The Complex Roots of Xenophobia in South Africa
Crowning a king in any form on foreign soil is anathema. It is insidious, provocative buffoonery, and I don’t care if the perpetrators are fed to crocodiles. But the current orgy of violence in South Africa is driven by xenophobic rage, not righteous indignation over foreigner slight. South Africans habitually punish all foreigners for the infractions of a few. If you believe that the murderous onslaught on foreigners is down to the coronation of an Igbo king in the Eastern Cape, you can believe anything. The coronation is an affront, but that is only a slice of the story.
The truth, as I have consistently shown on this page, is quite simply that many South Africans love the sight of foreign blood. If they had their way, all foreigners living in South Africa would be burnt to smithereens, together with their properties. Unemployment in South Africa stood at 31.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025, but South Africans are currently shutting down foreign-owned businesses. The day they wake up from their reverie, they will turn on their leaders.
Underlying Factors of Xenophobia
The factors driving xenophobia are linked to defective upbringing. That’s a common thread when you look at in-group vs. out-group bias, evolutionary survival instincts, fear of the unknown, stereotyping and cognitive shortcuts, or perceived economic/social threat. It is behind cultural conditioning and authoritarian personality traits. Brutalised by centuries of slavery in their own land, many South Africans have long become a corrupt, murderous lot recreating the horrors of apartheid with their Black folks as fodder.
They pounce on the slightest excuse to loot, rape and murder. Hear the testimony of a young Igbo man formerly resident in South Africa: “I saw a pregnant woman die in a hospital in South Africa in 2014 because she’s Ugandan. A South African woman stopped the doctor from treating the woman. But people think it’s all about Nigerians. South Africans don’t like Africans. It was white people in South Africa that really helped me. The best thing for all Africans is to leave South Africa.”
South Africans routinely invade schools and maltreat the children of foreigners. When they wake up in the morning, many South African youths do not consider the antics of a rapacious ruling class gorging itself on the country’s resources: they think of the nearest foreigner shop that they can loot for breakfast. If all foreigners left South Africa, they would resume the ancient wars and tear one another to pieces. They have a ruptured psyche, a form of mental disease. As compulsive alcoholics, drug users and rapists, these warlords blame their addiction on foreigners.
The Broader Context of Violence and Injustice
During their recent invasion of the Nigerian Embassy in that country, they had the familiar complaint about Nigerians peddling “draags” and “prostituting” their women. In March, though, the police arrested five South African female drug mules at the OR Tambo International Airport with drugs worth more than R5 million. They were en route to China via Dubai.
Are foreigners to blame for South Africa’s rape epidemic? It’s no news that South Africa has one of the world’s highest rape statistics. From 2023–24 alone, SAPS reported 42,500 rape cases. Last year, between January and March, there were 10,688 cases. Due to underreporting, experts say that these figures significantly understate actual reality. According to Action Society, “a rape is reported every 12 minutes. Every day, 86 people are murdered and 88 attempted murder cases are reported. Every day, 595 people are assaulted with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm (Assault GBH). Yet, for the whole quarter, only 622 murderers and 609 sexual crime convicts were sentenced.” Hmmm.
Dikeledi Mphela, Goitsione Machidi and McClaren Mushwana, the three South Africans undergoing prosecution for killing a 22-year-old Nigerian e-hailing driver, Isaac Satlat, in Pretoria West, did nothing wrong in the estimation of many South Africans. On February 11, the accused ordered a ride using a mobile phone number not registered in their name, and when the vehicle arrived, Mphela and an accomplice got into the vehicle, while two other killers followed in a separate car. Mphela and her accomplice strangled Satlat to death and robbed him of his cell phone and vehicle. But hear the incredible rationalisation by Mzansi vermin: the vehicle was unregistered!
You see, in the Rainbow Nation, foreigners never have a permit, even if born there. Remember Chidimma Adetshina.
The Role of Government and Social Media
The arrogance of these individuals on social media is simply incredible. They seem to think that all Nigerians have a love affair with their country. But they are not to blame after all. Imagine if Nigeria had a government! When the so-called leaders make the country a hellhole, why won’t South Africans gloat till they can’t breathe? Look at the gallons of Plateau blood shed to placate the Fulani gods of terror. On Palm Sunday, the terrorists who habitually boast that the Plateau people will have no hands with which to eat Christmas meat struck again, cutting down 28 souls in cold blood.
They acted just like they had on April 10, 2022, when they killed more than 150 people in the state. Whenever Fulani murderers attack the people of Plateau, the security agencies go on holiday, resurfacing afterwards to impose strange curfews. This week, the governor of the state visited the beleaguered community in an armoured vehicle. He made his useless address surrounded by heavily armed security.
Fulani merchants of blood have been killing Plateau people for ages and, as a matter of fact, Plateau elders once approached the UN for protection. The governor and his colleagues have done absolutely nothing to protect the people. The South-West has Amatekun and the South-East spoke of Ebubeagu, but the governors of the North Central have been playing ping-pong with the lives of their people. A senator from the state who condemned an attack by the Fulani once stormed a press centre in Abuja, urging that the story be pulled down. The clown did not want to offend Buhari, the disaster of a president who asked a grieving Benue people to accommodate their countrymen after a genocidal attack on New Year Day in 2018.
The Path Forward for Nigeria
It is a no-brainer that when the government fails to act, terrorists exploit the power vacuum. This is the verdict when you look at some countries in the Sahel.
Many Nigerians in South Africa won’t return home because there is no light, yet the authorities can deploy large-scale solar farms in high-radiation regions, promote rooftop solar systems for homes, schools, and businesses, and expand mini-grids and off-grid solar for rural communities lacking access to electricity. They can identify and develop high-wind zones, explore offshore wind potential along the coastline, install small wind turbines for rural and agricultural use, and use hybrid systems (wind, solar and storage) to improve reliability.
But will they? No. They are busy manipulating the electoral process using the format that sabotaged Eyitayo Jegede and his party in Ondo State in 2016. Gross!
