| Summary: | Abstract
The objective of this study is to identify the factors that enable “the right to have rights” in
the South African political community, as well as to understand the way that community
members perceive the meaning and value of these factors, during and following the 2008
xenophobic attacks. In order to understand political community, I draw heavily on Hannah
Arendt and Michael Walzer, theorists who emphasise the importance of shared values, the
right to self-determination and the influence of relationships with outsiders and outside
forces on the changeable nature of the political community. By focusing on shared values
rather than quantitative demographics and statistics, this study recognises that the South
African political community that either contributed to xenophobic rhetoric or engaged in the
2008 xenophobic violence is neither confined to nor limited by indicators like neighborhood,
social class or ethnicity. In order to identify the shared values of the South African political
community and understand their meaning and value, I rely primarily on transcripts from
interviews with citizens and migrants conducted by FMSP researchers three months after the
2008 attacks, research reports published in the year after the attacks and semi-structured
interviews that I conducted with citizens and migrants from September through November
2009.
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