For decades, South Africa occupied a unique moral position on the African continent. Its struggle against apartheid was not merely a national liberation movement but became Africa’s defining cause. From Lagos to Maputo, from Addis Ababa to Harare, and Rabat to Cairo, independent African states mobilized diplomatic, financial and material support to isolate the apartheid regime and assist South African liberation movements.
Today, however, one uncomfortable question refuses to disappear. Has South Africa forgotten the solidarity that helped secure its own freedom? The answer is difficult to avoid when one considers the recurring waves of xenophobic violence that have periodically swept across South Africa since 1994. Foreign nationals, many of them African migrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia, Nigeria and elsewhere, have been attacked, displaced and, in some cases, killed. Their businesses have been looted and destroyed. These are not isolated incidents but recurring episodes that have attracted condemnation from across the continent and beyond.
South Africa remains a constitutional democracy with a progressive Bill of Rights. Many South Africans reject xenophobia and have actively protected foreign nationals during periods of unrest. Civil society organisations, religious institutions and ordinary citizens have repeatedly demonstrated solidarity with migrants. It would therefore be inaccurate and unfair to portray all South Africans as xenophobic.
Yet acknowledging this reality does not absolve either society or the state of responsibility. The troubling question is not simply why these attacks occur. It is why they continue to recur with alarming regularity. Governments cannot eliminate prejudice overnight. They can, however, establish a clear norm that violence against vulnerable communities will not be tolerated. Critics argue that successive South African administrations have responded to xenophobic outbreaks with condemnation after the fact rather than sustained preventive action. Arrests have been made following some incidents, but the recurrence of attacks has raised persistent concerns about deterrence, accountability and political leadership.
Equally concerning is the political language that sometimes frames migration almost exclusively as a security or economic burden. South Africa undoubtedly faces genuine socioeconomic challenges. Unemployment remains among the highest in the world, inequality is severe, crime is a major public concern, and public services are under immense strain. These pressures are real and deserve serious policy responses.
But difficult socioeconomic conditions do not justify collective blame. There is scant evidence that immigrants as a whole are responsible for South Africa’s structural economic problems. The country’s unemployment crisis predates recent migration patterns and is rooted in a complex combination of historical inequality, educational disparities, slow economic growth, governance failures, infrastructure constraints and global economic trends. Reducing these problems to the presence of foreign nationals risks creating convenient scapegoats while leaving underlying issues unresolved.
Therefore, the irony is impossible to ignore. Many of those now labelled ‘foreigners’ come from countries that paid tangible costs in supporting South Africa’s liberation struggle. Nigeria became one of apartheid’s fiercest international opponents, contributing substantial financial resources to anti-apartheid efforts and supporting South African exiles. Nigeria nationalized British Petroleum and Barclays Bank just in order to cripple the Apartheid regime in Pretoria. This is not mentioning how the salaries of Nigerians were deducted as contribution to liberation movements and many other things too numerous to mention.
Mozambique provided sanctuary to members of the African National Congress despite enduring military destabilisation by the apartheid regime. Zimbabwe, after achieving independence in 1980, maintained close political support for South African liberation movements. Ethiopia hosted the headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity, which made the dismantling of apartheid a continental priority. Across Africa, newly independent states devoted diplomatic energy, economic resources and political capital to ensuring that apartheid became internationally isolated.
None of this creates a permanent debt owed by one generation to another. Nations evolve, governments change and citizens cannot be held personally accountable for history they did not make. Nevertheless, history creates moral expectations. The expectation was not that South Africa would repay Africa financially. It was that democratic South Africa would become a beacon of African solidarity and a nation whose own painful history of exclusion would make it especially vigilant against discrimination directed at others.
Instead, the continent has repeatedly watched images of African migrants fleeing violence in the very country whose freedom Africa helped defend. This disconnect inevitably raises difficult diplomatic questions. Should African governments continue treating xenophobic attacks in South Africa merely as domestic disturbances? Or should they collectively elevate the issue through stronger engagement within the African Union and regional institutions?
No sovereign state should tolerate interference in its internal affairs.
Equally, no member of the African community should assume that repeated attacks on fellow Africans concern only domestic politics. Continental solidarity cannot be invoked selectively. If African unity justified collective action against apartheid, can African unity remain silent when Africans are targeted because they are foreigners? This is not an argument for punitive measures against South Africa. It is an argument for principled accountability.
African governments could collectively demand stronger implementation of protections for migrants, encourage more effective law enforcement against perpetrators of xenophobic violence, expand cooperation on migration management and insist that inflammatory political rhetoric be replaced by evidence-based public policy.
South Africa deserves empathy for its immense socioeconomic challenges. But empathy should not become an excuse for recurring failures to protect vulnerable people. Leadership is measured not only by constitutional ideals but by the willingness to defend those who have the least political power.
The Rainbow Nation inspired the world by proving that reconciliation could triumph over hatred. It now faces a different test. Whether it can demonstrate that African solidarity extends beyond speeches commemorating the anti-apartheid struggle and into the daily protection of fellow Africans who live, work and seek opportunity within its borders. That would not merely honour South Africa’s past. It would honour Africa’s shared history.
