By Calixthus Okoruwa
The recent Miss South Africa pageant gave vent to yet another outbreak of the ugly war of mutual hate that has built up over the years, between South Africa and Nigeria. A lady, one Chidimma Adetshina had entered for the Miss South Africa pageant and been shortlisted for the finals. “Adetshina,” being a Nigerian name apparently derives from her father, being Nigerian. This was Adetshina’s original sin. Even though Adetshina had been cleared by the organisers of the pageant to compete, on the understanding that her mother was South African, to many South Africans, this wasn’t enough. Ms. Adetshina in having one parent as a Nigerian “was not South African enough” to compete in the Miss South Africa pageant.
Ms. Adetshina is a black African like majority of South Africans, but this fact may have even infuriated South Africans the more, as the country has for years exhibited a growing predilection to a unique form of xenophobia that is targeted at fellow black Africans, namely afrophobia.
The young lady was trolled mercilessly by South Africans online, a process that soon degenerated to virtual fisticuffs between Nigerians and South Africans. Days later, the country would announce that it had found evidence that suggested that Adetshina’s mother, an erstwhile citizen of Mozambique had in acquiring South African citizenship, done so fraudulently via identity theft. Investigations were ongoing, it said. The announcement was an “aha moment” for the millions of South African trolls as it provided a convenient justification for their callous bullying. It didn’t take long for the young lady to decline further participation in the pageant, again to the delight of her South African trolls.
Eventually, it was a South African lady with roots traceable to France – in fact her parents are Caucasian – who won the pageant.
The Adetshina affair, is just another in a growing list of afrophobic incidents in South Africa. In 2008, at least 62 people were killed and many more injured by South African mobs which targeted the homes and businesses of African migrants including Nigerians. Again in 2015, at least 7 people were killed in anti-black-African foreigner violence. In 2019, the Nigerian private airline, Air Peace, helped to evacuate hundreds of Nigerians in the heat of another round of xenophobic violence in South Africa. Like other foreigners of black African descent, Nigerians are blamed for the economic malaise of the country, reflected in massive unemployment, drugs and crime, among others. The criminality of some Nigerians, it must be stated, is inexcusable and it facilitates the convenient blanket scape-goating of Nigerians even when there are many Nigerians living decently in the country.
South Africa has, since the abrogation of apartheid, demonstrated that it is not significantly different from the dozens of African countries which attained independence before it. Its political leaders have largely been corrupt, greedy, managerially incompetent and lacking in vision. It is the symptoms of the ineptitude of the country’s politicians that are daily reflected in a rail system that is fast becoming dysfunctional with rail infrastructure regularly vandalized wantonly across the country. It is the corruption and ineptitude that manifests in the costly inefficiency of the erstwhile energy monopoly, Eskom, which delivers increasing hours of darkness to South Africa.
Eskom is in this wise, very much like Nigeria’s oil monopoly, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which has for decades kept its four refineries non-operational, preferring to export crude oil and import refined fuels in opaque and shady deals while petrol queues have become a fact of life in Nigeria. It is government corruption and incompetence that continues to drive social inequality that finds expression in the sprawling ghettoes, euphemistically referred to as “townships,” which adjoin South Africa’s major cities; “townships” overflowing with unemployed young people living in filth, disease and deprivation, amidst crime and insecurity. And it is a lamentable lack of foresight that leads politicians to neglect South Africa’s public education, in so doing, worsening the country’s inequality crisis. The average black South African, for instance, being a victim of the malnourished public education system, typically earns only a quarter of what his white counterpart earns.
Unfortunately, like their peers elsewhere in Africa, South Africa’s politicians have long systematically planted the seed of foreigner distrust in the minds of their simple citizens in order to deflect attention from their shortcomings. So rather than interrogate the competence or lack of it of their politicians under whose watch South Africa has for many years been on a steep decline, black South Africans regularly turn their anger and frustration at their worsening circumstances, against foreigners – fellow black Africans. They are poor and hungry because by setting up a shop or car-wash or hair salon nearby, the Nigerian immigrant deprives them of jobs, while the Malawian, Zimbabwean and Ethiopian immigrants have taken up the cleaning jobs at all the neighbouring hotels. The town is increasingly unsafe because the Nigerian immigrants have recruited dozens of jobless, uneducated South Africans, trafficking some and turning others to drug couriers and addicts. And the Nigerians have become so bold, so arrogant, they regularly marry South Africans!
Politician-inspired afriphobia did not start with South Africans, interestingly. Over the years, Nigerian traders have been deported from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana and the then Zaire. Togolese farmers and labourers have been deported from Ghana and Ivory Coast. Even civil servants from Benin Republic (Dahomey at the time) have been deported from Niger and Ivory Coast.
In 1981, with the Nigerian economy tottering on the brink of disaster even while its politicians, lived in nonchalant profligacy, the statesman, Obafemi Awolowo wrote an open letter to then President Shehu Shagari. To avert looming economic collapse, Awolowo counseled Shagari to radically reorganize the machinery of state, including eliminating wasteful spending. Shagari’s government dismissed Awolowo’s warning, countering that the Nigerian economy was sound and hinting that Awolowo’s critique was occasioned by sour grapes (Awolowo had lost the 1979 presidential elections to Shagari). Barely two years later, faced with the consequences of its poor economic policies in the face of rapidly plunging oil prices, Shehu Shagari sought out a victim to blame – foreigners. In January 1983, more than two million fellow Africans, comprising more than a million Ghanaians were summarily evicted from Nigeria. Their crime? As “illegal aliens,” they bore huge responsibility for Nigeria’s economic crisis. Fourteen years earlier, Ghana had similarly expelled Nigerians. Of course, as in the case of Ghana in 1969, there is no evidence to show that these evictions of millions of Africans from Nigeria made any positive impact on Nigeria’s economy, as the decline continued unabated. In fact by December 1983, it provided a convenient excuse for military adventurers, led by Muhammad Buhari to forcefully take over power.
Buoyed by the ignorance of majority of their people, Africa’s politicians have continued to resort to the afriphobia playbook. Where there are no foreigners to blame, they play the ethnic or religious card, both of which are ultra-emotional subjects in many parts of Africa.
Perhaps what the continent needs is the emergence of a corps of educated Africans which can help to play a mediating role of nipping the chicanery of politicians in the bud from time-to-time and encouraging Africans to be more rigorous in interrogating their leaders and holding them to account. In much the same way as the journalism profession introduced “factchecks” to help stem the spread of fake news, Africa’s elite need to come together to help save the continent’s peoples from the machinations of its indolent politicians who pith nationalities and ethnic groups against each other in order to deflect attention from their failures, corruption and incompetence.
- Okoruwa works for Lagos-headquartered communications company, XLR8
