Abstract
The author begins this chapter with context about xenophobic violence in South Africa and the psychological implications of the position ‘other’ for African foreign nationals living in the country. Focus is placed on the women’s stories of living in South Africa. The central theme in this chapter is their narrative imaginings of the sexual world of black South African women—symbolic female ‘others’—which shed important insight into the ways in which these migrant women experience patriarchal oppression of female sexuality in post-apartheid South Africa rife with xenophobia, racism, and deep-seated poverty. The author argues that the third central motif of the women’s collective narratives—South African women as faulty feminine subjects—served as a narrative resource whereby the women narratively projected negative aspects of their female sexuality (residues of gendered oppression) onto the image of black South African women. In doing so, they constructed positive selves related to worth and belonging in their social world.
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- 1.
Spaza shops refer to informal shops run from the owner’s home in a township or low socio-economic community. These shops usually sell small household items. The success of such businesses lies in the fact that due to unreliable public transport, it is difficult for people to travel from the townships to larger shopping centres which are in more affluent areas. Most people living in townships do not own their own vehicles and have to rely on costly and unreliable mode of transport in the form of mini bus taxis, buses, and trains.
- 2.
‘Zim’ is short for Zimbabwean.
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van Schalkwyk, S. (2018). Psycho-Social Borders and Imagining the South African Female ‘Other’. In: Narrative Landscapes of Female Sexuality in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97825-3_6
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