Threats, Attacks a Killings Against Nigerians In South Africa

While local media reports suggest that 800,000 Nigerians live in South Africa, official South African records say the number is about 30,000. It is not clear if the official data includes undocumented migrants. 

"We have faced enough... These killings must stop," said Ahmed Lawan, the head of Nigeria's legislature. 

"The South African government must as a matter of urgency do whatever it takes to protect the lives and property of Nigerians living there."

But it is unclear whether the South African government is committed to protecting Nigerians or other migrants.

Police arrested more than 650 foreign nationals - including traders who had their goods seized - in Johannesburg earlier this month. A court ordered that 489 of them be deported within 30 days, because they were not legally in South Africa.

During a parliamentary debate, Nigerian legislators suggested that the foreign ministry should from now on issue travel alerts to Nigerians planning to visit South Africa.

A presidential aide, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, met South Africa's Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, Bobby Moroe, and demanded an investigation into Mrs Ndubuisi-Chukwu's death.

Mr Moroe was also invited to meet Mr Lawan, and he expressed the South African government's concern about the situation.

"On behalf of the government of South Africa, we express our sincere condolences," Mr Moroe said.

About four million immigrants live in South Africa according to official UN data, although some contest the accuracy of this figure.

South Africa has a history of xenophobic attacks by black people who accuse citizens of other African countries, as well as Asian countries, of coming to steal their jobs.

The wave of xenophobic attacks that swept South Africa in 2008 claimed at least 62 lives. Subsequent incidents, particularly in 2015, have displaced thousands of African migrants and led to the large-scale looting of their shops and other businesses.

We hear that South Africans detest Nigerians because they believe we are criminals, are too loud, and our men steal their women.

"They are arrogant and they don't know how to talk to people, especially Nigerians," South African protesters wrote in a petition to their ministry of home affairs during an anti-immigration march in the capital, Pretoria, in 2017.

Nigerians, on the other hand, believe that South Africans are simply jealous of us. Of our self confidence, and our ability to thrive and outshine.

The tension between the two nations brings to mind a proverb in the Igbo language about a man who lays his pile of clothing by the riverbank while skinny dipping: A naked madman comes along, grabs the clothes and dashes away. Desperate to retrieve his clothes, the other man jumps out of the river in the nude and chases after the madman. Two naked men running through the streets - who, then, is the madman?