The Federal Government of Nigeria has sent a clear and unambiguous message that the government of South Africa should stop the deliberate targeting of Africans, including Nigerians, on the basis of their nationality and colour of their skin.
The federal government sent this message yesterday in the opening address delivered by the Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Amb. Olusola Enikanolaiye, during a roundtable discussion on "South Africa's 'Xenophobia' in Comparative Perspective," which was organised by the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA).
It urged South Africa to take charge of the enforcement of its immigration laws and not surrender same to mobs because the solution to illegal migration is not to cut off their head, kill and harm them.
Nigeria also said, "when leaders describe entire categories of people as drug lords, criminals, parasites, thieves or threats to national survival, they create an environment in which violence can be socially permissible."
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
This comes as the Consul General of South Africa, Lagos, Prof. Bobby Moroe, in his presentation at the NIIA rejected the tag of xenophobia being pinned on South Africans, arguing that isolated incidents of criminality performed by the vigilante groups could not determine whether South Africans are xenophobic or not.
Enikanolaiye stated that as far as Nigeria was concerned, what was currently playing out in South Africa under the cloak of "xenophobia" was nothing but pure "Afrophabia" which aptly described the reversed apartheid being target mainly on Africans and not citizens of different colour or race.
According to him, "on this occasion, the issue we discuss is the deliberate targeting of Africans, of Nigerians, of Ghanaians, (13:42) and we take this hard core (position) to stop."
He said: "It is Africans that have been targeted by fellow Africans. It is citizens of countries that has stood with South Africa during its darkest years that are being portrayed as unwanted outsiders, and this creates a profound moral and historical contradiction.
"Nigeria supported the anti-apartheid movement, both politically and diplomatically.
"Nigeria opened its doors and sorted immigration movement, even at considerable economic and political costs.
"It therefore amounts to a gross distortion to reduce the relationship between Nigeria and South Africa through mere trade statistics or diplomatic communiques.
"There is history between our peoples. There is blood in that history. There's sacrifice in that history. There's solidarity in that history.
"And that obviously imposes upon both nations a special responsibility to ensure that the relationship between our people is not defined by periods of episodic hostilities.
"Yes, we must also resist the temptation to make this solely a Nigerian-South African affair, which would be intellectually inactive."
The minister of state said that South Africa occupied a special place in African collective imagination as the country of the great late President Nelson Mandela whose democratic transition from apartheid represented one of humanity's most powerful demonstrations of reconciliation over revenge.
He, therefore, said that, "it is both painful and paradoxical that a country which emerged from the crucible of one of the world's most institutionalised systems of racial exclusion and separate development, which is what apartheid means, to periodically witness this sad exclusion and sometimes violent targeting of people on the basis of their nationality or where they come from and the colour of their skin."
The federal government also wondered why a society should hold migrants accountable for its underlying social tensions like unemployment, corruption, etc., that they did not create.
According to the minister, the claim that migrants are principally responsible for unemployment, crime, pressure on public services, are unsupported with evidence and often exaggerated.
He said: "And perhaps more importantly, why do society still sometimes blame migrants for structural failures that migrants did not create?
"The migrants did not create those structural issues, or indeed, those employment challenges.
"Migrants does not create corruption or institutional weaknesses.
"These are challenges faced not only by South Africa, but many other countries, including my own."
According to Nigeria, "there is a difference between protecting national interest and constructing a politics of deliberate exclusion, and there is a difference between patriotism and xenophobia or Afrophobia.
"Patriotism says 'I love my country. The Afrophobia says, 'I must hate yours in order to love mine.'
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
"If the first can build nations, the second ultimately destroys societies."
The federal government argued that xenophobia and Afrophabia are damaging South African international reputation and investor confidence, complicating diplomacy, threatening regional integration and places African businesses and citizens at risk, "and perhaps most dangerously it erodes the moral authority that South Africa acquired through its own liberation struggle."
Nigeria, therefore, proposed that both countries should move speedily to activate mechanisms, including, ultimately, the convening of the Binational Commission between the two countries.
Meanwhile, in his response, Bobby Moroe, said, "if South Africans were xenophobic, I do not think South Africa would be host to 3.9 million migrants, which is about 6.3 per cent of our total population of 65 million.
"Of those, roughly 2.4 million are documented foreign nationals and the rest are not. Yet they remain protected by the constitution in the country, regardless of whether or not they are illegal."
