So it has come to this. Nigeria, the self-proclaimed 'Giant of Africa', is airlifting its citizens out of South Africa. Not because of a war.
Not because of a natural disaster. Because of a pogrom. Anti-migrant violence, specifically targeting Nigerians and other African foreigners, has spread like a brushfire through Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The UK embassy, ever the nervous landlord, has issued an alert. And I am supposed to be surprised? This is what happens when a nation forgets its history.
South Africa, for all its post-apartheid rhetoric, has always had a simmering resentment towards foreign Africans. The 'makwerekwere' slur has been a constant. But now, with unemployment at 33% and the economy a basket case, the toxins have risen to the surface.
The Nigerian government's response, a dramatic evacuation, is both a practical necessity and a piece of political theatre. It tells the world: 'We are not your punching bag.' But it also reveals the brittle reality of African solidarity.
The African Union? Absent. ECOWAS?
Mute. The global media? Hurling buzzwords like 'xenophobia' and 'populism' without understanding the engine.
That engine is the collapse of the post-colonial state. South Africa, like Rome in its twilight, has become a land of failed promises. The ANC, once the moral beacon of the continent, now presides over a kleptocracy that makes Mobutu's Zaire look like a technocracy.
And the people, desperate for someone to blame, turn on the visible stranger. The Nigerian exodus is a symptom of a deeper sickness. It is the failure of the African Renaissance, the death of the Rainbow Nation myth, the return of tribal grievance.
And what of the UK? The embassy alert is a reminder that the old imperial master still has interests to protect. But let us not pretend this is a crisis of migration.
It is a crisis of legitimacy. When a state cannot provide security or prosperity, it becomes a protection racket. And the refugees, whether in Lagos or London, are just pawns in a much older game.
So here we are. Watching Nigerians flee South Africa, watching the British embassy issue warnings, watching the continent revert to its pre-colonial tribalism with a modern lexicon. The lesson?
Nations are fragile. Civilisation is a thin veneer. And when the economy turns sour, the rage always finds a foreign face.
