SA biting hand that fed it, says Nigerian author

A leading Nigerian author has stepped into the angry debate about illegal immigrants in South Africa being forced to flee, saying South Africans owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nigeria, which was the major financial backer of the struggle against apartheid.

In a series of Facebook posts recently, Kio Amachree said: “There is a particular kind of ingratitude so spectacular it almost deserves a standing ovation.

Author says Nigeria spent $61bn backing anti-apartheid struggle

“SA, a country whose liberation was financed, in no small part, by Nigerian schoolchildren skipping lunch and Nigerian public servants surrendering 2% of their monthly pay, has decided the deadline it once gave apartheid is now the deadline it is giving us.”

He said attacks on Nigerians and the recent wave of violence “are not the actions of a nation that remembers its debts. These are the actions of a nation that has been brainwashed into believing its liberators are its enemies.”

Amachree said from 1960 to 1995, Nigeria alone, spent over $61 billion (R1 trillion at today’s exchange rate) to support the struggle – more than any other country in the world, according to the SA Institute of International Affairs.

“That is not a rumour whispered in Lagos markets. That is the institute saying it. Their own people. Their own scholars.

“Students skipped their lunch to make donations and in just six months, in June 1977, popular contributions to the Southern Africa Relief Fund reached $10.5 million. The donations were widely known in Nigeria as the ‘Mandela tax’,” Amachree added.

“Nigerian children were taxing themselves – voluntarily – to free South Africa. And the South Africans now giving them until June 30 to leave were, in many cases, educated on Nigerian soil.

‘Mandela tax’

“Nigeria opened its doors and its classrooms. Hundreds of South Africans went to school free of charge.

“The Nigerian High Commission in Botswana issued hundreds of Nigerian passports to South Africans who had fled their country and gave them the dignity of citizenship when their own nation had stripped them of basic human rights.”

Former president Thabo Mbeki – “that refined, pipe-smoking intellectual who would go on to lead the country” – spent seven years living in Nigeria, the country did not hand him a deportation notice. It gave him sanctuary.”

Amachree said the money donated by Nigeria to the anti-apartheid cause implied a current “missed opportunity cost” for his country of close to $300 billion.

He added: “My proposal, and I state it with complete seriousness: South Africa has until June 30 – the very deadline its mobs have set for us – to present a repayment schedule to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“Payment can be made via the Nigerian Embassy in Pretoria, directly to the Presidency, or – and here I offer a creative alternative in the spirit of African brotherhood – in land.”

Repayment

“I propose that in lieu of cash, South Africa cede the Western Cape to Nigeria as a foreign territory of the federal republic.

“We will run it efficiently. We always have run things efficiently when given functioning infrastructure to work with. Ask any Nigerian businessman in Johannesburg – before someone burned his shop down.”

Addressing the “slander” Nigerians are behind the drug trade in SA, Amachree called it “a lie of breathtaking convenience”.

“The black South African who today turns on his Nigerian neighbour has been cruelly manipulated. His enemies, the people who own the land, control the economy, benefit from his continued disorganisation, live behind electric fences and security cameras. They have no interest in being the target of black frustration.

“They have, with the assistance of social media algorithms and politicians like Gayton McKenzie, successfully redirected that frustration toward the people who look most like a threat.”