The recurring decimal of xenophobic attacks in South Africa would have been nipped in the bud if the truth had been allowed to prevail. Since the end of apartheid rule in 1994, South Africa had experienced escalating xenophobia because of the failure by governments to be decisive. In what can be termed as sitting on the fence, both Nigerian and South African governments have failed to take decisive actions to stem the violence.
In 2017, South African security agents were openly blamed for looking the other way as a Nigerian was molested while the police were implicated in the extrajudicial killings. Two years earlier, the Zulu king, Goodwill Swelithini, had derogatorily described foreigners in a hate speech as ‘lice’ that ‘should be plucked out and left in the sun’ while ‘requesting those who came from outside to please go back to their countries.’ Many of the casualties were not recorded. The chief executive officer of newly-established Nigerians in the Diaspora Commission, Abike Dabiri, said that in 2016, 118 Nigerians had been killed extra-judicially in South Africa in addition to other 88 casualties.
A few months back, the Deputy Director-General of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, Elizabeth Ndubuisi-Chukwu was mysteriously found dead in her hotel room. Before then was the killing of Dennis Obiaju, a 17-year-old high school student, who was fatally shot dead. Even though South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa has condemned the mayhem, what cannot wish away is the fact that the unending attacks can be said to represent a monumental failure of both governments to stop the maltreatment of Africans by fellow Africans.
The government has opted to be more pragmatic by boycotting the World Economic Forum on Africa, sending a special envoy to the South African leader and summoning the country’s High Commissioner to Nigeria. Miscreants in Nigeria have also decided to take the law into their own hands by vandalising and looting some South African businesses in obvious retaliation. Similar responses have also been witnessed in other African countries, where people emptied into the streets to protest the conduct of their South African brothers.
Despite the big-brother role Nigeria played to end racial segregation and bring down the white-minority apartheid regime in South Africa, and the gratuitous support accorded South African businesses to thrive in Nigeria; it is curious and indeed unacceptable that Nigerians are still being viciously attacked and mindlessly killed in South Africa. The High Commissioner of South Africa to Nigeria, Bobby Monroe recently denied reports of xenophobic attacks in his country. The South African envoy described the attacks as a mere “sporadic acts of violence,” adding that businesses belonging to other South Africans were affected in the violence.
Telling the truth, the Catholic Bishops of South Africa have stated that the claim by the South African authorities suggesting that the attacks on Nigerians and other foreigners in the country were not xenophobic was incorrect and misleading. Archbishop Buti Tigagale of the Southern African Catholic Bishop’s Conference Office for Migrants and Refugees disclosed that the attacks were xenophobic. Acting as the voice of the voiceless, Tigagale said the bishops were dismayed that they took note of the recent upsurge in violence against foreigners.
The bishop stated that “Once again, we receive reports of the authorities doing very little to protect the victims. We received a report of police standing by idly in Pretoria while shops were looted and people attacked. Not a single arrest was made on that day. The authorities resort to the old explanation that this is not xenophobia, but the work of criminal elements. Let us be absolutely clear; this is not an attempt by concerned South Africans to rid our cities of drug dealers. And this is not the work of a few criminal elements. It is xenophobia, plain and simple”, he said.
As fallout of the attacks, the Federal Government had begun the evacuation of Nigerians willing to leave the country. The government should no longer tolerate the senseless killing of Nigerians. Furthermore, the South African government must address the deprivation of its citizens such as insecurity, education, hunger, unemployment, and housing for the restive youths. African governments should be up-and-doing by improving their economic fortunes that is fuelling illegal migration of their citizens because of greener pasture.
For the huge loss, the government of South Africa could be made to pay heavy compensation and reparation for the unwanted killings, if the necessary political will is missing. Our continent would continue to lag as long as governments continue to sit on the fence; a situation deplored in Lenrie Peters’ poem titled, The Fence when he says: “There where the body ages relentlessly and only the feeble mind can wander back there I lie in open-souled amasement”. According to Peters, there is an endless battle between ‘truth and untruth’ because human beings are naturally inclined to tell lies when only the truth is called for. That is the where the role of Catholic bishops becomes indispensable. Getting xenophobia behind us requires basically one thing – telling the truth.
