Xenophilia in Muizenberg, South Africa: New potentials for race relations?

Since the advent of democracy in 1994 race relations in South Africa have not improved substantially. The arrival of transmigrants from other African countries has emphasized a wounded South African psyche, as various xenophobic attitudes and attacks attest. However, a lesser known reality is the expression of xenophilia by South African women. In this article I argue that an intimate relationship between a South African coloured woman and a Congolese black man scripts a different potentiality for multiracial relations in the private and public spaces of urban Cape Town, South Africa. [Coloured; Congolese; Xenophilia; South Africa; Race; Love; Transnationalism]