Afrophobia: Should Nigeria ask South African companies to leave?<\/p>\n
By Lasisi Olagunju<\/p>\n
Jacob Zuma was President of South Africa when he declared on October 21, 2013 that South Africa should not \u201cthink like Africans in Africa, generally.\u201d The remark, delivered at an ANC manifesto forum at Wits University elicited gasps across Africa. History remembers it as the infamous \u201cI am not an African\u201d speech.<\/p>\n
As of three days ago, the Nigerian government has evacuated 801 Nigerians from South Africa. From city to city, black South Africans were almost unanimous that their poverty was because of blacks from other African countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo home. Go back to your country.\u201d They told everyone.<\/p>\n
The English word \u2018xenophobia\u2019 has been around for almost 200 years. The Greek have \u2018xenos\u2019 (stranger) and \u2018phobos\u2019 (fear). Those are the parts with which the light-fingered English Language forged \u2018xenophobia\u2019, which now means \u201cthe fear, hatred, or deep distrust of people perceived as foreigners, outsiders, or culturally different.\u201d But my teacher said I should not apply that word to South Africans and their current \u2018Africa Must Go\u2019 campaign. The fear and hatred they have for foreigners knows boundaries; the hatred is geo-colour sensitive. Only black Africans from outside South Africa are routinely marked out for rage. My teacher said the proper word for that hatred is Afrophobia.<\/p>\n
Zuma\u2019s 2013 statement reveals something deeper than a careless pronouncement. It betrays the ideology of South African exceptionalism \u2013 the belief that the country is more civilised, more entitled and somehow less \u2018African\u2019 than the rest of the continent.<\/p>\n
With \u2018exceptionalism\u2019 is \u2018Afrophobia\u2019, South Africa\u2019s peculiar disease. South Africa\u2019s violent eunuchs will not stop blaming fellow Africans for their personal failures and frustrations. Exactly as Zuma said, they\u2019ve always bought into their own hype of supremacy, and because of that, they think it makes good economic sense to view outsiders as inferior targets for hostility and their expulsion the elixir for their economic impotence.<\/p>\n
Should Nigeria and Nigerians, in retaliation, ask South African companies to leave Nigeria? Should they not? These are uncomfortable questions. Yet, every fresh wave of Afrophobic attacks in South Africa makes it harder to avoid. A country whose companies earn billions of dollars annually from Nigerian consumers owes Nigerians more than condolences whenever they are hunted, assaulted and dispossessed on South African streets. It owes them protection.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the latest madness two months ago, Edo senator, Adams Oshiomhole, asked Nigeria to \u201ctake away the South African rights\u201d from what those Afrophobes have in Nigeria. He mentioned the telecoms company, MTN. Adams was a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Other big people thought negotiation would soften the heart of the arrogant who think they are specially created.<\/p>\n
If Nigeria does what Oshiomhole suggested, would it be doing what no one has ever done before? In fact, it would actually be doing justice to its historical relationship with South Africa.<\/p>\n
Read Ann Genova\u2019s \u2018Nigeria\u2019s Nationalization of British Petroleum\u2019. In defence of suffering black South Africans, on 30 July 1979, the Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), acting on behalf of Nigeria\u2019s Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo, sent a telegram to BP (Nigeria) Ltd. informing the company that Nigeria had decided to \u201cincrease its participation to 100 per cent\u201d in Shell-BP and BP (Nigeria). The reason was explicit: the United Kingdom was proposing to resume oil supplies to apartheid South Africa. To Nigeria, that decision was an unjust endorsement of the oppressors of black South Africans.<\/p>\n
In Yorubaland, we say that if you make enemies because of a piece of firewood, that wood should at least give you enough warmth. Nigeria made costly enemies in defence of black South Africans. Today, the very people for whom Nigeria paid that price chase Nigerians through the streets of their country like rabbits. History rarely serves up an irony more painful than that.<\/p>\n
So, let the lesson in Nigeria\u2019s past engagements provide the pathway to the future of our relationship with South Africa.<\/p>\n
In doing that, I suggest that Nigeria answers today\u2019s hostility with the same economic instruments it deployed in defence of South Africans 47 years ago. There is a certain justice in irony. There would be a certain poetic justice in that. The lesson would be simple: yesterday\u2019s sacrifice should not continue as a subsidy to today\u2019s ingratitude.<\/p>\n
What I am saying here is that Nigeria once used economic power to defend South Africans; it should use same economic power now to defend Nigerians from the hostility of black South Africans.<\/p>\n
If, in their days of freezing cold, the fire of nationalisation warmed them, let it now char the ungrateful into remembering that every act of solidarity deserves remembrance, and every act of ingratitude has consequences.<\/p>\n
In their hostility, they think they are special and it shows in their swag. Exceptionalism says, \u201cWe are better than you.\u201d At its most arrogant, it also says, \u201cWithout us, you cannot survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Years ago, Nigeria\u2019s juju music maestro, Ebenezer Obey, answered that conceit in a song: \u201cWithout me, my friend will not eat; without me, my friend will not drink.\u201d Then he rebuked the boaster: \u201cstop saying so; only God Almighty sustains all.\u201d Obey understood what some politicians forget. No nation is indispensable.<\/p>\n
On June 7 this year, while appealing for calm, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that \u201cmany communities have expressed anger about the number of foreign nationals running spaza shops, trading stores and other informal outlets.\u201d He said many South Africans believed that \u201cforeign enterprises are squeezing out South Africans from operating in these markets in their own communities.\u201d The South African President then stressed that \u201cthese concerns must not be dismissed.\u201d Government, he said, has a duty to \u201csupport local enterprise\u201d and ensure that South Africans \u201cparticipate meaningfully in the economy.\u201d Fair enough. But does the Nigerian government owe its own citizens any less?<\/p>\n
If South Africa may \u2018lawfully\u2019 deploy policies that strengthen domestic enterprise, Nigeria should not hesitate to adopt equally \u2018lawful\u2019 measures that strengthen Nigerian businesses where South African firms dominate strategic sectors. Reciprocity is one of the oldest principles of statecraft.<\/p>\n
If South Africa insists it is unlike the rest of Africa, should it not also surrender the privileges it enjoys precisely because it is African? Why do South African companies flourish across the continent, especially in Nigeria? Every Nigerian who buys MTN airtime, subscribes to DStv, renews a GOtv decoder or streams Showmax contributes to the profits of South African corporations, the dividends of South African shareholders and the tax revenues of the South African state.<\/p>\n
Apartheid means \u201capartness.\u201d There is a cruel irony in watching a people whose freedom was secured by the sacrifices, solidarity and hospitality of other African countries now deploy the logic of exclusion against fellow Africans.<\/p>\n
But \u201ctwo can play that game.\u201d And they should. Publicly available data shows that Nigeria does not merely receive South African investment; it invests in South Africa every single day. Nigeria substantially finances South Africa.<\/p>\n
Nigeria is MTN Group\u2019s largest market by subscribers and one of the principal engines of its profitability. It is a South African company. Records show that in the 2025 financial year, MTN Nigeria generated more than \u20a65.2 trillion in revenue, accounting for roughly one-quarter of the group\u2019s total revenue. MTN Group reported service revenue of R218.5 billion for 2025, with Nigeria contributing about 27 percent of the figure. Those earnings enrich MTN\u2019s shareholders, many of them South African pension funds and retail investors, and ultimately enlarge Pretoria\u2019s tax base.<\/p>\n
MultiChoice, another South African company, tells much the same story. Millions of Nigerian households have financed DStv, GOtv, SuperSport and Showmax for years. Those subscriptions sustain a company whose headquarters, shareholders and principal tax obligations remain rooted in South Africa. In its 2025 financial year, MultiChoice contributed billions of rand in taxes, with a substantial share going directly to the South African government.<\/p>\n
I told a friend that there should be consequences for what happened in South Africa last week. The friend told me that the consequences \u201cwill not be mob retaliation but statecraft.\u201d<\/p>\n
I nodded in agreement. It is for the government to do.<\/p>\n
Diplomacy history is replete with cases of states using economic instruments to pursue foreign-policy objectives. The United States has, for instance, repeatedly done so through tariffs, sanctions and investment restrictions under presidents of both political parties. As law professors Ashley Deeks and Andrew Hayashi observe in \u2018Tax Law as Foreign Policy\u2019, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have shown \u201cthe same growing appetite for using economic tools to pursue foreign policy and national security goals.\u201d Nigeria would not be inventing a new warhead if it fires this missile at South Africa.<\/p>\n
My argument is about the responsibility of governments. If Pretoria repeatedly fails to protect Nigerians while South African companies continue to earn enormous profits from Nigeria, Abuja is entitled to review the terms of that economic relationship. Tax policy, competition law, procurement rules and investment regulations are legitimate instruments of foreign policy. States use them every day.<\/p>\n
The old folktale warned us about the crow \u201cbeautified with our feathers.\u201d Those who now peck at our eyes would do well to remember whose feathers first enabled them to fly. Oore p\u1eb9\u0301, a\u1e63iw\u00e8r\u00e8 gb\u00e0gb\u00e9. The foolish dismiss old favours because they were received long ago.<\/p>\n
Enough of the insults. South African companies operating in Nigeria must be made to feel the heat of the fire raging against Nigerians in South Africa. South Africa cannot, through its businesses, continue to feast on Nigeria\u2019s vast market while Nigerians are hunted in South African streets. As the Yoruba warn, if you let an ant climb you unchecked, it will keep climbing until it reaches even the forbidden place. Tell the Government of Nigeria that the Golden Rule has its counterpart in international relations: reciprocity. Or, in everyday language: do me, I do you.<\/p>\n
Friendship demands reciprocity. So does commerce. Apply pressure where it matters. Their businesses are their pressure points; they are their balls. Hold those firmly enough, and the message will be heard.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 The Shield Online!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afrophobia: Should Nigeria ask South African companies to leave? By Lasisi Olagunju Jacob Zuma was President of South Africa when he declared on October 21, 2013 that South Africa should not \u201cthink like Africans in Africa, generally.\u201d The remark, delivered at an ANC manifesto forum at Wits University elicited gasps across Africa. History remembers it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-others"],"yoast_head":"\n