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This is where the reflections of my mentor and co-writer, Dr. Newton Jibunoh, become particularly relevant. In his writings and recollections about Southern Africa, Jibunoh has repeatedly drawn attention to the human connections that existed across countries during the liberation years. His experience was not confined to government meetings or diplomatic ceremonies; he travelled through the region, encountered people from different countries and observed how political struggles created relationships that ignored the artificial distance created by national borders.
His argument points towards something that should have become a major pillar of Nigeria’s post-apartheid strategy. The Technical Aid Corps had already recognised the value of placing Nigerians in other African societies and, importantly, had included youth contact among its formal objectives. But the idea could have been taken much further. Nigeria could have deliberately created large-scale programmes for student exchanges, apprenticeships, university partnerships, young professional placements and cultural immersion between Nigeria and the countries of Southern Africa. Young Nigerians could have spent meaningful periods studying and working in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Maputo, Lusaka, Windhoek or Harare, while young Southern Africans could have been encouraged to study, train and work in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kano or elsewhere in Nigeria.
Such a programme would have done something that diplomacy alone could never accomplish. It would have allowed Africans to encounter one another as people rather than as headlines. A South African student would come to understand that Nigeria is more than a large country with a complicated reputation; a Nigerian student in South Africa would discover a society whose history, anxieties, ambitions and contradictions cannot be understood from television reports or social media.
Friendships would develop, professional networks would emerge and, perhaps most importantly, stereotypes would have less opportunity to become the basis of national attitudes.
This mattered because the post-apartheid relationship between Nigeria and South Africa was destined to become much more complicated than the solidarity of the liberation era. The two countries established formal diplomatic relations on 21 February 1994, just before South Africa’s first democratic election, and in October 1999 they established the Nigeria–South Africa Bi-National Commission as a framework for political, economic, social, cultural, scientific and technical cooperation.
The relationship quickly moved into areas that had barely existed during the apartheid years: trade, investment, telecommunications, banking, retail, energy, mining, aviation, education, tourism and private enterprise. South African companies expanded aggressively into Nigeria, while Nigerians increasingly travelled, worked, studied and invested in South Africa. The relationship was becoming commercially significant, and South Africa and Nigeria began to emerge as two of the continent’s most influential economies and political centres. South Africa itself has described the Bi-National Commission as a mechanism intended to deepen bilateral cooperation across a wide range of sectors.
This new relationship was bound to produce both opportunity and friction.
The same borders that had once been crossed by liberation activists, students and political exiles were now being crossed by businessmen, professionals, workers, traders, tourists and migrants. Nigerian companies and entrepreneurs saw opportunities in South Africa, particularly in a market that was becoming increasingly integrated with the global economy, while South African corporations found enormous opportunities in Nigeria’s population, markets and natural resources. What had once been political solidarity was becoming economic interdependence. But economic interdependence has never guaranteed friendship.
As Nigerians became more visible in South Africa, South African attitudes towards Nigerian migrants became increasingly complicated. Many Nigerians established legitimate businesses, built professional careers and contributed to local economies, but allegations of criminal activity involving some Nigerian nationals also became a recurring feature of public debate. At the same time, legitimate Nigerians could find themselves judged by association, while South Africans confronting unemployment, inequality and competition for economic opportunities sometimes directed their frustration towards immigrants from other African countries. The relationship that had once been defined by shared opposition to apartheid was being tested by the pressures of migration, inequality, crime, competition and national politics.
This is where history begins to take a painful turn.
During the liberation struggle, Nigeria and Southern Africa could easily identify a common enemy. Apartheid provided the moral clarity that brought governments, activists, students and ordinary citizens together. After apartheid, that claritydisappeared. Nigerians in South Africa were no longer simply fellow Africans standing on the same side of a liberation struggle; they were migrants, entrepreneurs, employees, traders, professionals and, in some cases, people accused of criminal conduct. South Africans were no longer simply people whom Nigerians were supporting from afar; they were employers, competitors, business partners, neighbours and political actors with their own fears and frustrations.
The relationship became human, which meant that it also became complicated.
That is why the history of Nigerian–South African relations after 1994 cannot be understood simply as a story of two governments signing agreements. It is a story about what happens when liberation-era solidarity encounters the realities of everyday life. It is about whether two countries whose people once stood together against oppression can successfully manage the tensions that arise when their citizens meet each other in the marketplace, the university, the workplace and the neighborhood.
The warning signs were there early, but perhaps we did not pay sufficient attention to what the future relationship would require.
Political leaders continued to speak about African brotherhood, but brotherhood cannot survive on historical memories alone. It must be renewed by each generation through education, exchange, commerce, cultural understanding and ordinary human contact. A generation that personally experienced the anti-apartheid struggle will inevitably remember Nigeria’s role differently from a younger generation that knows the history only from textbooks and documentaries.
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This is why Dr. Jibunoh’s emphasis on people-to-people relationships is so important. The most durable foreign policy may not always be found in a treaty, a communiqué or a presidential visit. Sometimes it is created when a Nigerian student forms a friendship with a South African student, when a young engineer spends two years working in another African country, when a university creates a permanent exchange programme, or when a business partnership grows from familiarity rather than suspicion. These are small acts when viewed individually, but over time they create something governments cannot manufacture by decree: familiarity. And
familiarity matters because ignorance creates space for stereotypes to grow.
The tragedy would be to allow the extraordinary history of African solidarity during
the struggle against apartheid to become little more than a footnote in the relationship
between Nigeria and Southern Africa. Nigeria gave political support when support carried a price. It contributed resources when African liberation was still uncertain.
It provided educational opportunities, diplomatic backing and technical expertise. It helped countries that were struggling to emerge from colonialism and minority rule.
The question now is whether that historic goodwill can be transformed into something equally valuable for the future.
The next challenge is therefore not liberation from colonialism or apartheid. It is liberation from ignorance of one another.
We helped Southern Africa fight for freedom. We helped provide the tools with which some of its countries could begin rebuilding. But somewhere along the way, we failed to build enough bridges between the people who inherited that freedom.
And when people do not know one another, they are more easily divided by fear, misinformation and political opportunism.
That is the unfinished business.
Nigeria and Southern Africa cannot live indefinitely on the emotional capital of the liberation era. The future demands a relationship based not only on what we did for one another yesterday, but on what we are prepared to build together tomorrow.
The question, therefore, is no longer simply, “How do we help Africa become free?”
The more difficult and more important question is this:
How do we make Africans free enough from historical prejudice, ignorance and suspicion to live, work and prosper together?
• To Be Continued…
