Xenophobia Has Killed My Wanderlust For South Africa -By Isaac Asabor

Almost a decade ago, I wrote an article titled “A Nightmare on South Africa,” published by the Nigerian Observer on February 23, 2017. I was then struggling to reconcile my longstanding fascination with a country I had admired from afar with the disturbing reality of xenophobic attacks against Nigerians and other Africans living there.

Today, as xenophobic tendencies continue to rear their ugly head in South Africa, I have reached a painful conclusion: “the wanderlust that South Africa planted in my subconscious for decades has been killed by xenophobia.”

My fascination with South Africa began long before I contemplated travelling there. In the early 1980s, while preparing for my General Certificate of Education examinations, I read Peter Abrahams’ “Mine Boy”, one of our recommended literature texts. Published in 1946, the novel offered me an early glimpse into black life under apartheid.

Through Xuma, its protagonist, I encountered a society defined by racial discrimination, exploitation, poor living conditions and the systematic denial of human dignity. Ironically, the South Africa that “Mine Boy” introduced to me was also the country that made me yearn to visit someday.

Xuma leaves his home for Johannesburg in search of work in the gold mines. He encounters a city sharply divided by race and power, where black people live under constant oppression. One of the observations that stayed with me was the fear that compelled black people to flee even when they had done nothing wrong.

Leah, one of the novel’s memorable characters, observes that, “Life is so in the city.” That statement has remained with me, but so has another question: “What happened to the city, the country and the people whose struggle for freedom inspired an entire continent?”

For years, South Africa was more than a country on a map to me. It was an idea, an embodiment of resistance, resilience, freedom and the triumph of the human spirit over oppression.

Indeed, if there is any African country that has subjected me to bouts of wanderlust over the years, it is undeniably South Africa. Travelogues, documentaries, books, photographs and television programmes further deepened that fascination. I imagined standing atop Table Mountain, visiting Sun City, exploring Kruger National Park and Blyde River Canyon, touring the Cape Winelands and experiencing the wildlife of Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve. I wanted to visit Soweto, a place immortalised in my imagination partly through the music of the late Evangelist Sonny Okosun.

Okosun brought the anti-apartheid struggle into Nigerian homes and made the suffering and aspirations of black South Africans a concern far beyond the country’s borders. His music, including “Papa’s Land”, became part of the soundtrack of an era when Africans looked at South Africa and saw a people fighting for dignity and majority rule.

Then came Nelson Mandela. Mandela’s life and leadership added another dimension to my fascination with South Africa. His ability to emerge from 27 years in prison without allowing bitterness to define his politics remains, to me, one of the most remarkable demonstrations of political maturity in modern African history.

In December 2014, I wrote a panegyric titled “Mandelaism: A Template for African Leaders,” published online. My admiration for Mandela was so profound that, if offered the opportunity to relocate to the United Kingdom, the United States or South Africa, I would probably have chosen South Africa. That was how deep the wanderlust ran.

I nurtured the dream of visiting the country partly to see places associated with Mandela’s extraordinary journey. I wanted to visit Robben Island, see where he lived and worked, and stand in Soweto to appreciate, in person, the history I had encountered through books and music.

But something has changed. The South Africa that lived in my imagination has increasingly collided with another South Africa, the South Africa of xenophobic attacks, anti-foreigner rhetoric and violence directed at Africans who migrated there in search of opportunities.

There is something particularly painful about seeing Africans attack fellow Africans on a continent whose history should have taught us the dangers of dehumanization.

South Africa’s apartheid struggle was never merely a South African struggle. Nigerians and citizens of other African countries supported the anti-apartheid movement in various ways, while African countries endured economic and diplomatic costs in opposing apartheid and supporting the liberation struggle.

That history makes xenophobia particularly troubling. The irony is almost unbearable: a people who fought against a system that classified human beings according to race now have compatriots who sometimes subject other Africans to hostility simply because they are foreigners.

Of course, South Africa is not synonymous with xenophobia. Millions of South Africans are decent; welcoming people committed to peaceful coexistence. It would be unfair to paint an entire nation with the brush of violent individuals or groups.

But recurring xenophobic tendencies have consequences beyond their immediate victims. They affect how outsiders perceive the country, how tourists make decisions, how professionals respond to invitations and how investors assess risk.

In my own case, they have changed how I feel about a country I once desperately wanted to visit.

In 2017, I wrote about a nightmare in which I arrived in South Africa only to be chased by hoodlums armed with clubs and cutlasses because I was Nigerian. At the time, I described it as a nightmare triggered by reports of xenophobic attacks.

Almost ten years later, I no longer know whether that dream was merely a nightmare or an expression of an anxiety that has become increasingly difficult to dismiss. The difference is that the nightmare has outlived the night. It has seeped into my subconscious.

The South Africa I once saw through “Mine Boy”, Sonny Okosun’s music, Mandela’s legacy and countless travelogues have gradually been replaced by images of African migrants being threatened, attacked or treated as unwanted outsiders.

That is how xenophobia destroys more than lives and property. “It destroys goodwill, curiosity and trust. It destroys the emotional bridges that generations of Africans painstakingly built across national borders.” And it has killed something in me. It has killed my wanderlust for South Africa. I do not say this with triumph. I say it with sadness.

For years, I wanted South Africa to be one of the countries I would proudly say I had visited. I wanted to experience its landscapes, cities, history and culture beyond the pages of books and images on television.

Today, however, the question is no longer simply, “How beautiful is South Africa?” It is, “How welcome would a Nigerian feel there?” That question should worry South Africa.

Tourism thrives on attraction, but it also depends on safety and a sense of belonging. No traveler wants to spend money travelling to a destination while wondering whether his nationality could make him a target. The same applies to journalists, academics, entrepreneurs, students and professionals.

South Africa possesses enormous soft power. Mandela gave the country a moral capital that transcended its borders, while Desmond Tutu helped popularize the idea of the “Rainbow Nation.”

But soft power is fragile. It can be built over decades and damaged by recurring acts of intolerance. This is why South Africa must confront xenophobia not merely as a law-and-order problem, but as a national reputational crisis.

Every attack on a Nigerian, Zimbabwean, Mozambican, Malawian, Congolese or any other African migrant sends a message far beyond the location of the incident. It tells the rest of Africa that the dream of African brotherhood has limits. That message must not prevail.

South Africa’s liberation was too important, Mandela’s legacy too profound and Africa’s sacrifices during apartheid too significant for xenophobia to become one of the country’s defining exports.

I still hope South Africa will prove the xenophobes wrong. I still hope it will reclaim the spirit of the Rainbow Nation. I still hope that someday, the South Africa in my subconscious will once again be the South Africa of Mandela, Tutu, Soweto, freedom, resilience and extraordinary beauty.

But for now, I must be honest with myself. The wanderlust that once made me choose South Africa over the United Kingdom and the United States in my imagination is gone. It did not die naturally. Xenophobia killed it.

And perhaps the most painful part is that I am not sure South Africa realizes how many other Africans have quietly lost their desire to visit a country they once admired.

A country does not become truly great merely because people want to visit it. It becomes great when people feel safe, respected and welcomed when they arrive. That is the South Africa I once dreamed of visiting.

That is still the South Africa I hope to see. But until xenophobia is decisively confronted, “my wanderlust remains buried.”