EXORCISING THE DEMONS WITHIN, xenophobia, violence and statecraft in contemporary South Africa

275pp., maps, paperback, Johannesburg, 2011.

A collection of essays that explore the May 2008 violence against immigrants in South African townships.

Contributions include:
"People, Place and Politics: an exploration of factors explaining the 2008 anti-foreigner violence in South Africa" by Christine Fauvelle-Aymar and Aurelia Segatti
"Xenophobia's Local Genesis: historical constructions of insiders and the politics of exclusion in Alexandra Township" by Noor Nieftagodien
"Taking Out the Trash? A 'garbage can' model of immigration policing" by Darshan Vigneswaran
"Making the Law; Breaking the Law; Taking the Law Into Our Own Hands: sovereignty and territorial control in three South African settlements" by Tamlyn Monson.

"By placing the demons within both migration and violent citizenship and in a longer historical perspective, this book succeeds in surpassing current interpretations of the 2008 violence against immigrants in the townships as just resulting from xenophobia. The authors masterfully show that the politics of statecraft - notably the African National Congress' (ANC) language of multicultural dominance - inspired a fatal depolitisation of difference. The very coherence of this collection offers a challenging analysis of struggle over belonging and denial of difference that is of much broader relevance than South Africa alone." Peter Geschiere, Department of African Anthropology, University of Amsterdam

Loren Landau is Director of the African Centre for Migration & Society at the University of the Witwatersrand.