Battle of the elephants The conflicts between Nigeria and South Africa

Battle of the elephants
The conflicts between Nigeria and South Africa are threatening pan-African integration. The elites ignore the real problems of their countries.

Nigeria's President Buhari with his South African colleague Ramaphosa in Pretoria.
When Nigeria signed the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) as the 53rd country on July 7, it was an important step in a widely praised but also heavily criticized neoliberal integration project. Just three weeks later, afrophobic acts of violence in the South African economic center of Gauteng once again shook the principles of pan-Africanism that underlie the political utopia of a continental free trade area.

Attacks on African immigrants in South Africa have a long history. The riots, which peaked in early September, were the latest in a series of twelve violent waves that have targeted foreign nationals since 2000 and killed 150 people. In Johannesburg, hundreds of shops of Nigerians, Ethiopians, Congolese, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and others were burned and ransacked by violent mobs. All under the pretext that inner cities must be freed from the predominance of foreigners and the illegal drug trade of immigrants. A disproportionate number of Nigerians are attributed to drug trafficking in major cities in South Africa.

After decades of isolation under apartheid and in view of the high level of unemployment, black South Africans see little improvement in their living conditions in the "new" South Africa, because they still have no prospects and cannot feed their families. For example, the locals accuse immigrants from other parts of Africa of contesting jobs and resources and operating criminal networks. Since the end of apartheid, South Africa has been one of the most dangerous countries in the world with the highest crime rates, corruption is rampant, law and order are not being sufficiently enforced. African migrants in particular receive practically no protection from the security authorities. Afrophobic attacks are therefore directly related to the socio-economic problems that millions of people in South Africa suffer from.

Afrophobic attacks are directly related to the socio-economic problems that affect millions of people in South Africa.

Between 2016 and 2018, at least 118 Nigerians are said to have been killed in South Africa. According to a UN report from 2019, there are officially 27,327 Nigerians living in the country, while Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama speaks of up to 800,000 people. This discrepancy suggests that an immense number of Nigerians live in South Africa without a residence permit and therefore drift particularly easily into the informal economy.

In the past, relations between the two largest African economies were characterized by cooperation, but increasingly also competition. During the military rule in Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s, the two countries were hostile, but in the years that followed, between 1999 and 2007, they built institutions and security and development structures in Africa through strong and promising diplomatic cooperation. Together they propagated the doctrine of the Organization for African Unity Against Coups of Africa. After 2007, however, competition for positions and representation in international forums overlaid this joint leadership. Pretoria and Abuja have repeatedly clashed over immigration policies and outbid each other by denying and deporting people.

Economically, the two countries are in competition with each other. While Nigeria overtook South Africa as the continent's largest economy in 2014, South Africa, which exports many of its goods and services to Nigeria, is one step ahead in its trade balance. Due to strict regulations, only a handful of Nigerian companies were able to gain a foothold in South Africa, while more than 100 South African companies have positioned themselves on the Nigerian market. The telecommunications giant MTN controls 65.3 percent of the Nigerian market, and South African banks and the supermarket chain Shoprite have also invested on a large scale.

These companies are the face of South Africa in Nigeria because there is no large South African community there, and were therefore also targeted by retaliation for the violent acts of South Africa by angry Nigerians. Branches and branches of MTN, Shoprite and the cable television station MultiChoice were temporarily closed, some looted before the police could intervene. Various parts of society have been calling for boycott measures, apologies, compensation or even nationalization of South African companies. The anger that has built up in the years when there have been repeated attacks on Nigerians has solidified in the collective consciousness of the country and its people. With Nigeria demonstrating solidarity with the South African brothers in the fight against apartheid and playing a key role politically and financially, people are now deeply disappointed.

The South African government tacitly tolerated xenophobic populism, did not stop the violence in time and never took legal action against suspected perpetrators.

This mood could only arise because both governments lacked commitment. The South African government tacitly tolerated xenophobic populism, did not stop the violence in time and never took legal action against suspected perpetrators. Many Nigerians also accused their own government of not taking a firm stand against ill-treatment and murder of their compatriots. In the end, she was still active: Like other African nations, Nigeria boycotted the World Economic Forum in Cape Town in September 2019, but sent a special ambassador and agreed to work with Pretoria to find a permanent solution that would put an end to all forms of violence and xenophobia should. Around 600 Nigerians were returned home, but the two governments failed to identify and combat the roots of the violence: fierce competition for work, associated with poverty, hopelessness, and lack of prospects for millions of mostly young people.

The recent xenophobic attacks show that relations between the two countries need to be improved to prevent escalation and solve the problems, but also to advance pan-African projects like AfCFTA. The growing and prolonged antagonism can be understood as the externalization of internal problems in both countries, the causes of which are lack of development, increasing poverty and increasing social inequality. Nationalist and isolationist behavior opposes the pan-African orientation in many countries, not only in South Africa and Nigeria.

Polarization is also evidence that both countries are governed by a political elite that is unable and often unwilling to take responsibility for their country's problems. The leadership is increasingly decoupled from the people and their problems and more interested in their own survival than in the development of the country.

If the respective governments and elites don't deal with their internal problems, the AfCFTA's neoliberal focus will only make things worse.

In the long term, the AfCFTA provides for the free movement of people and the establishment of a visa-free zone for the member countries as well as a common passport for the African Union. In the context of the current tensions, such a pan-African project is not particularly promising. And if the respective governments and elites do not deal with their internal problems, if they do not involve civil society, workers' movements and the ever-growing shadow economy in the debate about national development and the distribution of wealth, the AfCFTA with its neoliberal orientation will only become everything make worse. Large-cap corporations will continue to expand, and intercontinental migration to economic centers and megacities will increase. Without regulation and protection, the exploitation of the poorest and competition between them will become increasingly brutal. Among the most exploited, a nationalist outlook easily spreads and immigrants are declared scapegoats.