In 2011, Cheryl Cwele, wife of former South African Intelligence Minister Siyabonga Cwele was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of running an international drug trafficking ring. According to case records, Cwele was identified as the kingpin at the head of a global drug smuggling operation which was busted when a courier was apprehended in Brazil with about $132,504 worth of cocaine destined for South Africa.
Her co-accused, Nigerian national, Frank Nebolisa received a similar sentence, but there was never any ambiguity about who the drug dealing kingpin was. Here was the wife of a South African cabinet minister who was also in business with and benefitting from the South African government via the infamous “tenderpreneur” system. She used her position and influence to import drugs into South Africa – drugs that would eventually find their way to the streets of Johannesburg and Cape Town via Nebolisa’s network of low-level drug dealers.
In the world of South African stereotypes, this should have been the moment the scales fell from the public’s eyes as it became apparent that the ubiquitous “Nigerian drug dealer” was actually just a low-level operative existing at the behest of rich and powerful and South African drug dealers with connections in government and the security services. This rare conviction of a member of the country’s ruling class for drug trafficking should have taken the spotlight off the traditional scapegoats – the makwerekwere (immigrants) – and focused it clearly where it belonged.
Powerless in the face of injustice
Of course, the opposite is what happened. Even as Cwele sits in prison, having no doubt been replaced in the international drug-running scene by another powerful and well-connected South African, the term “Nigerian” in South Africa is now something between a dog whistle and a slur. South African politicians openly use loaded language and trigger terms like “Hillbrow,” “Sunnyvale,” “no papers” and “illegal immigrants” to invoke the country’s national bogeyman – the Nigerian immigrant.
From last weekend, this bogeyman bore the brunt of yet another violent uprising as South Africans took to the streets in their thousands to burn and loot Nigerian-owned businesses and property, and attack Nigerians and other African immigrants. As images and videos of the latest orgy of violence filtered into the Nigerian social media space, furious reactions demanded all kinds of actions ranging from expropriating South African investments in Nigeria to carrying out military action against the country.
From the government though, mum was the word until the sheer ferocity of the attacks drew an almost grudging response from the Foreign Affairs Ministry. While Nigerians raged online, advocating attacks against MTN, Multichoice, Shoprite, Stanbic IBTC and other South African-owned establishments in the country, the president’s only response was to announce the dispatch of a special envoy to South Africa.
Many bristled at the perceived lack of ire, even going as far as smashing up some of the afore-named establishments on their own.
What they and many other Nigerians do not know however, is that the now-cliched, “Go after MTN/DStv/Shoprite/Stanbic” whenever South African xenophobic violence rears its head is not really the threat, we like to think it is.
Shoprite for example has 1,343 corporate and franchise outlets across Africa. Only 25 of those stores are in Nigeria. The same goes for MTN, which makes 72 percent of its revenue from outside Nigeria and DStv, which makes about 86.6 percent of its revenues outside Nigeria. Nigeria is obviously a big market for these companies, but it is not quite as important to them as we like to imagine.
What is more, going after foreign investors at a time when we depend on borrowing to keep our public finances from completely falling apart would be particularly foolhardy. The last thing a potential investor wants to see is a country that does not respect property rights.
It bears repeating that South Africa may be able to get away with a lot of its bad optics because it has a very large local economy and reasonably well-developed infrastructure already. Here in Nigeria on the other hand, there is no scenario where we can get away with scenes like those observed on Tuesday afternoon, where parts of Lagos began looking like scenes from Sarafina, complete with looters and trigger-happy police.
Claiming our power back
Now that we have established the objective reality of Nigeria’s powerlessness in the face of South African aggression, what can we do to change our situation? In the short term, the most effective steps would include concrete diplomatic action such as recalling and expelling diplomatic personnel as appropriate, rallying the AU to impose sanctions on South Africa, and making provision for Nigerians in South Africa to return home if they so wish. The trouble with these approaches is that – like the others explored previously – they would have precious little effect.
If Nigeria got into a full-scale diplomatic war with South Africa, Nigeria would almost certainly have to blink first because the South Africans clearly believe that they hold all the aces. Even if Nigeria could seize all South African assets and investments in Nigeria without triggering an internal economic apocalypse due to collapsed investor confidence, South Africa’s posture appears to be that it does not care. It will be recalled that the current South African administration recently watched Naspers relocate roughly $100 billion of investment out of the country without once softening its Soviet-style political rhetoric or trying to find a mutual solution.
The total value of South African investment in Nigeria is not even half of that figure, so we can be sure than the ideologically-driven communist-lite South African administration would probably see it as an acceptable price to pay in return for getting rid of the makwerekwere.
In the medium term therefore, our strategy must be to begin electing leaders who are versed in the art of negotiation and international relations, as against our current leadership which is encapsulated by a viral photo doing the rounds of Mr President picking his teeth and inhabiting his very own private universe away from all our problems.
Nigeria’s current administration is headed by a famously unbothered and reticent person who believes that young Nigerians without exception should be on smallholder farms performing back-breaking manual labour. To him, Nigerian economic migrants, be they in South Africa or elsewhere are not his constituency or a government priority. If we begin electing leaders who actually value the remittances, ideas and experience brought home by diaspora Nigerians, even openly antagonistic diaspora authorities like the South African government will have to treat us with less levity.
Not even South Africa’s government, drunk on an aggressive communist ideology from cloud cuckoo-land would want to be seen openly disrespecting the president of Africa’s most populous country. If there is a real perception that Nigeria’s president actually cares about what happens to Nigerian citizens in South Africa, it is unlikely that the country’s police officers will happily stand aside and watch lives and properties being destroyed as they are repeatedly caught doing on camera.
Most importantly, we need to assimilate and make peace with our new reality as giant-sized African minnows. We have not been the “Giant of Africa” for at least three decades, and the sooner we accept this, the quicker we can get to fixing the several things wrong with our country.
After all, let’s face it, if Nigeria was working even half its optimum capacity, why would anyone go be a makwerekwere in South Africa?
David Hundeyin
