Since the early 2000s, several community-based organisations in Yeoville have been involved in an annual week of celebration, ending with a street festival, to honour the neighbourhood and the diversity of its residents. The first of these festivals took place on 29 May 2010, a symbolic date chosen to commemorate both Africa Day (established in 1963 to mark the formation of the Organisation of African Unity) and the 2008 South African xenophobic attacks. in the context of Yeoville, characterised since the mid-1990s by a cycle of decline marked by ‘white flight’, urban decay, unemployment and xenophobic tensions, the festival is also conceived as a means to promote a renewed image of the neighbourhood in order to attract people and investments into the area, and as an opportunity to bring all the people from the community together.

Yeoville earned the reputation of being cosmopolitan early in its history because of the importance of migrants from southern and eastern Europe in the area (Harrison 2002). The history of Yeoville as a place of immigration is thus not new, but this representation of the neighbourhood today is directly linked to the gradual influx of new residents (South Africans and foreigners from other African countries) and the departure of the white middle classes from the mid-1990s onward. Unlike today, immigration in the early days was not regarded as a problem, probably because the European immigrants had a similar socio-economic background to the people already living in the area (Beall et al. 2002), and this probably facilitated their integration. The current reputation of Yeoville as an immigrant entry point was historically built alongside a general pauperisation of the neighbourhood and an increase in crime rates: violent crimes doubled from 1994 to 1998 ( Jurgens et al. 2003). Once known as an attractive place, in less than two decades Yeoville became known as a decayed neighbourhood, like most of the inner city. Given this context, for some residents (South Africans and others), the easy explanation for the decline of the area lies in the arrival of foreigners. This perception creates a climate of distrust and suspicion amongst the people living in Yeoville. Therefore, while Yeoville was not directly affected by the 2008 xenophobic attacks, it is far from being a place of tolerance (Harrison 2002).