By Ikeazor Akaraiwe, SAN
The first sign that something was deeply wrong did not come from a mob attack or a viral video of foreign-owned shops being looted. It came from a routine immigration interview at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport.
For Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ikeazor Akaraiwe, SAN, a single question posed by an immigration officer during a stopover in 2017 has, in hindsight, come to symbolise the prejudice and resentment that have since erupted into repeated waves of xenophobic violence against African migrants in South Africa. In this commentary, he argues that the crisis reflects not only mounting economic frustrations but also political choices that risk turning fellow Africans into convenient scapegoats.
- My wife and I, in 2017, went for the International Bar Association conference which held in Sydney, Australia, that year.
- Flying with South Africa Airlines, we were obliged to layover in Johannesburg for about nine hours.
- The first question we were asked by the immigration officer at O.R. Tambo airport, was, “why can’t you Nigerians stay in your country? !!!”
- It is in the light of this question that I am able to understand the black on black violence / killing of dark-skinned foreign nationals ongoing in South Africa, which, by the way, is worse than a scandal.
- And in President Cyril Ramaphosa announcing to his people that South Africa’s economic woes was caused by undocumented immigrants, he was deflecting his own administrative failings towards Africans of other nationalities.
- What has Cyril Ramaphosa done to stem the tide of undocumented migrants in South Africa?
- How many has he deported? And what has he done to block the routes they follow to come into South Africa?
- While it is the right of the government of South Africa to save its primary constituency from economic adversity, it must do so with utmost sensitivity to the role played by brother African nations to dismantle apartheid.
- In response to the ongoing xenophobia’s murders which has spared no nationality in South Africa, it is my view that an emergency meeting of the African Union should be called, and African nations agree to collectively break off diplomatic relations with South Africa.
