Beyond Xenophobia or Afrophobia: Strategies and Solutions

Historically, South Africans have suffered from apartheid and perhaps xenophobia is a form of subconscious retaliation to their experiences. Subtly, through criminal activities, there is the targeting of people from other parts of Africa. As such, South Africans are blamed for practising afrophobia as opposed to xenophobia. There is growing literature exploring afrophobia, criminality, and xenophobia experiences in South Africa, and several studies have been taken from different perspectives and disciplines. However, there is a gap in synthesizing the strategies and solutions to prevent further happenings. The problem is that afrophobia is a multi-layered phenomenon, permeating through, politics, migration, economics, and human rights issues. Since, violence begets violence, there is a risk of retaliation from other African nations against South Africans. This chapter reflects and harmonizes recommendations from both inductive and deductive research to function as strategies and solutions to move from afrophobia, criminality, and xenophobia to xenophilia. The chapter uses social identity theory as a theoretical framework, and the data is gathered through a systematic narrative review of the xenophobia or afrophobia discourses in South Africa and critical interpretive synthesis analysis. The results reveal that to stop afrophobia from happening in the future, people and institutions should be intentional about: developing government policies; embracing the reality of migration; speaking with universal language; reviving Ubuntu philosophy; and religion. This study concludes that strategies and solutions for afrophobia require moving to xenophilia or afrophilia.