Lecture and Discussion

• Wed 18 05 2016 / 7 pm •
Xenophobia and Racism in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Writer’s Challenge


with FRED KHUMALO

Migration is not only a central issue in Western Europe; it also plays a central role in South Africa. The coverage of international migration by the South African press has been largely anti-immigrant and unanalytical. While not all reporting has been negative, the overwhelming majority of the vast collection of newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor about immigrants and immigration uncritically reproduces problematic statistics and assumptions about cross-border migration in the southern African region. Although it is impossible to draw direct and causal links between this kind of media coverage and the rise of xenophobia in South Africa, it is true that the two are at least mutually reinforcing. The media, and the writing community at large, have a responsibility to be more balanced, critical and nuanced in writing about immigration and immigrants. How then, does a writer grapple with this sensitive issue? Academy fellow Fred Khumalo elucidates this question and joins in a discussion with author GUY HELMINGER.

Venue: ACADEMYSPACE, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne Free admission In English with translation into German

Event in the context of the Rhine-South-Africa-Fellowship in cooperation with stimmen afrikas / Allerweltshaus Köln and the Syltfoundation, with support from the Kunststiftung NRW