The term xenophobia is usually used to describe intolerance and fear of foreign immigrants by indigenous people of a particular country, while Afrophobia is the intolerance and fear of African immigrants.

According to various reports, xenophobia is common in many countries, but Afrophobia is the prevalent societal vice in South Africa. The menace is being perpetrated against Africans, especially Nigerians, who have been the target of Afrophobia.

Chindimma Adetshina

Recently, Nigerians were shocked when South African beauty queen of Nigerian descent, Miss Chindimma Adetshina, was hounded from the Miss South Africa contest in a torrent of vicious xenophobic abuse.

She was forced to pull out of the beauty pageant following the bullying on social media platforms. Adetshina resigned from the competition about 48 hours ahead of the event following a wave of public outcry concerning her citizenship in South Africa.

She faced very brutal and hate filled cyberbullying and xenophobic abuse, with online trolls declaring that she is “not South African enough” to compete or represent South Africa. However, Adetshina was born in Soweto.

This did not satisfy her critics who were convinced that she should have no place in the competition. Adetshina’s father is Nigerian and her mother is South African with Mozambican roots. South African law states that citizenship can be acquired if you are born in the country and at least one of your parents is a citizen or permanent resident.

The hate was focused on her Nigerian root, but it is the dispute over her mother’s nationality that was the final mix. In response to a request from the competition organisers, South African Home Affairs Ministry investigation found early evidence that Adetshina’s mother may have committed fraud and identity theft in 2001.

It suggested that she might not be a South African citizen. In an interview, Chidimma hinted that she may seek therapy on account of this experience. This brings to discussion the Psychological impacts of xenophobic attacks on individuals.

She had said then, “It’s just not a nice feeling, I think I’ve been avoiding it a lot and only now it’s started to cloud me. “It’s something I will work on and see a therapist,” she added with tears running down her face, “because I feel like I have been suppressing my emotions because of what has happened. It wasn’t a minor thing, it was actually really major.”

Miss Universe

Nigeria In a dramatic twist, Adetshina became Nigeria’s Miss Universe after she was welcomed with open arms into the Nigerian beauty pageant hosted by the Silverbird Group in Lagos. Having only visited Nigeria as a young child 20 years ago, she plans to “get to know” more of Nigeria.

In November, she will be off to Mexico for the international Miss Universe competition. Adetshina said an “overwhelming feeling” swept over her when she was crowned Miss Universe Nigeria.

As Nigeria’s representative, she will compete against beauty queens from across the world, including Mia le Roux, who won this year’s Miss South Africa contest. Meanwhile, South Africa’s investigation into Adetshina’s nationality persists. Adetshina’s story is a classic example of the many xenophobic experiences of Nigerians living in South Africa.

History

Xenophobic attacks against Nigerians living in South Africa is a recurrence issue. According to various reports, these attacks include physical violence, discrimination on the basis of nationality, destruction of properties, and businesses. Nigerians businesses and homes have been targeted while many innocent Nigerians have been injured, killed or displaced.

Nigerian churches, garages and hotels have been attacked by South Africans. In an interview with New Telegraph, a Nigerian business woman, Mrs Seyi Oduala, who is the CEO of Classic Sambus, said that the causes of these xenophobic attacks are traceable to poverty and a legacy of apartheid.

According to her, “The South African people have experienced many decades of white dominance and are not ready to experience another form of dominance whether from fellow Africans or white supremacists.

“The South Africa government ought to be involved in fostering a cordial relationship with African immigrants in South Africans by a planned re-education of the people because most of the Nigerians in South Africa are investing in legitimate businesses and contributing to the economic advancement of South Africa.”

Oduala further disclosed that Nigerians in South Africa have been the victims of South African anger against poverty and years of economic deprivation from white supremacists. She noted that although South Africans have gained political Independence, they have not really gained economic Independence.

Their economy is still being controlled by white South Africans. Notable figures in South Africa and ordinary South Africans on the streets have repeatedly labeled Nigerians in South Africa as drug traffickers.

This misconception has contributed to waves of Xenophobia attacks against Nigerians living in South Africa while South Africans living in Nigeria live freely.

Xenophobic attacks on Africans

According to XenoWatch, in 2008 violence was perpetrated against African migrants all over the country. These violence has led to the displacement of more than 100, 000 people and the deaths of several hundreds. Recent wave of attacks featured more antiNigerian sentiments, repeated claims that Nigerians are promoters of crimes and are fast destroying South African communities.

Nigerians have become so undesirable in South Africa that living there may be synonymous with a struggle for survival in a war zone. In 2017, Nigeria’s Senior Special Adviser to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Abike Dabiri, stated that ‘in the last two years, 116 Nigerians have been killed in South Africa and according to statistics, 63% of them were killed by the police.’’

It is true that Nigerians have quickly become primary subjects of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, which are not usually reported or, if covered, are misreported by the South African media.

I It is the Nigerian Union in South Africa (NUSA) that has reliably kept tabs on the issue and given credible reports about the rising number of violent attacks and killings of their fellow nationals. At the moment, eight police officers are reportedly undergoing prosecution for extra-judicial killing of a Nigerian, Ibrahim Olamilekan Badmus, in October 2017.

While it is undeniable that there are Nigerians involved in criminal activities, reliable evidence nullifies the claim that they are the chief perpetrators of crimes in South Africa.

According to the 2017 United Nations data on the population of migrants in South Africa, Nigerian migrants constitute the 20th on the list, with a population of 27,326 (although, this may only represent the number of documented migrants).

Top five countries on the list include; Zimbabwe (649, 385), Mozambique (381,386), Lesotho (312, 537), Namibia (174,043) and the United Kingdom (123,764). South Africa’s 2011 official census also confirms that Africans outside the Southern African sub-region only constitute 7.3 per cent of the total 75 per cent African immigrants in South Africa.

Nigerians not among top rated criminals

Official reports from the Department of Correctional Services indicate that Nigerians constitute a small number of the prison population in South Africa.

In fact, foreign nationals only constitute 6.3 per cent of the total number of inmates in the prisons. Of the total population of 162,162 in the 2011 report, foreign nationals are 8,580 inmates, with Zimbabweans and Mozambicans in the majority and only 426 Nigerians featured in the list.

Of these Nigerian inmates, 242 were still in the awaiting-trial category. However, this misconception was debunked in a recent report by South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI). The agency dispelled the stereotype of Nigerians as major contributors to the country’s top-priority crimes.

The DPCI, led by Lt. Gen. Godfrey Lebeya, released a statistics for the first quarter of 2024, revealing that Nigerians were not among the top foreign nationals involved in high-value crimes.

The data announced showed that South Africans accounted for a significant majority of the suspects arrested for serious offenses, with 77% of the accused being South African citizens.

The remaining 23% were foreign nationals, primarily from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Lesotho. General Lebeya highlighted the substantial number of cases handled by the DPCI, involving over 750,000 charges with a total value of approximately $57 billion.

These cases included serious corruption, fraud, money laundering, police killings, cash-intransit robberies, illegal mining, infrastructure damage, and crimes against the state.

The DPCI, commonly known as the Hawks, reassured South Africans of its commitment to investigating and combating priority offenses.

Nigerians speak

In an interview with the New Telegraph, Mr Henry Mark, a Nigerian farmer and trader from Abia State, noted that, “South Africans’ hate for Nigerians has been happening for a long time.

The cause is that many South Africans are not as hardworking as Nigerians. It is not that there are no opportunities in SA. Nigerians hustle hard in SA and South African women love Nigerians. That is their pain and that is where the problem lies.

South Africans are not happy with Nigerians because Nigerians work harder and accumulate wealth in their country where indigenous South Africans themselves fail to do so. “Why is it that South African ladies love Nigerians more than their South African men?

I have two brothers in SA that are married to South Africans. Nigerians marry South Africans like sand because they love Nigerians more than their men. “This is why the men are angry. While I have visited South Africa many times, I cannot stay there because it’s not safe for Nigerians.

They are jealous of us. We go there, we see opportunities, we hustle hard and we create wealth for ourselves. We are successful and then the South Africans become angry. They destroy Nigerian shops at night, they attack many Nigerians on the streets.

It’s pathetic.” Speaking further Mark said, “Many times they accuse Nigerians of drug trafficking which is not true. If one Nigerian commits a crime, they will use that to label all Nigerians living in South Africa.

“My advice to Nigerians living in South Africa is to be very careful. Their men hate us. It’s only their women that love us. Nigerians work ethic is on another level. They don’t like it. When you hustle hard, you make it and then you have enemies.

They don’t work like us there. They are killing Nigerians a lot over there. I have many relatives there but I will rather stay here in Nigeria than live in South Africa.”

Another Nigerian, Moses Oluwabori Dairo, who is the CEO of Bori Famous Global Enterprises, said, “African women love Nigerians all over the world. It’s the reason why many people are envious. It’s because Nigerians are industrious and they have money.

Nigerians are born hustlers. ‘‘Nigerians leave their comfort zones, their country to go to South Africa to hustle, this is why they have money. This brings envy among South Africans.

If I leave my country to go and work in another country, my energy level will be different from the indigenous people there. It’s the way we are. We have a mission to succeed. We always want to succeed in anything we do.’’

Advice to Nigerian government

When asked what Nigerian government should do to arrest the situation, he said, “Most countries in the world now are using many Nigerians as caregivers.

If you go to the United Kingdom or to Germany, the first job you will likely get as a Nigerian is caregiving. Nigerians are not lazy at all.

‘‘The Federal Government should provide jobs, create employment for the youths so that they don’t need to go to South Africa or anywhere else for opportunities and to hustle. Provide electricity.

Many self-employed people will do better in Nigeria if there is 24/7 electricity supply in the country. “In fact, many businesses are exiting Nigeria because of unsteady electricity alone. The FG may not know what difference a steady electricity makes in the country.

It matters a lot especially for entrepreneurs and businessmen. “This is one of the major reasons Nigerians are relocating to South Africa and other countries. Our government can change this narrative by providing adequate and affordable electricity supply for Nigerians,” he said.

Elder Moses Dairo, a septuagenarian and retired fashion designer, said, “The federal government should provide jobs for Nigerians. If the government provides jobs, youths will not elope. Nigeria is a big brother to all African countries and to South Africa.

‘Nigerian government should take care of the youths and ensure that they are economically occupied. The South African Government should also provide security for Nigerians and jobs for their people because an idle hand is a devil’s workshop.”

In an Interview with the New Telegraph, Mrs Shola Abimbola, an educationist said that sports is not being optimised in Nigeria. Abimbola submitted that young people are often gravitated towards sports and entertainment.

The federal government ought to develop various local tournaments between states and local governments to engage the youths in Nigeria. “We have the population. Take boxing for example, for a boxer to make it big, he has to leave Nigeria to the UK or the US simply because we don’t have a fully developed boxing tournament in Nigeria and you can say that about tennis, wrestling and other sports.

Our government has also not developed our agriculture sector enough to engage hundreds of Nigerian youths and create opportunities in the country,” she said.

Recent developments

Many reports have also indicated that drug trade and trafficking had been a major issue in South Africa before the end of apartheid, long before Nigerians began migrating to South Africa.

Similarly, the influx of African migrants to South Africa is a post-apartheid phenomenon, especially after the 1994 elections that

brought about a new (democratic) South Africa. Nigerians are reported to have only started becoming more visible in the major cities of South Africa after the millennium.

According to the African Centre for Migration and Society of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa started noticing an increase in the number of Nigerian migrants in 2004 as 2,000 entries were recorded every month.

In a 1999 report by the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNODCCP), analysts revealed that South Africa was already becoming another Columbia following a growing rate of drug violence in the 1990s.

Three years later, the same UN agency reported that ‘drug trafficking and organised crimes have unquestionably grown in a symbiotic relationship in South Africa since the mid-1990s.

In 1997, SAPS [South African Police Service] conducted a survey which demonstrated the existence of 192 organized crime groups operating in South Africa of which 92 were focused primarily on the international smuggling of drugs.

In his 1997 report published by the South African Institute of International Affairs, Glenn Oosthuysen noted that ‘‘South Africa has the dubious record of being the world’s largest consumer of methaqualone (commonly called Mandrax).

‘‘Most of the cocaine found in South Africa originates from Brazil and to a lesser extent in other Latin American countries. Initially, South Africa was used as a circuitous route to send both cocaine and heroin to the well-established European and North American markets.’’

According to the UNODCCP, while Cannabis (Dagga) was popular among the black community, Mandrax was more popular in the Indian and Coloured communities, and the white population commonly used Wellconal (dipipanone hydrochloride).

In response to the increasingly overwhelming crisis of drug crimes in the 1990s, a vigilante group, People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), emerged in 1996, which used extreme measures to fight the menace.

The PAGAD approach further contributed to killings and gangsterism in the Western Cape. Reports and statistics have also debunked the notion that Nigerian are drug and human traffickers in South Africa.

There are ample suggestions that Nigerians are more likely to be victims of police extortion and robbery in South Africa. In major cities such as Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town, Nigerians have a popular saying that they are the ‘ATM’ (Automated Teller Machine) of the police and immigration officers.

According to a Research by Nahla Valji in 2003, it was confirmed that Nigerians are two to three times more at risk of robbery, assault and murder than other nationals in the country.

African National Congress

A n o t h e r factor responsible for the tremendous hate against Nigerians and other African immigrants in South Africa is the African National Congress (ANC), which has enjoyed political dominance since 1994 on the wings of its history of liberation struggle, has been mired in corruption scandals.

Instead of admitting their failures, political leaders have chosen to adopt the usage of anti-immigrant rhetoric to shift blame to Nigerians, to distract the people and to find excuses for their failure in the area of economy.

Another reason that have been attributed to the hate experienced by Nigerians in South Africa is the seeming confidence and assumption of continental leadership of every other African nation by Nigeria.

Nigerians naturally assume the big brother role wherever they find themselves among fellow Africans. Nigerians believe that leadership roles should naturally fall on them where ever Africans of other nationalities are congregated.

This is because Nigerians pride themselves as having the largest population of black people and producing most of the successful Africans in the world.

It is this notion that informs Afrocentrism in Nigeria’s foreign policy, which stems from a post-independence belief that Nigeria’s duty to Africa is to be Africa’s ‘big brother.’

This belief informs some ostentatious behaviors that have come to be understood as the ‘Nigerian domineering attitude’ which is so repulsive to other Africans.

For South Africans, in particular, who have experienced more terrifying years of white settlers’ dominance than other Africans, the fear of another round of domination by foreigners may not be out of place.

These fears explain claims that Nigerians are snatching their women and taking their jobs, which Nigerians interpret as the result of envy.

South African gov’t speaks

Foreign Affairs Minister, Naledi Pandor, remarked that there is “the belief and the reality that our people have that there are many persons from Nigeria, who are dealing in drugs in our country, who are harming our young people by making drugs easily available to them.”

Thabo Mbeki, the former President of South Africa and respected African statesman, was similarly quoted as saying that, ‘‘the truth of the matter is that there are Nigerian criminals, who are involved in drug dealing, and that’s true. There are Nigerian criminals who are involved in prostitution and that’s true.