Across South Africa, disturbing scenes have once again emerged: African immigrants harassed in the streets, businesses looted, workers intimidated, families beaten, and many forced to flee communities they once called home. Nigerians, Malawian, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Ghanaians, Somalis, Ethiopians and other African nationals have increasingly become targets of hostility from groups claiming that foreigners are responsible for unemployment, crime, and economic hardship. Reports in recent weeks have shown growing tensions linked to anti-immigrant protests and vigilante-style actions by groups such as Operation Dudula.
This crisis should not merely be described as xenophobia. It is increasingly taking the shape of Afrophobia- hostility directed specifically at fellow Africans. That distinction matters. Xenophobia broadly refers to hatred of foreigners. Afrophobia, however, captures the painful contradiction of Black Africans turning against other Black Africans while sharing a common history of colonial oppression, exploitation, and racial segregation.
What makes the situation especially tragic is the historical memory attached to South Africa’s liberation struggle. During the dark years of apartheid, many African countries stood firmly behind the South African people. Nigeria contributed financially and diplomatically to the anti-apartheid struggle. Other African states provided refuge, political backing, scholarships, military training grounds, and moral support to liberation movements. Across the continent, ordinary Africans regarded the suffering of Black South Africans as a collective African burden.
Today, many Africans watch with disbelief as fellow Africans are insulted, chased from communities, denied access to healthcare, and blamed for nearly every social problem confronting South Africa. Critics have accused movements like Operation Dudula of promoting intimidation and social division rather than lawful solutions to immigration concerns.
This reality raises uncomfortable questions. How can Black Africans become unwelcome in a land whose freedom was defended by African solidarity? How can immigrants from neighboring African countries be treated as enemies while descendants of the same colonial structures that engineered apartheid continue to coexist within the same society without attracting equivalent public hostility?
The answer is not simple, because South Africa’s frustrations are real. The country faces severe unemployment, deep inequality, crime, corruption, poor public services, and widening economic frustration. Unemployment remains extremely high, especially among Black youth. These hardships create fertile ground for populist narratives that scapegoat migrants. But immigrants did not create apartheid. Immigrants did not capture state institutions. Immigrants did not design an economic system that favours whites South Africans where the majority blacks South Africans remain excluded from meaningful ownership decades after liberation.
Blaming fellow Africans for structural failures may provide emotional satisfaction, but it cannot build national prosperity.
The uncomfortable truth is that many African migrants in South Africa occupy spaces abandoned by weak economic participation, entrepreneurship gaps, or governance failures. Some run small businesses under difficult conditions. Others take jobs locals may not want. Many contribute taxes, labour, skills, and investment into the economy. None of this denies that immigration must be properly regulated. Every sovereign nation has the right to enforce its immigration laws. But law enforcement cannot become mob justice, ethnic intimidation, or collective punishment against Africans.
Equally dangerous is the growing rhetoric that paints specific nationalities- especially Nigerians- as inherently criminal or morally corrupting. Such stereotypes poison African unity and reduce complex social issues into simplistic tribal or national blame games. No country is free from crime, and no nationality should be criminalized because of the actions of a few individuals.
It is also important to avoid turning this into hatred against any South African ethnic group. While tensions in some communities have involved individuals from different backgrounds, including some Zulu-speaking areas, millions of South Africans, especially their women across all ethnic groups strongly oppose violence against immigrants and continue to defend African unity. Civil society groups, activists, and political voices inside South Africa have repeatedly condemned anti-immigrant vigilantism. But these voices are not loud enough.
Africa stands at a defining moment. The continent is home to more than 1.4 billion people, enormous mineral wealth, vast agricultural potential, youthful energy, and expanding markets. Yet Africa continues to struggle partly because colonial borders still shape how Africans see one another- not as partners, but as competitors. A continent divided against itself cannot become a global power.
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The dream of African greatness cannot survive if Africans are hunted in African streets.
South Africa remains one of Africa’s most industrialized nations and carries enormous symbolic influence. If the vision of a united and prosperous Africa is ever to become reality, South Africa must lead not through exclusion, but through Pan-African cooperation, economic reform, lawful governance, and social inclusion. The same applies to every African nation.
And Nigeria, with its population, cultural reach, entrepreneurial spirit, and strategic influence, also carries historic responsibility. Africa’s future may well depend on whether Nigeria fully realizes its own potential and rises to lead with vision, stability, and continental purpose. A stronger Nigeria can help inspire a stronger Africa.
In the end, history teaches a permanent lesson: no people rise by hating those who look like them, pray like them, and share the scars of the same past. The road to Africa’s promised future will not be built by walls between Africans, but by bridges among them. For when Africans finally learn to see one another not as foreigners, but as fragments of one destiny, the continent may at last begin its long journey to the promised land.
■ Steve Otaloro is a Nigerian political analyst and public affairs commentator known for his strong advocacy for African unity, democratic accountability, and Pan-African development. Can be reached at steveoomania@gmail.com
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