By Prince Debo Luwaji
The latest news making the rounds is that near deserted airports and empty shops in South Africa, in the immediate aftermath of the recent xenophobic attacks and immigrants’ expulsions, are forcing a rethink in certain quarters.
In a related development that also suggests some soberness, the country’s International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola, was reported on X to have called for the implementation of an African Union decision to convene a continent-wide conference towards addressing the root causes of migration and challenges associated with irregular migration.
I suspect it won’t be long before the same Nigerians who suffered huge losses and were chased out of different parts of S.A found their way back, awaiting another inevitable xenophobic attack sooner or later.
Aggrieved Nigerians who talk about a strong government action against South African businesses here would draw nothing. A recent business report shows that Shoprite Group -the largest supermarket chain in SA made over 85% of its global sales returns in that country alone, indicating that all other stores elsewhere abroad, Nigeria inclusive, can close down for all it matters!
Besides, South African nationals are not into mindless migration the way other Africans are; so, there are obviously not many of them here and any talk about reprisals is pointless. I recall once passing through the American Embassy in Johannesburg on a weekday morning and was amazed to see how deserted it was. Only a few individuals could be spotted at a time that, were it to be in Nigeria, there would have been rowdy queue of applicants in their hundreds, many of whom would probably have slept at nearby car parks overnight to make it to the embassy early.
The root cause of migration, whether to SA, Europe, America or anywhere in the world no longer requires too many conferences to decipher. Increasing hardships, unmitigated poverty rates, unemployment in their home countries and perceived better opportunities abroad are the major driving force behind African’s desperate flight overseas, reaching epidemic proportions in recent years and causing global concerns. From Sweden to France, USA, UK and wherever else the pastures appear greener to immigrants, liberal postures to immigration have long given way to stricter censorship and tough laws against illegal immigrants – necessitated by mounting unemployment and socioeconomic challenges as well as overstretched public services in those countries, with politicians winning and losing elections based on their performance or stand on this thorny issue especially.
So, South Africa is by no means an exception. It is a beautiful country in most parts. If it were not so tens of thousands of tourists would not be pouring in from near and distant places to the nation’s ultimate economic benefit. Despite this however, there’s a large population of unemployed and unemployable blacks, too messed up by booze and hard drugs for their own good, who are completely dependent on the state’s social welfare system for very basic subsistence. They constitute the mob and non-state actors to whom the expulsions of the so-called illegal immigrants are left ever so often. S.A’s repeated xenophobic recourse has become one too many, so much so that some believe it is now difficult to exonerate the government.
Those who point to the well documented sacrifices Nigeria made in South Africa’s emancipation from White oppressive rule have a point. While this can never be a justification for Nigerians disregarding their immigration laws, I think the problems our nationals constitute in S.A is often largely exaggerated. Sadly, anytime the lazy locals are searching for scapegoats for their misery, the indiscriminate targeting of foreigners often put the fate of legal migrants who make worthy contributions to that nation’s economy on the line.
Why do I think the South African government is complicit, especially as regards not putting the restless and violence prone nature of some of its large black communities in check?
My daughter and her family spent over 12 years in that country as legal resident. From her arrival there in 2008 for her A’ Level studies, through her University Medical training – both in some of the country’s most prestigious institutions, to her practice as a medical doctor, my wife and I as parents must have visited jointly or independently more than a dozen times, added to another couple of excursions undertaken with pupils and staff of our school. Despite our obvious justification for repeated visits, at no time did the usual rigorous screening and expensive visa charges produce more than 3 months visa per-time. One would have thought that the exceptional asperity attached to granting South African visa (as against UK or US that would give 5 years multiple visas for frequent travelers) was precisely to whittle down the possibility of illegal entry and prolonged stay.
Within those periods of visits, we witnessed many firsthand armed robbery incidents in supposedly posh and tightly guarded residential areas. We were near victim and actual victim a couple of times, the unforgettable one being in December 2015 in Johannesburg, where we had gone for our daughter’s graduation.
Two days before the event, my sister had arrived from her base in the US and had made the mistake of asking a uniformed official at the airport for information on how to get a cab to our Guest house, showing him an address in Sandton.
Unknown to her, an unmarked car followed her on the one-hour drive from the airport, ultimately rounding up the Uber driver as he was about to enter the electronic-controlled gate to the guest house. They relieved my sister of her entire luggage, including her US Passport, jewelry and the rest. I was right in front of the CCTV monitor watching the commando style robbery as the 4-man gang transferred the luggage into their waiting car and zoomed off.
The first interesting part of this experience is that it didn’t take more than 8 minutes after our distress call for the different arms of their law enforcement units to arrive at the scene; first the regular police and soon after the Airport Police and other uniformed units. Every one of us was impressed! What a difference from Nigeria, we thought.
They looked and sounded efficient. They took turns questioning my sister and the witnesses till we were tired of the interrogation. They retrieved the CCTV footage of not just that of the guest house but many others on the roads leading to our guest house. One of the officers admitted they know the gang and how they have accomplices planted at the airport.
The second interesting part, however, and here is the sad one, is that all that bravado amounted to nothing at the end of the day. After days of fruitless visits to the investigating authority, the victim eventually returned home without any of her stolen items, lucky to secure some temporary travelling documentation from the US embassy in Jo-burg.
Now, with experiences like these, it is difficult to fault those who argue that the government, intent on winning or retaining power through the overwhelming voting block that the black majority constitutes, often deliberately treat the excesses of the miscreants: the robberies, the thuggery and molestation of foreigners with kid gloves.
Prince Debo Luwaji – An entrepreneur and Public Affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.
