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There was another distinction that became increasingly important: the difference between the behaviour of individuals and the character of a nationality.
Some Nigerians in South Africa were successful entrepreneurs, professionals, students and ordinary working people who contributed to the economy and became part of their communities. Others, as is true with every nationality, broke the law.
The problem arose when legitimate concerns about crime or illegal immigration were converted into generalizations about Nigerians as a people. Once the actions of individuals are used to define millions of people, the line between law enforcement and xenophobia becomes dangerously blurred.
South Africa’s own social and economic problems created fertile ground for that tension. Apartheid had been defeated, but inequality, unemployment, poverty and competition for scarce opportunities remained deeply entrenched. Migrants from across Africa could therefore become convenient targets for frustrations that had much deeper structural causes.
The explosion came in 2008.
In May that year, a wave of xenophobic violence began in Alexandra Township in Johannesburg and spread rapidly to other parts of South Africa. Foreign nationals were attacked, homes were destroyed, businesses were looted and thousands of people were displaced. The violence affected Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Somalis, Pakistanis, Ethiopians and nationals from other countries, including Nigerians. South African History Online records that 62 people were ultimately killed during the violence and its aftermath.
The images were horrifying because the victims were not colonial powers, apartheid officials or foreign armies. They were Africans attacking other Africans. That fact should force us to pause.
For decades, Nigeria had defended the idea that an attack on one African people was an attack on the dignity of the entire continent. Nigerians had campaigned for the liberation of Southern Africa, donated money to the struggle, educated South
African students and stood behind the political transformation that produced the democratic South Africa of 1994. Yet barely more than a decade after the fall of apartheid, Africans were being attacked on South African streets because they were perceived as foreigners.
The historical irony was profound, but the causes were more complicated than simple ingratitude. Xenophobia in South Africa developed within a society struggling with inequality, unemployment, rapid urbanization, weak service delivery, competition for economic opportunities and a difficult transition from apartheid. Scholars have cautioned against reducing the violence to poverty alone, because socio-economic pressures do not automatically produce xenophobic violence; local political conditions, perceptions of competition, community dynamics and ideas about who belongs also matter.
For Nigerians, however, the consequences were deeply personal.
The Nigerian presence in South Africa had become much larger than the political relationships of the liberation era. Nigerians were living there permanently, raising families, establishing businesses, attending universities, working in professional sectors and building social networks. They were not visitors passing through a country with which Nigeria had a historical connection; many had made South Africa their home. When violence or public hostility targeted foreigners, therefore, the issue was no longer simply a matter of diplomacy between Abuja and Pretoria.
It was about the safety, dignity and belonging of real people.
And this changed the meaning of the relationship.
During the anti-apartheid struggle, Nigerian and South African citizens could unite around a common political objective. After apartheid, they increasingly encountered one another as competitors, consumers, employers, employees, entrepreneurs, migrants, students and neighbours. That is a much more demanding relationship because there is no single enemy to unite everyone and no liberation movement around which solidarity can easily be organised.
There was also an uncomfortable truth that both sides had to confront. Nigeria could not legitimately expect South Africa to ignore crimes committed by Nigerian nationals simply because Nigeria had supported the anti-apartheid struggle. Equally, South Africans could not fairly allow the criminal behaviour of some Nigerians to define an entire nationality or become a justification for collective punishment. A mature relationship between two sovereign African countries requires the courage to make both distinctions at once: criminals must face the law, and innocent people must not become collateral damage.
This is where the unfinished business becomes much deeper than diplomacy.
The real question is whether Nigeria and South Africa ever succeeded in replacing liberation-era solidarity with a mature understanding of one another.
The governments certainly tried. The Bi-National Commission created a formal structure for dealing with difficult questions and expanding cooperation, and over the years the relationship developed across trade, investment, energy, mining, security, education, science and technology. The mechanism was elevated to presidential level in 2016, underlining the importance both countries placed on the relationship. By 2024, the two countries were marking 30 years of formal diplomatic relations and convening the 11th session of the Bi-National Commission, demonstrating that despite recurring disputes, the relationship had endured and remained strategically important to both countries.
But governments alone cannot manufacture goodwill.
The deeper relationship exists between people, and this is where the legacy of the liberation struggle appears incomplete. We built political relationships, but did we build enough social relationships? We sent professionals across borders and encouraged trade, but did we create enough opportunities for young Nigerians and young South Africans to grow up knowing one another? Did we teach the next generation that the history of African solidarity was not simply a story about what one government did for another, but a story about ordinary Africans recognising that their futures were connected?
These questions matter because history becomes weaker when it is inherited only through stories.
The generation that experienced apartheid directly remembers the significance of Nigerian support in a way that a young South African born after 1994 may not.
Likewise, a young Nigerian who grew up after apartheid may know Nelson Mandela as an international icon without understanding the enormous political, financial and diplomatic price that countries such as Nigeria paid during the decades-long struggle that made his presidency possible. When memory disappears, old bonds become vulnerable to new narratives.
That is what makes the story of migration so important. The Nigerian who arrives in Johannesburg today is not necessarily thinking about Nigeria’s support for the antiapartheid struggle. The South African who encounters that Nigerian in business or in a neighborhood may have no personal connection to the history of Nigeria’s solidarity with the ANC. They meet as individuals carrying their own expectations, frustrations and prejudices. If there is no historical understanding beneath that encounter, decades of solidarity can disappear in a single generation.
The challenge, therefore, is not to romanticize the relationship between Nigeria and South Africa. There have been genuine disagreements, genuine criminality, genuine economic competition and genuine grievances on both sides. Pretending otherwise would not strengthen the relationship; it would weaken it because durable friendship requires honesty. What is needed is something more demanding: the ability to acknowledge legitimate problems without allowing them to destroy the larger relationship.
The old friendship was built during a struggle against a common injustice. The new relationship must be built around mutual respect, lawful migration, fair economic competition, stronger people-to-people contact and an honest understanding of each country’s history and aspirations.
Nigeria and South Africa remain two of Africa’s most influential countries, and their relationship has consequences far beyond their own borders. When they cooperate, they can influence continental diplomacy, trade, peace and security, investment and regional integration. When they fall into mutual suspicion, the consequences are felt far beyond Pretoria and Abuja.
The tragedy would therefore be to allow the difficult encounters of the post-apartheid period to erase the extraordinary story that came before them.
Nigeria stood with Southern Africa when freedom was uncertain.
Southern Africa must now learn to stand with Nigeria as a partner rather than as a beneficiary, just as Nigeria must learn to engage South Africa not as a country to which it once gave support, but as an equal African power with its own interests, pressures and responsibilities.
That is the real test of friendship after liberation.
Because the greatest measure of solidarity is not how we behave when we have a common enemy.
It is how we treat one another when the enemy is gone.
