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Being Human
South Africa’s Chinese Diaspora and the Multilingual
Transformation of Rural Towns
China’s economic ties with Africa have strengthened in the last decade as more Chinese migrants settle here –
recent estimates are as high as 400 000 compared to 20 000 in 1990.
Research Project
Most recent migrants are from mainland China and
are engaged in the retail sector. Iconic of this
development are the so-called “China shops” found
in almost every South African town, shops that do not
cater to a niche ethnic market, as is common in the
global North, but to a local African clientele.
The project looks at the multilingual transformation
of rural towns, with ethnographic fieldwork focusing
on the Eastern Cape towns of Tsolo, Cala and
McClear – off the beaten track and rarely discussed
in migration literature, which focuses instead on
urban, metropolitan contexts. These three towns are
vibrant market towns servicing a population engaged
in subsistence agriculture, small-scale farming and
some professional and government employment.
Since the late 1990s, trading in these towns has been
transformed by international migration, with traders
coming from China, from India and Pakistan, and from
other African countries like Ghana and Senegal.
The project endeavours to understand how global
migrants, especially the ”new” Chinese diaspora,
negotiate the linguistic, social and economic challenges
of trade and everyday life in these rural African towns.
Local residents are primarily isiXhosa-speaking with
varying levels of English, yet Chinese traders have
developed strategies to facilitate economic transactions:
signage drawing on local meanings and languages, basic
isiXhosa-Afrikaans-English jargon, and employment
of language mediators to interact with customers.
Further fieldwork will take place in November 2013 and
throughout 2014, focusing on issues of ownership and
consumption, and changing communication practices.
The project is funded by the National Research Foundation
and conducted jointly by Associate Professor Ana Deumert
(AXL, Linguistics) and Mr Nkululeko Mabandla (AXL,
CAS) who are also involved in the recently established
European Consortium on Globalization at the Margins,
initiated jointly by Professors Jan Blommaert (University
of Tilburg) and Leonie Cornips (University of Maastricht).