Re-Imagining the Other: The Politics of Friendship in Three Twenty-First Century South African Novels**

Abstract

The outburst of xenophobic violence that shook South Africa in May 2008 severely damaged the belief in a multicultural society. This article re-reads three early twenty-first century South African novels – Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit (2001), Kabelo Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams (2001), and Ishtiyaq Shukri's The Silent Minaret (2005) – in the context of the May 2008 events. It is argued that the figure of the foreigner, apparently marginal in all three narratives, is in fact central to their ethical project, which seeks redemption, renewal and redefinition of the South African identity through an identification with the foreign other. The affective impulses of hospitality and friendship directed towards the foreigner in Dangor, Duiker and Shukri are read not merely as accepting or welcoming alterity, but as instances of self-othering – becoming strange in one's own domain. Expressing disillusionment with the liberatory potential of the narrative of the anti-apartheid struggle, they provide access to alternative sites of memory borrowed from the stranger that become sources for re-imagining South African history. In the context of the various racial and ethnic identity politics that have emerged in the New South Africa, such de-centred understanding of identity has radical implications for notions of nationhood.