South Africa’s leaking pipe mistake

The traditional candid advice is that you do not mop the floor before fixing the leaking pipe. South Africa did the exact opposite and we are still wondering where it got its own advice from. South Africa had to flagrantly fling this useful suasion away before its current realities as a country. After their vicious ethnic mobs, backed by their complicit government’s passivity and intransigence, they chased people away from their country, and drove many others underground. The country is now faced with the new realities of their collective folly. The emerging reports of new, brewing protests and a new wave of post-immigrant agitations among the people is one that would test the current government of South Africa in some novel dimensions.

One of the new dimensions of the new-fangled challenge Ramaphosa’s government will tackle is in the field of diplomacy and international relations. During the week, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declined to receive a South African envoy in audience. The South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, had sent Ronald Lamola, the country’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, to Nigeria. Obviously, without too much thinking, we know that Lamola was sent not just to see what can be done about the degenerating situation their government has found itself, it was also to see how best South Africa can be a beneficiary in the famed Nigerian large heart.

However, both the king and his emissary are either naïve or bereft of adequate knowledge. By that contention, I mean that both Ramaphosa and his envoy either do not respect Nigeria one bit, or are not wise enough to have thought that they could stroll into Nigeria and just walk up to Tinubu in Abuja. This borders on insult and it is repulsive. If Ramaphosa was so thoughtless not to know, shouldn’t Ronald Lamola, as a foreign affairs minister, have enough training to know how to approach another country’s president? Or, why would Rampahosa and his cohorts plan, and send Lamola to Nigeria – a supposed diplomatic journey, without prior notice to the Nigerian authorities? Why would Lamola himself think that he could come to Nigeria without proper groundwork and think he could get direct access to President Tinubu? Who do these South Africans think they are?

Scheduling issues or not, it would have been utterly degrading and highly annoying if Lamola had been given access to President Tinubu. Even Cyril Ramaphosa himself is not entitled to an unscheduled stroll-in on our president like that, personal friendship or not. It would have amounted to another layer of insult on the pile of South African insults and disdain already weighing heavily on Nigeria as a country.

So, it is profoundly heartwarming that Lamola was sent to see our Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Sola Enikanolaye. That privilege alone should be considered an achievement for him on his condescending trip. No South African other than their President Ramaphosa is deserving of the ears of the Nigerian president because of what their country has been doing to Nigerians. And the terms for any such visit should be properly defined by Nigeria. Recent developments in the country, which have forced Nigeria into a sudden evacuation of nearly 1,500 of its citizens call for this. South Africa, rather than being penitent and showing restraint, has remained on its high horse. It has remained its ungrateful, Afrophobic self.

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They should simply be shoved aside for now so that we can fashion out how to rescue our country and citizens from their hateful disposition. We must find a way around South Africa because if the country keeps pillaging visitors, especially Nigerians, and killing them without a just cause while ruining their legitimate businesses, they do not merit our ears, or our time, or our treasure. That nothing was heard from the South African government except platitudes while this is going on, is enough reason to ostracise them. When one considers the obvious fact that these South Africans have proven time and again that they are a pristine example of Alaimore, the best we should give them is our cold shoulders.

The alaimore is an ingrate – the man who does not recognise the good done to him. In fact, speakers of the Oyo variant of the Yoruba language equate and ingrate to the sick. They say that the sick person shows gratitude to his caregiver only by a frequent release of gases. That is exactly what Nigeria has received from Ramaphosa, his government and the people of the country. If their thoughts were for a mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries, the South African government would not have left it to this very unreasonable time to seek an audience with President Tinubu. And rather than making it a formal visit, they fatuously sent a minister, and also without doing their homework!

The odd South African emissary to Nigeria was because they are beginning to feel the increasing heat. South Africa came only because they know that thousands more Nigerians and indeed other Africans are seriously intent on leaving their hateful country. They know that the resentment against them is growing across Africa, and they know that Nigeria holds the key to any fruitful turnaround there might be in their impending socio-economic trouble. So, why didn’t they fix the leaking pipe before mopping the floor? Why did they allow unschooled mobs to dictate the terms of their cleaning exercise? Why did the government not nip the loathsomeness in the bud? After the damage has already been done, Ramaphosa and his team have now begun to seek redemption in the same Nigeria whose citizens your policemen and sundry criminals are still robbing, maiming and killing. It simply doesn’t add up.

Of course, the signals are now clear enough to them, and they can also see that the prognosis is not looking good for their country. Some might argue that this is outside of their trademark xenophobia, but why would Oprah Winfrey choose this period to close the school for girls she had been running for about 20 years? They must have been hearing and seeing that a growing number of Nigerians are calling for a boycott of their Tyla’s A-Pop tour scheduled for December in Lagos. And the resultant cancellation of that Lagos show is one potent message from Nigerians to the South Africans in their shenanigans.

The Nigerian Ambassador to South Africa, Femi Fani-Kayode, characteristically vented his spleen via X. He pointedly told the xenophobic morons that “the vilification, persecution, targeting, extra-judicial killing, racial stereotyping and murder of Nigerians in South Africa is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Neither will we continue to be complicit in these crimes against our nationals by remaining silent in the face of them.”

Minister Enikanolaye, a name which coincidentally means ‘the world is not any one man’s monopoly’, also asked the visiting Lamola that they must share with Nigeria their views and perspectives on how to address and resolve “the ongoing afrophobic attacks in South Africa, of which Nigerians, and other citizens of Africa, have been victims.” They cannot deny that Nigeria has seen a pattern emerge beginning as early as 1995, and this pattern has continued – 1998, 2006, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024 and now 2026. The Minister said: “It is on record that from 2022 alone, 98 Nigerians have died in mob actions, in hate-related actions that we have called Afrophobia, because we found that the preponderant victims of this ugly situation are Africans and Nigerians in particular.”

These, to me, are some of the prompts for that failed diplomatic shuttle to Abuja by Lamola, who came to deliver the message of an Alaimore Ramaphosa. So, when South Africa leaves the leprosy to address the ringworm, they must be told the naked truth. Nigeria deserves respect, apology, compensation and reprieve for the continuing crimes against its people by South Africa. That said, I think South Africa should be left to stew in its current juice. They should strictly and decisively address Jacinta Ngobese Zuma, Zandile Dabula and Nhlanhla Dlamini before any serious country should listen to their excuses.

For far too long, our country has been rudderless with regards to diplomatic dealings with South Africa and many other countries; and this often leaves Nigerians in these countries in quandary whenever they need the support of their country. This, of course is about Nigerians legitimately living in South Africa and other countries, and who are doing legitimate businesses.

There must be a way to bring these afrophobic South Africans to their senses. If it means totally severing relations with them, so be it! Nigeria cannot continue to relate with South Africa in the manner an old Japanese proverb describes a disadvantaged suitor. “A man who is wooing a girl on the hillside knows that they are not on the same level,” the Japanese say. This is quite instructive and we must bring ourselves to the proverbial ‘level playing field’ now that we have an opportunity to speak our minds to them, hear from them and, perhaps listen to them.