For nearly two decades, xenophobic violence in South Africa has followed the same exhausting script. Immigrant Africans are blamed for crime, unemployment, and pressure on public services. Protests erupt, lives are threatened, people beaten, and in too many cases, killed. Government officials step to the podiums, condemn the violence and issue statements. The international community registers concern. Then, after the headlines fade, the cycle begins again with a new set of vigilante movements, deadlines, and body counts.
What has changed this time is Ghana’s response.
After anti-immigration activists in South Africa intensified campaigns against foreign nationals and issued a June 30 deadline for foreign nationals to leave the country, Ghana refused to treat the situation as business as usual. The Ghanaian government summoned South Africa’s acting High Commissioner to explain the intimidation and harassment of Ghanaians living in South Africa, organised the evacuation of nearly 300 citizens from Johannesburg, and unveiled a reintegration package for those returning home. At the same time, Ghana has adopted a noticeably tougher posture toward South Africa’s economic interests, with stricter scrutiny of major South African mining assets and rejecting the assumption that longstanding concessions will be automatically renewed. By taking these steps, Ghana has set an example for the rest of Africa, delivering a masterclass on how sovereign governments should protect their citizens.
The current wave of xenophobic violence did not appear from nowhere. In April and May 2026, citizen-led movements organised demonstrations against “undocumented” migrants across South Africa’s major cities, including Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. Their slogans were direct: #PutSouthAfricaFirst, Undocumented migrants must pack and go, Mabahambe! —meaning “they must leave.” Their methods, which quickly crossed from protest into violence, going door-to-door in townships to demand papers from anyone who looked foreign, shutting down migrant-owned businesses, and, in several documented cases, assaulting and killing foreign nationals.
Most chilling is the deadline issued: a self-declared ultimatum for all foreign nationals to leave South Africa by June 30, 2026. This ultimatum carries no legal weight since the South African government has no obligation to honour a deportation schedule set by vigilante groups. But that is almost beside the point. President Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, declared that “South Africans are not xenophobic,” and described the situation as “pockets of protest, which is permissible within our constitutional framework.” The government urged other African nations to address the economic and governance crises driving migration in their own countries. Taken together, this posture reads less like firm repudiation and more like tacit endorsement. By reframing organised xenophobic mobilisation as constitutionally tolerable “protest,” the government effectively softens the political urgency of the moment.
While it might be true that South Africa’s government does not organise anti-foreigner attacks, it definitely clings to it. Complicity does not require active participation. For failing to prevent, deter, and punish the violent actions of its citizens against nationals of its supposed allies or trade partners, only one conclusion is reasonable
There exists a longstanding pattern going back to the 1998 killing of foreign nationals in Johannesburg and extending through every decade since. Just recently, on June 2nd 2026, the Mozambique government reported that five of its citizens were killed in what it explicitly described as xenophobic attacks in Mossel Bay, while hundreds more were forced to flee, seek shelter, or return home. Local officials reported murders, burnt homes, and displaced families. At what point do these become the government’s responsibility? Ghana has responded with a clarity that highlights the inaction of other African governments like Nigeria. In addition to evacuating its citizens, Ghana has deployed its most powerful lever: economic pressure. Gold Fields, one of South Africa’s largest mining companies, holds five Tarkwa mining leases in Ghana covering a site that produced over half a million ounces of gold in 2025, making it one of its most significant global assets. As of May 2026, renewal negotiations for those leases, due to expire in April 2027, have stalled. Ghana had already declined to renew Gold Fields’ license for the Damang gold operation in 2025, awarding it instead to a local contractor. UBS analysts subsequently warned clients that “mining lease renewals in Ghana can no longer be assumed to be automatic or rules-based.”
It has also petitioned the African Union for continental intervention, set to be tabled at the AU Mid-Year Summit in Cairo at the end of June 2026. At a moment when South Africa is treating Ghanaian citizens as threats, Ghanaian political capital is extremely unlikely to be spent protecting South African corporate assets. The message from Ghana is clear: the treatment of Ghanaian nationals and the commercial privileges of South African companies operating in Ghana are now linked. Ghana has also advised its citizens to halt impending visits to South Africa. The contrast with Nigeria could not be more obvious, and the stakes for Nigeria are even greater. Nigerians have consistently been among the most targeted groups during every major wave of xenophobic violence in South Africa. In 2019, Nigerian-owned businesses were specifically and repeatedly attacked. In 2026, the pattern continues: Two Nigerians have been killed, Nigerian-owned shops looted, and some others assaulted. Yet the Nigerian government has taken no serious action. The rest of Africa needs to mete out similar consequences as Ghana.
Nigeria has not been entirely passive. The Federal Government recently announced an evacuation programme for Nigerians seeking to leave South Africa, with the first flight expected to depart Johannesburg carrying approximately 270 passengers. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, more than 500 Nigerians have already been screened and cleared for evacuation, as President Bola Tinubu has approved five evacuation flights to facilitate the return of affected citizens. The effort demonstrates a willingness to provide consular support and immediate protection for Nigerians caught up in the crisis. However, unlike Ghana, Nigeria has stopped short of deploying significant diplomatic or economic pressure on South Africa itself.
This matters enormously because the economic ties between Nigeria and South Africa are significant. South African companies like MTN Group, Standard Bank, and others maintain a substantial and profitable presence across Nigeria. South Africa also benefits from Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery, which has been supplying substantial volumes of refined petroleum products across the continent, including South Africa. This has helped to offset a crude oil shortage that was one of South Africa’s most acute economic vulnerabilities in the post-Iran-sanctions era.
South Africa needs Nigeria’s market and energy infrastructure. Yet, Nigeria has not used any of this as leverage. Despite being Africa’s most populous country and one of its two largest economies, Nigeria has allowed a situation where its citizens are killed indiscriminately on South African soil with no consequence to it. South African companies continue to operate in Nigeria unhindered, its representatives also haven’t been held to any serious account. That is not diplomacy; it is mere ineptitude in Nigerian leadership.
A country like South Africa that continues to offer hostility to other African countries deserves pariah status. Other countries must begin to signal, through trade, sport, and diplomatic posture that the current situation is unacceptable and comes at a cost.
Africa already has a precedent for this kind of collective continental signalling, and it does not require looking far. Morocco has long occupied an uncomfortable position in African continental relations, precisely because of how a significant portion of Moroccan society treats Black Africans. The tensions revealed itself again during the 2026 Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, where the final between Morocco and Senegal descended into confrontation, violence against Senegalese fans, the cancellation of Senegal’s post-match press conference, and an explosion of racist abuse across Moroccan social media. Rights groups documented “a serious and worrying resurgence of hate speech and racist practices” targeting sub-Saharan Africans in Morocco.
Morocco has historically had an ambiguous relationship with sub-Saharan Africa, and has been repeatedly accused of treating African migrants as tolerated at best and disposable at worst. This has made many sub-Saharan African countries wary of Morocco. That wariness shapes diplomatic relationships, football allegiances, and trade discussions in ways that Morocco is only now being forced to confront.
South Africa deserves the same treatment. Not because its entire population is xenophobic —clearly it is not, and many South Africans have marched against the violence— but because its government has implicitly endorsed violence against Africans living in its territory. South Africa has continued to enjoy the full benefits of African goodwill. There is no justification for an African country whose government enables, through consistent inaction, the targeting, brutalising, and killing of other African nationals should be shielded from equivalent pressure simply because of its supposed economic power.
To be clear, calling for South Africa’s pariah status is not about being hostile toward ordinary South Africans or the collapse of regional economic integration. Instead, it is a call for African governments to make normal, unconditional relations contingent on demonstrable improvement in the protection of foreign African nationals within their territories. In practice, this could mean several things.
It means following Ghana’s lead and making it clear to countries like South Africa, which have businesses constantly seeking new markets, licenses, or investment terms, that the operating environment for them is directly shaped by the operating environment for their nationals in their territories. It means urging their citizens, as Ghana has done, to boycott South Africa in their tourism until meaningful structural protections are made. South Africa’s tourism industry, which depends heavily on African visitors and their spending, will feel the impact. It also means backing Ghana’s petition to the AU and pushing for the African Union to move from the position of concerned bystander to active intervenor. The AU has mechanisms to act on this. The question is whether African governments will employ them.
It also means that the Nigerian government places a premium on Nigerian life, and her legislators and civil society groups should publicly scrutinise the commercial terms under which South African corporations operate in Nigeria and demand that those terms include conditions tied to the bilateral treatment of Nigerian nationals. These commercial relationships generate billions of naira in revenue and depend entirely on Nigerian consumer goodwill and government licenses. That leverage exists, it simply has not been applied.
There is a specific dimension to this crisis that Nigeria, in particular, should speak about more openly, because it represents a historical and moral wrong that goes beyond the violence happening now.
Nigeria played an active role during South Africa’s apartheid years. The Nigerian government, under multiple administrations, provided financial support, political cover, and diplomatic weight to the ANC’s international campaign against the apartheid regime. Nigerian civil society also got involved. South Africa’s freedom was, in part, an African project —and Nigeria was one of its most significant backers on the continent. The idea that Nigerian nationals are now being targeted, beaten, looted, and killed on South African soil while the South African government describes the situation as constitutionally permissible protest represents an ingratitude so profound it should be a source of national outrage for every Nigerian leader with any knowledge of that history. It is not ancient history. The ANC leaders who built relationships with Nigerian government officials during the struggle years are part of the same political generation that leads South Africa today. The betrayal is a living memory.
Ghana has shown one version of what can be done to earn government action. The economic and diplomatic pressure Ghana has brought to bear on South Africa over its treatment of Ghanaian nationals is not hostility —it is accountability. It is the application of leverage by a government that has decided its citizens’ safety and dignity are not negotiable items to be managed quietly through consular channels.
South Africa should not feel comfortable. It should not keep enjoying the full fruits of continental goodwill while its government repeatedly fails to protect Africans within its borders. This is a matter of justice. Ghana has provided the model. Nigeria, and every other African country whose citizens have bled on South African land, should follow suit.
