell

Intergroup emotions give another view of why contact may not be enough. Bornman et al. (2023) surveyed 1,658 people, made up of 350 Afrikaans-speaking white, 526 English-speaking white and 782 Black South Africans, about group-based emotions (pride, anger, disgust, fear, pity and envy) and attitudes towards the other groups. Ingroup pride predicted more positive attitudes towards outgroups in every group, which is a useful reminder that a secure identity need not mean hostility. Disgust predicted more negative attitudes in all three groups. Anger predicted more negative attitudes among white respondents towards Black South Africans, and younger Black respondents were more negative towards Afrikaans-speaking whites. The authors read this as support for intergroup emotion theory, in which emotions regulate attitudes and behaviour (Bornman et al., 2023).

The study has its own limits. Bornman et al. (2023) cover three ethno-linguistic groups and so leave out coloured and Indian South Africans and migrants, and a regression on survey items cannot say whether disgust produces negative attitudes or the other way round. Even so, it gives a picture of intergroup feeling that a friendship measure alone would miss. A person could have a close friend in the other group and still carry anger or disgust towards the group as a whole, and the friendship-based studies do not tell us how often that happens (Swart et al., 2023).

What matters for the contact argument is that these emotions are not formed in friendships alone. They come from histories and from the stories circulating about groups. Dratwa (2023) spent 15 months on a digital ethnography of the ‘Put South Africans First’ movement, following its Facebook page and interviewing its leaders. Two narratives held the group together. One, the supposed harmfulness of Pan-Africanism, recycled colonial stereotypes, drew on disgust and used history as a weapon. The other, a belief in ‘modern-day slavery’, was fed by replacement conspiracies and by fear that South African children would one day be enslaved by foreigners. Disgust turns up here too, as it does in the survey results, which suggests a link between the emotional profile Bornman et al. (2023) measured and the narratives that Dratwa (2023) documented, though neither study tests that link.

One response to all this is to look inside the individual. Olaseni and Adewoye (2024) systematically reviewed studies published between 2008 and early 2022 and concluded that shared external locus of control, repression, displacement and learned helplessness were the main dispositional factors behind xenophobic behaviour among South Africans. They propose a National Cognitive Re-Orientation Programme to raise internal locus of control. I would treat that cautiously. Dispositional factors may well play a part, but a programme aimed at personal outlook risks treating a patterned, politically organised and racially marked behaviour as a private deficit (Olaseni & Adewoye, 2024; Dratwa, 2023). The evidence of discrimination as a driver sits awkwardly with it (Gordon, 2023).

When contact sedates or avoids race

The wider literature has a warning that applies directly. Cocco et al. (2024) reviewed 134 studies on how intergroup contact relates to collective action for disadvantaged groups, with 100 samples from advantaged groups and 58 from disadvantaged groups. For advantaged groups, contact generally mobilised support, and did so more strongly when it raised awareness of the injustices disadvantaged people experience. For disadvantaged groups the effects were mixed. Contact that increased awareness of injustice mobilised action, while contact that made the legitimacy of the group hierarchy or the threat of retaliation more salient had a sedative effect. The review is not about South Africa, and I do not want to stretch it. Still, it points to a risk in contexts where inequality follows racial lines so closely (Cocco et al., 2024; Gordon, 2023).

Some of the South African evidence about white identity is consistent with that risk. Ebert and Pillay (2022) examined the narratives of white people working for racial justice through education and identified three guiding stories, ‘People Are People’, ‘Following God’ and ‘Quality Education for All’. These stories move away from overt prejudice and show a sincere attempt to engage with the new South Africa. But the authors point out that not engaging with race at all could be read as a way of avoiding guilt about continued racial privilege. A contact encounter organised around the idea that everyone is simply people might feel warm and still leave the structure of advantage untouched (Ebert & Pillay, 2022; Cocco et al., 2024).

None of this makes the friendships found in the township study less real. Swart et al. (2023) give good reason to keep building them. The point is that the township friendships were linked to lower threat and more empathy among residents of an under-resourced neighbourhood, so whether those friendships would also support action on the shared sources of their hardship is a separate question that the study did not ask. Adedeji et al. (2021) describe South Africa as a society transforming from a history of racial segregation, and in a society like that, good feeling between individuals and a fairer distribution of resources are probably two separate goals (Swart et al., 2023; Adedeji et al., 2021).

What the South African context changes

Three features make the argument sharper here than it might be elsewhere. The first is that much of the xenophobic hostility described in this literature falls on Black migrants from other African countries, which means a simple ingroup and outgroup picture based on skin colour does not fit. Hlatshwayo (2023) describes the targets in the same way, and Gordon (2022) responds by arguing that xenophobia belongs to a wider racialised order. The second is that organised and online movements now supply narratives and a vehicle for action (Dratwa, 2023; Hlatshwayo, 2023). The third is that racial reconciliation is still an open question. Bornman et al. (2023) find that emotions such as anger, disgust and fear are still tied to attitudes across white and Black groups.

What follows for practice is fairly concrete. Contact programmes in townships could pair friendships with attention to the realistic threats people describe, such as competition for housing and work, since Swart et al. (2023) found friendships to be linked to lower realistic threat. They could also make room for talk about discrimination, instead of leaving it out for the sake of harmony (Cocco et al., 2024; Ebert & Pillay, 2022). And policy aimed at reducing racial discrimination, particularly for poorer people, looks a better bet against anti-immigrant violence than an appeal to individual attitudes alone (Gordon, 2023; Olaseni & Adewoye, 2024). The evidence for that last point is correlational, so I would hold it loosely.

Conclusion

Contact is not the wrong idea. In a Cape Town township, friendships across group lines went with less threat and more empathy, and nationally, positive racial interaction went with better life satisfaction for several groups (Swart et al., 2023; Adedeji et al., 2021). The trouble is the weight being put on it. Xenophobia in South Africa appears to run together with racial animosity and with experiences of discrimination (Gordon, 2022; Gordon, 2023), it is carried by emotions such as disgust and by organised narratives (Bornman et al., 2023; Dratwa, 2023), and it is taken up by organisations that formed amid economic and social crisis (Hlatshwayo, 2023).

So my position is that contact should be treated as one part of a wider approach and judged by whether it also leaves people better able to see and challenge unjust arrangements, which is where the sedation risk and the avoidance of race become relevant (Cocco et al., 2024; Ebert & Pillay, 2022). Programmes built on individual change alone, including those proposed on dispositional grounds, look incomplete next to this evidence (Olaseni & Adewoye, 2024). Much of what is cited here is cross-sectional or qualitative, so these are cautious conclusions. Even so, the pattern across very different kinds of study is hard to ignore, and it points to prejudice in South Africa being as much a matter of structure and story as of who meets whom.

Reference list

Adedeji, A., Idemudia, E. S., Bolarinwa, O. A., & Metzner, F. (2021). Racial relations and life satisfaction among South Africans: Results from the 2017 South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS). Journal of Psychology in Africa, 31(5), 522-528. https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2021.1978183

Bornman, E., Mynhardt, J. C., & van Zyl, D. (2023). Intergroup emotions and intergroup attitudes in post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 33(4), 348-357. https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2023.2233227

Cocco, V. M., Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Di Bernardo, G. A., & Dovidio, J. F. (2024). Mobilizing or sedative effects? A narrative review of the association between intergroup contact and collective action among advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 28(2), 119-180. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683231203141

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Gordon, S. (2022). Are foreigners welcome in South Africa? An attitudinal analysis of anti-immigrant sentiment in South Africa during the 2003-2018 period. In G. Houston, M. Kanyane, & Y. D. Davids (Eds.), Paradise lost: Race and racism in post-apartheid South Africa (pp. 245-266). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004515949_011

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