Xenophobia, South Africa, Nigeria and children of bad neighbours

By Tony Erha

Again, civil unrest has resumed in South Africa in April and May, 2026, as the country’s black youth population, kill and maim their African brothers, who are from countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Sudan and others. Property and businesses have been ruined through looting, physical damage and arson.

Another strange dimension to the deadly attacks is where South African women married to Nigerians and other immigrant Africans, have been attacked. The women had taken to the street protests in semi-nudity

This is not the first time the rampaging South African predominant black youth population had taken to the street, chanting dangerous slogans and armed with machetes, bottles, daggers, clubs, whips and other dangerous cudgels.

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Since the beginning of the millennium, the violent protests, deaths and destructions had become a recurring decimal in the Nelson Mandela’s country.

In 2008, a major wave of violence resulted in at least 62 deaths and over 100,000 people displaced. In 2015, more attacks led to added deaths, bodily injuries and widespread looting of foreigner-owned shops. The incidents were said to have been sparked by economic hardship, unemployment and the impoverishment if the South African black majority that constitute about 85 of its headcount and the minority whites of a negligable population.

Apart from full-blown cases, there had been such isolated cases of attacks, deaths and destructions that are not recorded.For instance, in April 2004, following the death of Brenda Fassie, a 39 year old South African musical diva, some Nigerians were killed and others hunted in the country, as a result of the rumours that the cocaine overdose doctor said was the cause of her death, was supplied by some Nigerian hard drug agents.

Similarly in 2007, when Lucky Dube, a South African Reggae music sensation, was shot dead, Nigerian immigrants were hiding from pillagers, who avenged it on Nigerians, as his killers. His actual attackers, who were after all South Africans, later confessed to killing him because they taught he was a Nigeria, and they did not know who he was until after seeing the news reports. The trio of Sifiso Mhlanga, Mbuti Mabe, and Julius Gxowa, were later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

South Africa’s recurring waves of xenophobic violence is often codenamed “Operation Dudula”. They are restless mobs that carry out mass deportation of undocumented migrants, stopping their access to healthcare, and raiding their businesses.

But,cl the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, reluctantly condemned the atrocious acts, as he was also accused by Julius Malema, the fiery South African opposition politician, who further accused him of double standard. Malema added that President Ramaphosa with his ruling party, has no genuine interest in stopping the attacks and serve deterrence to the offenders, because they didn’t want to lose the mass votes from the teeming youth in the South Africa general elections, holding soon.

But, the word ‘Xenophobia’ got its origin from ancient Greece, the south European nation, like many notions and words now globally used. Xenophobia is a societal misnomer, which has plagued many countries of the world. Although it is a Greek originating coinage, Xenophobic practices didn’t originate in ancient Greece, but is a timeless blight associated with human origins. Its origin is hardly traced to a country.

Instructibly, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, explicitly describes Xenophobia as a compound word of Greek origin, that emanated from ‘xenos’ (race) and ‘phobia’ (fear). It is the fear or dislike of people who are perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression that is based on the perception that a conflict exists between a group-within and an out-group.

Wild xenophobic protests had been usual exchange in the past four decades, between Nigeria and Ghana, two rivalry West African countries, just as Ghanaians are currently carrying out such street protests against “surges of Nigerian migrants in their country”, with further accusation of “criminalities and economic domination by Nigerians”.

When each time, both countries carry out the xenophobic agitations, there are stereotype makeshift or handmade bags, with which expelled migrants cart away their belongings. To these days, the bags have become a derisive remark by both countries. In Nigeria, it is called “Ghana Must Go” and in Ghana “Nigeria Must Go”. No one seems to know the real origin of the bag.

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Currently, Togo, a Francophone neighbour of Nigeria, is similarly protesting against the flood of Nigerian immigrants in their country.

In response to the South African violent attacks, Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ordered his Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, for emergency response unit in South Africa. The Guardian of 7th May, 2026 quoted the minister as thus;

“I maintained that our government cannot stand by and watch the systematic harassment and humiliation of our nationals resident in SA as well as the extra-judicial killings of our people, and that the evacuation of our citizens who want to return home remains our government’s priority at this time.”

She furthered that the South African government expressed reservations for the recommended evacuation of Nigerians from the country, at their defence of exaggerated reportage of the same attacks, factually reported by some notable foreign media.

This was not the first time Nigeria was taking diplomatic option to the continuous attacks on Nigerians. In September 2019, violence also swept through parts of Johannesburg and Pretoria again. The South African police figures cited by Reuters, said 12 people were killed, and hundreds of businesses looted and destroyed. Nigeria evacuated more than 500 of its citizens from South Africa. There were diplomatic crisis across Africa, with Nigeria temporarily boycotting the World Economic Forum on Africa hosted in Cape Town.

In all, the xenophobic or anti-immigrant deaths, attacks and protests, whether in South Africa, Ghana, Togo etc., have derogatory slogans and wakeup messages passed to Nigerians and their government, that they go back and rebuild their country and stay there, not scramble to go and spoil other countries that were built through hard labour and honesty. They are also mocked to have attitude change, where they will no longer get involved in crimes and lawlessness, in foreign lands.

When we were growing up, our parents would warn us to keep long distance from the children of parents, who were known as bad neighbours. And do we treated them as lepers from whom one can’t share food, drinks or nearness.

It’s interesting having the Nigeria’s Senate and House of Reps, the lower and upper chambers of the country’s legislative bodies, condemning South Africa over the untold deaths and persecutions of their countrymen and women, in their sittings. As if they were truly concerned. Some notable of the members even called for the take-over of South African companies and other economic assets in the country.

In another instance, a clergy of a new-generation church, based in South Africa, wailed that his church’s efifices were razed down. All counted their losses, regretting how Nigeria was supportive of the same South African blacks, when Nigeria helped them fight Apartheid and gave them independence. Their regrets had been that there were a Pharoah and Egyptians who did not know Joseph and the Israelites, just as a Ramaphosa and black South Africa youth who don’t know Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigerians.

To our lawmakers who feign love for Nigerians in South Africa, how many of such cheap deaths of Nigerian have they cared to save in the hundreds of thousands of deaths being lost to terrorist, jihadist and criminal attacks going on in the country? What reliefs have they given to the victims of unbridled corruption they concreted and their milking of poor Nigerians, through ostentatious indulgence as lawmakers, who supposedly make life meaningful to their electors?

Can they be absolved from the executive recklessness, blackmarket Judicial practices and the criminalities that arrest the soul of the country? Are South African blacks to be entirely blamed, when the children of our bad parents besiege foreign lands to manifest the filial responsibility?
Have we forgotten so soon how a gun dwell and killing festival shifted from South Africa to somewhere in Nigeria, when families members were gruesomely murdered in their homes and churches, over sour cocaine deals, and gun battles which started in South Africa and concluded in Nigeria?