The fires in Pretoria and Johannesburg have barely cooled, but the stench of betrayal hangs heavy. Between April 27 and 29, 2026, mobs once again rampaged through South African cities. Shops were looted, homes were invaded, and lives were snuffed out. Among the dead are two Nigerians, Amaramiro Emmanuel and Ekpenyong Andrew, reportedly killed by the very security forces sworn to protect them. This is not a momentary lapse. It is the latest installment in a two-decade saga of xenophobic violence that has claimed over 118 Nigerian lives since 2015 alone.
Pretoria continues to reject the word “xenophobia.” Officials call it “protest against illegal immigrants.” The euphemism collapses under the weight of facts. When mobs demand “all foreigners leave” but only pursue Black Africans, when Nigerian children in South African schools are told to “go back to your country,” this is not about immigration status. It is Afrophobia—raw, targeted, and deliberate. And it is a betrayal of history, of solidarity, and of the very idea of an African brotherhood.
South Africa appears to suffer from selective amnesia, or worse, a deliberate refusal to remember who stood with it when the world looked away. During the darkest years of apartheid, when the United States, Britain, and Israel armed and bankrolled the apartheid regime, Nigeria stood on Africa’s frontline. From 1960 to 1991, the Nigerian state and its people funded the liberation struggle directly and consistently. Workers paid the “Mandela Tax,” a deduction from salaries meant to sustain the fight for freedom. Through the Southern Africa Relief Fund, Nigerians raised over 20 million naira.
The support went beyond money. Nigeria issued its passports to ANC operatives, hosted Thabo Mbeki and other exiles when no other country would, chaired the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid for three decades, and imposed oil embargoes when others were still hedging their bets. Nelson Mandela’s first international trip after his release was to Lagos and Abuja, a pilgrimage to thank the country that had never wavered. Winnie Mandela said it plainly: “Nigeria contributed a great deal towards our liberation.”
To repay that sacrifice with machetes, bullets, and mob justice is not merely ingratitude. It is moral bankruptcy. It reduces the memory of shared struggle to ash and tells a generation of Africans that solidarity ends when convenience demands it.
Today, Nigerians in South Africa are once again being hunted on the same flimsy pretexts. Economic frustration, with unemployment above 30%, is weaponized against migrants. The lie persists that Nigerians “steal jobs,” despite overwhelming evidence that Nigerian, Somali, Ethiopian, and other African migrants create businesses, pay taxes, and fill gaps in the economy that locals either cannot or will not fill. Entire communities have been built on the labor and entrepreneurship of these migrants. Yet the narrative remains: outsiders are the problem.
This narrative is reinforced by criminal stereotyping. All Nigerians are painted as “drug dealers” and “fraudsters,” a caricature that provides moral cover for violence. It ignores the obvious truth that crime has no nationality. For every Nigerian arrested for a crime in South Africa, thousands live lawfully, contribute to the economy, and raise families. But nuance is abandoned when hate becomes politically useful.
Groups like Operation Dudula and March and March have turned anti-foreigner rhetoric into a political tool, mobilizing votes ahead of elections by promising to “cleanse” communities of outsiders. It is opportunism masquerading as patriotism. More troubling is the state’s role—or lack thereof. Perpetrators are rarely prosecuted. When security forces themselves are implicated in the deaths of Nigerians, it sends a chilling message: some African lives are expendable. The state’s inaction is not neutrality; it is complicity.
Abuja has not been silent. President Bola Tinubu ordered the activation of crisis notification units in Nigerian missions across South Africa. The Minister of Foreign Affairs summoned South Africa’s High Commissioner and asked the question many Africans are asking: should we stop calling this xenophobia and start calling it Afrophobia? The House of Representatives has called for a review of bilateral agreements and a temporary suspension of business permits for South African firms. NIDCOM and the Nigeria Labour Congress are pushing for prosecutions, protection, and accountability.
These steps are necessary, but they remain reactive. Diplomacy without consequences is ignored. South Africa and Nigeria have signed Early Warning Mechanism Memoranda of Understanding before. Implementation has been weak, enforcement absent. The result is a cycle: attack, condemnation, promise, repeat.
Already, 130 Nigerians have registered for voluntary evacuation. Evacuation is a humanitarian necessity in the short term, but it cannot be a long-term strategy. Nigeria has over 3 million citizens across Africa. If every country decides to turn on us, do we evacuate the continent? That is neither feasible nor dignified. What is required are enforceable guarantees: joint monitoring mechanisms between Nigeria and South Africa, public prosecution of perpetrators, and compensation for victims and their families. Statements of concern must be backed by mechanisms that make future attacks costly and prosecutable.
Where, in all this, is the African Union? Its silence is deafening. The AU was built to prevent exactly this kind of intra-African violence. Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act gives the Union the right to intervene in grave circumstances, including crimes against humanity. The pattern of state-tolerated Afrophobia in South Africa qualifies. Ghana has petitioned the AU to intervene. A Nigerian lawyer has filed a petition with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, citing violations of the AU Constitutive Act and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The AU must act. It should deploy an observer mission to South Africa to document attacks and monitor prosecutions. It should establish a continental fund for victims of xenophobic violence, financed by all member states, so that no African is left to bury their dead alone. And if South Africa fails to implement concrete protection measures, the AU must show the same courage it showed against apartheid South Africa by suspending it from all Union bodies. Selective memory cannot be allowed to selective justice.
Nigeria, for its part, must link future trade and aviation agreements with South Africa to verifiable benchmarks in migrant protection. Economic partnership cannot be decoupled from human security. If South African businesses want access to the Nigerian market, South Africa must guarantee that Nigerians can live and work there without fear of mob violence. African unity cannot survive if the AU only meets for photo opportunities and communiqués that gather dust. As the NLC rightly put it, xenophobia is a cancer. If it is not excised, it will metastasize across the continent.
The truth is inescapable: South Africa owes its freedom to the rest of Africa. To turn that debt into a blood debt is intolerable. Nigeria has shown restraint, even when that restraint is mistaken for weakness. Restraint, however, is not infinite. No nation can watch its citizens hunted abroad and do nothing indefinitely.
We therefore call on Pretoria to uphold its constitutional promises of dignity and equality, or admit that it cannot protect Africans in Africa. The promises of the post-apartheid constitution mean nothing if they apply only to South Africans. An Africa that eats its own cannot claim to be rising.
And we call on the African Union to choose. It can defend the African people and justify its existence, or it can continue its silence and become irrelevant. There is no middle ground. “There is no emancipation without solidarity.” If that principle is abandoned in South Africa today, no African is safe tomorrow.
Nigeria’s history demands that we speak. Our sacrifice demands that we act. And our future demands that we ensure no African ever again pays for being African with their life. Enough is enough.
