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Introduction: Grades of Otherness “Why are we so different", a passerby asks me laughingly. I’m strolling down the streets of Alexandra and am not so sure how to reply to this question. So I just laugh back and continue my daily journey on foot, enjoying the vibrant street-life that surrounds me. The man just testified to my white skin I presumed, in contrast with the black ones that prevail in this poverty-stricken, overpopulated space of shacks, hostels, flats and houses. My white skin was a visible marker of otherness throughout my stay in the township, which I made my place of residence for five months. It was a marker I could never conceal and which always made me a highly visible anomaly within Alexandra’s predominantly black public spaces. Despite my efforts to live my life as a township-resident, I always remained a white outsider and a constant source of enthusiasm, laughter, interest and amazement. I even became a public asset to be paraded around by unknown pedestrians in front of their peers in order to enhance status. I became someone who was often perceived as beneficial to the community for the mere fact of being White and thus highly associated with economic prosperity and a Western lifestyle12 . In May 2008, markers of difference proved lethal for many immigrants from neighbouring African countries within the informal settlements and inner-cities of 1
From now on I will refer to a racial category in capitalization when it is not an adjective in order to
differentiate between the socially and politically constructed nature of racial identity and the natural, inborn perceptions of racial difference 2 It must be said that being a European White made a difference too, since South African Whites were predominantly perceived as being racist who would never come to the township
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