From Abuja to Addis: How xenophobic attacks in South Africa threaten Pan-African unity

By Jeff Okoroafor

The videos are sickening. A Ghanaian woman dragged from her shop. A Nigerian trader beaten in broad daylight. South African citizens cheering as fellow Africans are robbed and humiliated. These are not isolated incidents. They are a recurring nightmare that South Africa refuses to wake up from. Yet far too many of us, watching from Abuja, Accra, Nairobi, and Kinshasa, have treated this tragedy as someone else’s problem—a South African problem, an internal affair. It is not. The fires lit in Hillbrow and Durban today will, if left unchecked, consume the entire continental house we have spent six decades trying to build.
Last week, Nigeria announced plans to repatriate its citizens from South Africa. At least 130 Nigerians have already registered to return home voluntarily, joining over 800 Ghanaians whose government is funding mass evacuations from Johannesburg. In Durban, 400 terrified foreign nationals—Congolese, Ethiopians, Rwandans, Somalis—were herded onto buses by police as anti-migrant mobs chanted “They must go!” while women and children pressed identity documents to bus windows to prove their right to exist on South African soil. A Burundian refugee who fled a war in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the age of 12 told journalists: “I have the papers to be here. But every time there has been a xenophobic upheaval, I have been a victim. In 2012, I was shot in the head and nearly died. A few years later, I was stabbed by a mob. I fled a war in my country, yet I cannot find peace in South Africa.” Let that sink in. A man who survived a war only to be shot in the head and stabbed by mobs in the nation that calls itself Africa’s rainbow. This is not governance failure. This is a moral abyss.
The diplomatic consequences are already cascading. Ghana summoned South Africa’s acting high commissioner for a formal démarche over “continuous xenophobic attacks on Ghanaians and other Africans.” Nigeria demanded full investigations, autopsy reports, and prosecutorial action over the deaths of two Nigerian citizens allegedly assaulted by security officials. Somalia issued a security alert urging its citizens to avoid public spaces and keep businesses closed during periods of heightened tension. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights expressed grave concern, the United Nations condemned what it called “criminal acts perpetrated by individuals inciting violence,” and even the African Union is under mounting pressure to convene an emergency session.
And yet the violence continues. Groups such as March and March and Operation Dudula have intensified campaigns, setting a June 30 deadline for undocumented foreigners to leave the country—an ultimatum that carries no legal weight but plenty of terror. In Estcourt, a local mayor reportedly shut down businesses owned by African migrants, handed the keys to local residents, and ordered foreign nationals to vacate the area within 21 days. Ghana’s High Commissioner confirmed that at least 25 Ghanaian-owned businesses were seized, with Nigerian and Angolan diplomats also reporting their citizens among the victims. This is not vigilantism. This is ethnic cleansing by administrative decree.
The Betrayal of Pan-Africanism: What makes this unbearable is not merely the violence—it is the historical betrayal. South Africa’s freedom was not purchased solely with South African blood. It was a continental project, financed by the sweat of Nigerian labourers, shielded by Ghanaian diplomatic passports when ANC leaders were stateless, trained in camps in Tanzania, Zambia, and Ethiopia, and sustained through decades by frontline states that endured South African military raids and economic sabotage for the crime of sheltering freedom fighters. Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, captured the pain precisely: “These developments are most depressing because as Africans, we all know the role we played in assisting South Africa to defeat the apartheid regime.” He described the attacks as “naked hatred” and “baseless xenophobia,” a “betrayal of African unity.” A betrayal. That is the word. And it is the correct word.
During apartheid, leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere declared that Africa’s liberation was indivisible. Nelson Mandela, in his memoir Long Walk to Freedom, acknowledged Ghana’s singular contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle. Today, the descendants of those who provided sanctuary watch their own children being dragged from shops and beaten in the streets of a “free” South Africa. To attack a Ghanaian, a Nigerian, or a Zimbabwean in Soweto is to attack the descendant of the people who made Soweto’s liberation possible. South Africa is desecrating its own moral foundations.
The Economic Reckoning That Waits: Beyond the moral catastrophe lies a cold economic reality. South Africa is not an island. It exports over R800 billion—approximately $45 billion—worth of goods to the rest of Africa annually, from mining equipment to manufactured products, chemicals to agricultural produce. Nigerian lawmakers, led by Senator Adams Oshiomhole, have already called for the revocation of operating licences of South African companies such as MTN and DStv, or even the nationalisation of South African-owned assets. “When a country, for the first time, kills Nigerians, they got away with it. Second time, they riot, they kill Nigerians, they got away with it. Third time, they kill Nigerians, they got away with it,” Oshiomhole declared. “Is human economy, weight, or foreign investor, foreign dollar more important than the life of a Nigerian?” While Senate President Godswill Akpabio has wisely resisted economic retaliation for now, citing the need for diplomatic engagement, the pressure is building, and patience is not infinite.
If just five African nations decided to retaliate by banning South African imports—a plausible scenario given the outrage in Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere—the Johannesburg Stock Exchange would plunge, the rand would collapse, and hundreds of thousands of South African jobs would vanish overnight. That is not speculation; it is basic trade economics. And the damage would not stop at goods. Hundreds of thousands of South African citizens live, work, and thrive across the continent—professionals in Nairobi, traders in Accra, students in Kigali. If African nations decided to expel them in retaliation, South Africa would suddenly face a mass return of its own people needing housing, jobs, healthcare, and schools. An already fragile economy would break.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)—our most ambitious economic integration initiative, designed to create a single market of 1.3 billion people worth $3.4 trillion—cannot succeed when African nationals are treated as outsiders in fellow African countries. The World Bank projects that effective AfCFTA implementation could lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035. But xenophobia acts as an invisible trade barrier that threatens the entire edifice of continental integration. As AfCFTA policy analysts have warned, “no continental market can function effectively when African nationals are treated as outsiders in fellow African countries.”
The Retaliation That History Would Not Forgive: We must speak plainly about the risk of retaliation. Already, voices across the continent are calling for tit-for-tat measures. Ghana’s government has wisely warned its citizens against reprisal attacks on South Africans living in Ghana, with Foreign Minister Ablakwa assuring that Ghana will not tolerate such actions. But the restraint shown by Accra and Abuja is not guaranteed to hold if the violence continues. Professor Daniel Dramani Kipo of the University of Ghana cautioned that “it’s against the continental unity that we are looking for,” but acknowledged that the patience of ordinary Africans is wearing thin. City & Local Guides
The Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) in Nigeria has opposed retaliatory measures, warning they would be “inappropriate, disproportionate, and counterproductive” and could “damage longstanding bilateral relations, weaken investor confidence, and undermine the broader objective of African economic integration.” The CPPE is right. Retaliation would hurt Nigerian workers, suppliers, and consumers who depend on South African businesses for their livelihoods. But the moral calculus cannot be one-sided: South Africa cannot demand that other African nations protect its economic interests while its own citizens burn the businesses of fellow Africans and its local officials seize foreign-owned shops and hand them to locals.

Jeff Okoroafor is a social accountability advocate and a political commentator focused on governance, accountability, and social justice in West Africa.