Obasanjo says Nigeria's support brought apartheid to an earlier end

Nigeria’s backing for the campaign against white minority rule helped bring apartheid to an earlier end, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo said this week, and he coupled the claim with a warning against attacks on African migrants in South Africa.

Obasanjo made both points during an interview on C-Suite Cafe, hosted by Ikem Okuhu, while reflecting on Nigeria’s role in the liberation struggles across Southern Africa. As The South African reported on 16 September, he said South Africa would not have got rid of apartheid when it did without Nigeria’s support.

South Africa held its first democratic, non-racial elections in 1994, marking the end of apartheid rule.

What Nigeria did

Obasanjo framed Nigeria’s involvement as a matter of principle rather than gain. Nigeria’s position, he said, was that no Black person anywhere should be treated as inferior because of skin colour, and he argued the country should be proud of the part it played.

The historical record he is drawing on is substantial, and South African leaders have acknowledged it in public.

In a 2016 address to Nigeria’s National Assembly, then president Jacob Zuma set out several areas of support. Nigeria helped establish and chair the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, and hosted a UN anti-apartheid conference in 1977. It hosted South African exiles, particularly after the 1976 Soweto uprising. It established the Southern African Relief Fund in 1976, which provided scholarships and other assistance to South African students and refugees. Nigerian civil servants had money deducted from their salaries through what became known as the “Mandela Tax” to support the struggle. Nigeria also backed boycotts of the Commonwealth Games in 1978 and 1986 in protest against apartheid.

For South African readers, that list is not a distant diplomatic footnote. The scholarships put South Africans through school and university. The exile routes gave activists somewhere to go when staying here meant prison. The Commonwealth Games boycotts helped keep apartheid’s isolation on the agenda of governments that would rather have moved on.

On attacks on foreign nationals

Obasanjo also used the interview to criticise attacks against African migrants in South Africa. He said people who break immigration laws or commit crimes should face the law, rather than having their homes and businesses attacked.

“There are criminals among the illegal migrants, but I do not believe that you use illegality to treat illegality,” he said.

That position matches South African law. No group, movement or individual may enforce immigration law, because that authority belongs to the state and not to a crowd. Assault, arson, intimidation and public violence are crimes whoever commits them. A person who enters the country unlawfully is dealt with by Home Affairs and the courts, not by a neighbour with a match.

The comments land at a moment of renewed tension between Nigeria and South Africa over attacks on African migrants, and they carry weight in Abuja because of who is speaking. Obasanjo is a former head of state and one of the most recognisable African voices of his generation. When he raises the treatment of migrants here, Nigerian officials and Nigerian media take notice, and so does the South African government, which has consistently condemned attacks on foreign nationals and has deployed police to restore order where such incidents have occurred.

What this means for the relationship

The Nigeria-South Africa relationship is one of the most consequential on the continent. The two countries are the largest economies in Africa, they trade heavily with each other, and their citizens travel in both directions for work, study and business. Disputes between them are not bilateral curiosities. They affect shipping, investment, aviation routes and the consular queues in both capitals.

Obasanjo’s intervention works in two directions at once. It asks South Africans to remember what Nigeria gave during the hardest decades of the last century, and it asks Nigerians and other Africans to keep pressing for the lawful handling of migration here rather than the vigilante version. Both requests are reasonable, and both can be answered without pretending the other does not exist.

The South African government’s position is that immigration is administered by the state, that the law applies to everyone equally, and that criminal conduct by anyone, whether a citizen or a foreign national, is dealt with through the police and the courts. That is the framework within which the conversation Obasanjo has opened should be conducted.

Source: The South African, Ex-Nigerian president makes bold claim about South Africa’s apartheid struggle