Xenophobia or Afrophobia: Is it the fear of foreigners or the fear of fellow Africans? by Mary Izobo – International Human Rights Lawyer

I am what you would call a nomadic African who has not had the luxury of being sedentary. In my twenty-something years, I have lived in five countries and still counting. South Africa, where I recently completed a Master’s degree is my latest home. However, I have felt more unwelcome in South Africa .than anywhere else.

In 2007, when I first arrived in Pretoria, a policeman stopped my car to check where I was from, because apparently, I looked ‘different’. As soon as I said I am from Nigeria, he asked for my bags which he proceeded to search it disparagingly, as if it contained pieces of dirt, and not my treasured valuables. He then demanded to search my handbag. By this time I had had enough of his disrespectful behaviour, so I refused to give him my handbag. I pointed out that by law, no policeman is allowed to search a female handbag without a warrant of arrest and only if I was charged with a particular crime. However, I did offer my bag to be searched by a female officer if he could find me one.

Then the policemen vented his anger, and swore at me, calling me a ‘bloody kwere-kwere’. I later learned that the words like ‘magrigamba’ and ‘shangaans’, was derogatorily used to refer to foreign Africans. These pejorative words serve a special function in South African society, to create an artificially homogenous, undifferentiated group of people, who are vulnerable and often to serve as scapegoats for everything that is wrong within South Africa. The ‘makwere-kwere’ is supposed to be responsible for unemployment, crime, drugs, and even the ‘stealing of wives and girlfriends’. The situation becomes worse when those in leadership positions do not appear eager to condemn the stigmatization and baseless blaming of foreign Africans.

I still struggle to understand how I, a Nigerian, living in Pretoria, am considered more of a foreigner than a white immigrant from Netherlands, also living in Pretoria. I am also baffled that, from where I sit, it seems that in Southern Africa, immigrants of lighter skin, from other continents apart from Africa, are referred to as ‘expatriates’, while those who look like me are referred to as ‘foreign nationals’. This was the fate in April 2015 when some South Africans descended on other Africans. Exactly a year later, this is the case in Zambia. What exactly is going on? Is this xenophobia, Afrophobia or shall we call it xenophobia Africana?