The part three examines the period when the old friendship was tested, as political disagreements, economic competition, migration, crime, xenophobia and other tensions began to reshape the relationship between Nigerians and the peoples of Southern Africa.
For much of the twentieth century, Nigeria and the countries of Southern Africa had been bound together by a shared political cause. Nigeria had stood firmly behind liberation movements, opposed apartheid and colonial rule, provided financial and educational assistance and used its influence in international organisations to argue that the liberation of Southern Africa was an African responsibility. South Africans and other peoples of the region therefore knew Nigeria as one of the countries that had stood with them when freedom was still a distant aspiration. But history has a way of changing the questions it asks. After 1994, when apartheid had been dismantled and Nelson Mandela had become president, the relationship could no longer be sustained entirely by the memory of a common struggle. There were now governments rather than liberation movements, commercial interests rather than only political causes, migrants rather than only political exiles, and citizens meeting one another in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life. The old friendship was about to encounter its first major test.
That test came with extraordinary speed.
On 10 November 1995, while the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was taking place in Auckland, New Zealand, the military government of General Sani Abacha executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists following their convictions by a special tribunal. The executions provoked international condemnation and had an especially profound effect on Nelson Mandela, who had personally tried to intervene with the Nigerian government. Mandela had travelled to Nigeria in 1994 and raised, among other issues, the detention of Moshood Abiola and Nigeria’s political prisoners, while South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki later travelled to Nigeria in July 1995 and sought assurances from Abacha concerning the fate of Saro-Wiwa and others. According to the Nelson Mandela
Foundation’s archival account, Mandela was deeply angered when those assurances were not honoured.
The timing made the situation particularly painful. Mandela was in Auckland when news of the executions reached the Commonwealth meeting, and instead of treating the matter as an internal Nigerian affair, he argued that the international community had a responsibility to respond. His position was consistent with the principle that had shaped much of his own life: political sovereignty could not be used as a shield behind which governments were free to violate fundamental rights. South Africa’s delegation moved to support Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth, and on 11 November 1995 Nigeria was suspended following what the Commonwealth described as a serious violation of the principles of the Harare Declaration, specifically citing the execution of Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni activists.
The irony was difficult to miss. For decades, Nigeria had told the world that what happened to Africans elsewhere was not somebody else’s business. It had insisted that apartheid was an international concern, that colonialism could not hide behind claims of sovereignty and that African countries had a duty to stand with oppressed peoples. Now South Africa, under Mandela, was applying that same principle to Nigeria.
It was an uncomfortable moment, but it was also an important one.
The relationship between Nigeria and South Africa had reached a stage where historical gratitude could no longer guarantee political agreement. Mandela’s government was prepared to criticize Nigeria because friendship did not, in his view, require silence in the face of injustice. Indeed, Mandela’s own response demonstrated how dramatically South Africa had changed. Only a few years earlier he had been one of the world’s most prominent political prisoners; now he was the president of a democratic country challenging the behaviour of another African government.
The consequences were serious. South Africa recalled its High Commissioner from Lagos, and Mandela publicly pushed for stronger international pressure on the Abacha regime. The United Nations General Assembly later condemned the executions, describing them as arbitrary and occurring after a flawed judicial process, while also calling for the restoration of democratic rule in Nigeria.
For Nigeria, the episode was devastating not only because of the international condemnation but because it exposed a contradiction between the country’s historic role as a champion of African liberation and the conduct of its own military government. The country that had spent decades campaigning against political repression in Southern Africa was now itself under international scrutiny for political repression and human-rights violations.
The crisis did not, however, permanently destroy Nigeria–South Africa relations. General Abacha died in June 1998, Nigeria began its transition back to civilian rule and, on 29 May 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as president. South Africa was also entering a new phase. Mandela had completed his single term and handed the presidency to Thabo Mbeki in June 1999, demonstrating that the new South African democracy was already beginning to establish the constitutional culture and political institutions that Mandela had helped create.
This change in leadership on both sides opened the way for a new relationship. In fact, the two countries formalized a mechanism for managing their increasingly complex ties when they established the Nigeria–South Africa Bi-National Commission in 1999. The Commission was intended to provide a structured framework for cooperation across political, economic, security, educational and social issues and has remained one of the central institutional mechanisms for managing bilateral relations.
This was a fundamentally different relationship from the one Nigeria had maintained with Southern Africa during the liberation struggle. The question was no longer whether Nigeria would support South Africa’s freedom. South Africa was free. The question was how two of Africa’s most influential countries would manage their growing political and economic interests.
The transformation was visible in the movement of companies and capital across their borders. South African businesses began looking north towards Nigeria’s enormous market, while Nigerian entrepreneurs and professionals increasingly looked south towards South Africa’s relatively sophisticated financial, telecommunications, retail and corporate sectors. MTN became one of the most significant examples of this new commercial relationship, building a major telecommunications operation in Nigeria, while Nigerian businesses and professionals established themselves in South Africa. The relationship was no longer confined to presidents and foreign ministers; it was entering boardrooms, universities, construction sites, hospitals, shopping centres and homes.
That expansion brought enormous opportunities. Nigeria offered scale, population and one of Africa’s largest consumer markets, while South Africa offered deep corporate experience, sophisticated financial institutions and access to the wider Southern African market. Together, the countries could have formed a particularly powerful economic partnership, with each complementing the other’s strengths.
But economic integration also has a less comfortable side. Once citizens begin moving in large numbers between two countries, immigration ceases to be an abstract issue discussed by diplomats and becomes a matter experienced directly by ordinary people. Questions of visas, work permits, documentation, competition for employment, policing and access to services begin to shape public perceptions of one another.
The first warning signs were not necessarily dramatic, but they were revealing.
In March 2012, South Africa deported 125 Nigerians over alleged problems involving yellow-fever vaccination certificates. Nigeria responded by deporting 28 South Africans over immigration and documentation-related issues, and the dispute quickly became a diplomatic embarrassment for both governments. The episode eventually led to renewed discussions between the two countries and further attention to the bilateral mechanisms intended to manage migration and consular disputes.
The significance of the incident went beyond the numbers involved. It demonstrated that the historical language of African brotherhood did not abolish national borders or immigration laws. Nigerians travelling to South Africa remained subject to South African law, just as South Africans entering Nigeria remained subject to Nigerian law. At the same time, the episode exposed how quickly a dispute involving government agencies could become a source of national resentment, particularly when it was interpreted through the lens of long-standing stereotypes.
To Be Continued…