HUNDREDS of passengers aboard a South Africa Airways flight from Lagos arrived at the Oliver Thambo International Airport, Johannesburg in March 2000 to a chilly weather.
Clad in light dresses that the Lagos weather permits, majority were in a hurry to complete the immigration formalities and embrace the comfort of their hotel rooms. On the flight from Lagos were the Nigerian journalists attending the finals of the 2000 CNN Africa Journalist of the Year Award, who were finding the weather unbearable.
At the Immigration counter, two Nigerian journalists, one, a member of the panel of judges, and the other, a reporter with the defunct The Comet were asked to stand aside.
After about five minutes, a health officer told them that they had entered South Africa without proper health certificate.
“But it is not a problem,” he assured, “at the payment of $44, you will be inoculated and allowed into South Africa.”
The two journalists were taken to a section of the airport where they were joined by many other passengers who entered the country without the right health certificate waiting to be inoculated. After the inoculation, they were allowed into South Africa.
But about 125 Nigerians passengers, who travelled to the land of Nelson Mandela last week aboard Arik Air and South Africa Airways, were not that lucky, instead of paying $44 to be inoculated, they were deported to Nigeria.
What has changed ?
Why are Nigerians who were treated with courtesy and respect when South Africa got independence in 1994 now treated like lepers in a country they committed a lot of human and material resources to help liberate?
During the apartheid era in South Africa, the Nigerian government issued more than 300 passports to South Africans seeking to travel abroad as part of its support for the struggle.
Now, Nigerians are often depicted as criminals in high profile South African movies and have reportedly become targets of immigration and police scrutiny.
South Africans allege that Nigerian organised crime groups, mostly involved in illegal drug trafficking, has grown over the years.
High-profile victims of South African antagonism toward Nigerian visitors include Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, who later received an official apology. Former Aviation minister, Kema Chikwe, was detained by immigration officials in 2001 who insisted that she must be vaccinated against yellow fever and quarantined.
Foreign Minister Olugbenga Ashiru, speaking at the National Assembly on Tuesday, said the deportations represented something more than a vaccination concern. Ashiru said it represented the ongoing “xenophobia” faced by Nigerian immigrants living in South Africa who face rampaging police who arrest them without cause.
Visa requirements between the two countries remain strict. Diplomatically, the two nations also hold differing views. Nigeria supported Libya’s rebels during the nation’s recent civil war. Nigeria also joined international forces calling for the ouster of Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo in 2010, while South Africa largely remained quiet.
When The Nation spoke to a Nigerian footballer ,who is now a South African legend on account of his exploits for a Johannesburg based football club, the day after the deportation row broke, he revealed that a lot has changed since he arrived in 1994 and now.
He recalled that when he first arrived in South Africa, he was treated like a King everywhere, not on account of his sharp reflexes as a goalkeeper, but because of the role Nigeria played in liberating South Africa.
The class of Nigerians in South Africa then were professionals in medicine, teaching, information technology and other fields of human endeavour contributing to the growth of the society and earning a decent living.
The problem that led to Nigerians being treated with contempt in South Africa began shortly after independence when thousands of Nigerians who were chased from Zimbabwe and others trooped to South Africa in thousands.
On arrival, they discovered that unlike Europe and America where they could do menial jobs, and survive, such opportunities were not available in South Africa.
Ms. Ayanda John, a South African tour guide, said: ‘’So many things have changed. At independence, Nigerians where treated like kings, but in last year ten years, your people have become a real nuisance to our society. In every crime, you see a Nigerian, drugs, fraud, prostitution, kidnapping. They are all being perpetuated by Nigerians. Are we supposed to sit down and allow you destroy our country? No!”
Ms. John said the fact that Nigeria helped liberate South Africa is not reason enough to allow Nigerian criminals to destroy South Africa. “At government, business and diplomatic level, our elite may be pretending that all is well, but at the level of the masses, we are tired of Nigerians and we don’t want them on our soil, if they want to, let them close all South African businesses in Lagos, a drug free South Africa is better than billions of Rands from Nigeria.”
By the late 1990’s, research by the South African police revealed that the growth of Nigerian organised crime groups in South Africa is phenomenal. Despite this, there have been comparatively few arrests and fewer successful prosecutions. Street level drug officers in Johannesburg admit that they are largely unsuccessful in countering Nigerian criminal gangs and parts of inner city Johannesburg are increasingly dominated by the activities of these ‘drug lords’
On the eve of the 2012 FIFA World Cup, National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele threw caution to the wind when he publicly blamed Nigerians for being behind drug syndicates that have infiltrated South Africa. “South Africa should not be the space for criminals. We are being targeted by international criminals, who are [making] factories of drugs in South Africa. They all come from Nigeria and live in Sandton.”
Two weeks earlier, police discovered a major syndicate operating in Gauteng and North West, and arrested 16 men. Cele said the kingpin was a Nigerian national living in Sandton. He warned that the police would be using ‘deadly force’.
Not just Nigerian affairs
For a country renowned for intellectualism, drugs’ smuggling is the only thing many South Africans associate Nigerians in their country with.
Sandidiwe Mbambo, a resident of Witbank, claimed Nigerians will do anything to import drugs into South Africa.
Ms.Mbambo revealed that it was once fashionable for South African ladies to fall in love with Nigerians and travel with them to Latin American countries for holiday, but not anymore.
“Many girls who went with them were killed and when they have been murdered, their corpse will be used to bring drugs, and the bodies are dumped after the drugs have been removed. If anybody is doing that to your daughter, sister, wife or mother, would you want them in your land? Our heart will be filled with joy, if Nigerians leave en-mass.’’
While Mbambo’s story may be difficult to verify, the fact that Nigerians are in the news for wrong reasons is not deniable.
Only recently, Ambrose Monye, a former Nigerian athlete, who quit track and field in Nigeria to play Rugby in South Africa, was arrested for murder and drug dealing.
Monye is regarded as one of Pretoria’s (South Africa capital city) most dangerous men - the “go-to guy” if you want someone’s legs broken or need protection via his company, Big Dog Security”.
Monye before the new charge has once been charged with beating a 48-year-old motorist, Neville Olivier, to death in 2009. Now he is back behind bars in connection with the murder of Chanelle Henning.
While Monye is fighting to beat the murder rap, a Special Drug Court in Durban, South Africa recently sentenced one of South African drug lords, Ndudim Agoha, a Nigerian, to 20 years imprisonment.”He was caught dealing in over R100 000 cocaine and ecstasy and therefore his involvement in manufacture and distribution is obviously of much larger scale than your average drug dealer,” Mark Dyson, the senior public prosecutor told the court.
Another high profile case is that of Frank Nabolisa, a Nigerian drug lord who was recently sentenced to jail alongside Sheryl Cwele, wife of the country’s Security Minister, and an accomplice to 12 years in prison each for trafficking drugs. Sheryl is married to State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele. They were convicted after the court found the pair guilty of using young women as carriers to smuggle cocaine into South Africa from Turkey and South America. Both the defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges.
While delivering the sentence, Judge Piet Koen noted: “Many families are affected by drugs which are brought here illegally. They suffer as a result of dealers who often initiate addiction by constant supply and thrive on that addiction.”
The good, the bad, the ugly
Are there no Nigerians in South Africa making the news for good reasons? Nigerians in South Africa are a combination of the good, the bad and the ugly. Take the case of Dr. Kolawole Adigun. Last year, Dr. Adigun won the 2011 prestigious Pierre Jacques Rural Doctor of the Year Award in South Africa. The award, which was instituted by the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa (RuDASA) in 2002, is to reward doctors, who excel in the provision of healthcare services in the rural areas of the country.
But as the country media was reporting Dr. Adigun’s feat, they were also reporting the arrest of one Dr. Wale Aremu, another Nigerian qualified doctor, and five other Nigerians involved in fraud and corruption. Aremu and the other unnamed doctor, allegedly staffed three of their clinics with five unqualified doctors, thus putting lives of thousands of South Africans at risk.
The arrest of Aremu and others came after a two-year investigation by the Hawks and the Health Department.
One of the quacks was alleged to be a gardener, another, a car washer. They apparently used the qualified doctors’ practice numbers, allegedly with their permission, to work as doctors. The men appeared in the Middleburg Magistrates court in Mpumalanga province, they are charged with fraud and corruption. It is believed that the two qualified doctors will also be charged for contravening various health practitioner regulations.
A Nigerian teacher in South Africa, Sunday Ojikutu believes Nigeria government needs to sit down with South African government to find a lasting solution to the problem of illiterate Nigerians in South Africa who are giving the country a bad name. He said: “ Their argument is that there is no job in South Africa ; that is why they are doing drugs. This is not tenable, neither the argument that South Africans are criminals. Even if South Africans are criminals. How many of them are stealing in Abuja or Lagos? While I condemned the deportation because of yellow card, I must say we need to check our citizens here, before we have a worse crisis.’’
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