Alien epistemology — framing foreigners as enemies within a culture of legal antipathy
Daily Maverick | 05.05.2026 00:24
In recent weeks, South Africans have witnessed increasingly alarming reports of vigilante-style witch-hunts against foreigners, from Durban and the Eastern Cape to Pretoria. These events should not be read only as isolated eruptions of xenophobic anger. They are the visible expression of something more settled: a way of seeing the foreigner as the assumed culprit of shortage, disorder and institutional failure. What is at issue is therefore not only how foreign nationals are treated, but how they are known. This is alien epistemology: the making of the foreigner as a person known by negative assumption.
