Capital’s preference for foreign african labour in South Africa: reflections on liberal anti-xenophobia research

Abstract

n South Africa, in many economic sectors, foreign blacks are more likely to get a job than a similarly skilled black South African. This paper is about why employers prefer foreign African labour in South Africa, how this contributes to seeing South African black workers as inferior, and how job hoarding networks in employment niches have emerged. We examine this in the context of literature on ‘xenophobia’. Both discursive and material practices of racist-ethnicist employers are significant. There is a new hierarchy of fictive labour imaginaries which reflects a new labour ‘frontier’ in a diversified post-apartheid southern African pool. The new frontier also reflects neoliberal flexible labour systems which operate within a human rights free-market framework.