4 This article makes a contribution to understanding human rights peer education in the South African context and the extent to which such pro- vision could enable participants to develop a critical understanding of human rights and xenophobia. Counteracting Xenophobia in South Africa Through Popular Education Natheem Hendricks, Shepi Mati Introduction: Setting the Context The discourse concerning foreign nationals and public safety in contempo- rary South Africa displays numerous continuities with the country’s apartheid past (Vale, 2002). More specifcally, the construction of African migration as a threat, which is responded to within a discourse of xenophobia, is rooted in the apartheid assumption that some people are inherently superior to others and accordingly must be afforded privilege above and despite others. This discourse is characterized by violence and brutality as the following examples confrm: • The 1998 savage killing of three Mozambican migrants to South Africa by members of the so-called “Unemployment Masses of South Africa” (Pretoria News, September 14, 1998); • On the morning of Sunday May 11, 2008, South Africa woke up to a series of attacks apparently carried out by locals and directed at foreign nationals from the rest of the African continent. Sub-editors in the coun- try’s mainstream, commercial newsrooms framed the story with headlines such as “Bitter fruit in Alex” (Citizen, May 19, 2008) and “A nightmare threatens the dream of a new South Africa;” (Cape Argus, June 3, 2008); and • The 2019 xenophobic attacks in the Tshwane central business district, which resulted in the looting of shops and the murder of fve people (Al Jazeerah News, September 3, 2019). Acknowledging the inhumanity of xenophobia, the South African President humbled himself and apologized for xenophobic violence in 2019 with these words: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION, no. 165, Spring 2020  2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/ace.20367 49