A recent article by Mills Soko in this newspaper (SA too timid in handling Nigeria, May 29) is a prime example of the perils of academic journalism. Soko argues that South Africa has “pursued a policy of appeasement” towards Nigeria, “failed to stand up to Nigeria when its national interest has been undermined”, and he described Nigeria’s policy towards South Africa as “a combination of blackmail and misplaced overconfidence”.
Soko, however, fails to provide any evidence of a single instance in which South Africa has appeased Nigeria.
Former president Thabo Mbeki, in fact, pursued a strategic relationship with Abuja from 1999, not to appease it, but in recognition that he needed what is now Africa’s largest economy, with 20 per cent of the continent’s population, to build regional institutions and increase Africa’s leverage in global politics. Alliance-building should thus not be confused with appeasement.
South Africa also stood up to Nigeria to defend its perceived national interest on numerous occasions, including an example the author himself cites of ensuring the election of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the African Union commission chair in 2012 in the teeth of Nigerian opposition. Last year, South Africa also impounded for several weeks a planeload of cash sent by the Nigerian government to buy arms in South Africa.
As for the charges of Nigerian blackmail, it is stretching this term to use it to describe Nigeria’s recalling of its ambassador after xenophobic attacks against its citizens.
Nigeria’s call for greater access to the South African market to match the large presence of South African businesses in Nigeria also scarcely amounts to blackmail.
Soko, a professor of business, makes the economically illiterate point that Nigeria has a huge trade surplus with South Africa. The point, though, is that more than 90 per cent of Nigeria’s exports have been oil, while more than 100 South African companies operate in diverse sectors of Nigeria’s economy and export to Nigeria machinery, electrical equipment, wood, paper, tobacco, sugar, plastics and rubber. More sophisticated analysts have noted that the greater industrialisation of South Africa’s economy has made it more difficult for Nigerian companies to enter the market.
Soko acknowledges Nigeria’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle but notes that other countries supported the struggle. He again misses the point.
As President Jacob Zuma recently observed in the wake of the xenophobic attacks, South African leaders have not done enough to educate their citizens on the debt of gratitude they owe to the continent. Most South Africans are unaware Nigeria established the Southern African Relief Fund in 1976 to provide South Africans with scholarships (400 black South African students arrived in the country a year later). Public servants also had a “Mandela Tax” deducted from their monthly salaries to support South Africa’s liberation struggle.
The country’s diplomats attended meetings of the Frontline States of Southern Africa, chaired the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, and hosted the UN anti-apartheid conference in 1977, which triggered the arms embargo against South Africa three months later.
Soko erroneously notes that South Africa contributed to peacekeeping missions in Mozambique, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Since the UN deployed in Mozambique between 1992 and 1994 in the midst of South Africa’s own transition to democratic rule, if the latter were to have been involved in the country, it would have had to send apartheid soldiers who had been wreaking destruction on Mozambique years earlier. Liberia and Sierra Leone were peacekeeping efforts largely led by Nigeria and did not involve South African peacekeepers.
Responding to criticism of the stereotyping of Nigerians as criminals, Soko helpfully tells us that one cannot deny that Nigerian nationals have been involved in crime. This statement is about as insightful as noting that most crimes in South Africa are committed by South Africans.
The point surely is that Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Russians, Mozambicans, Moroccans and Italians also engage in criminal activities, but are not stereotyped in the same way as Nigerians. In 2004, for example, a Johannesburg radio station, 94.7 Highveld, was forced by South Africa’s Broadcasting Complaints Commission to apologise after it claimed that then Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo was carrying cocaine in his bag when he attended Mbeki’s presidential inauguration.
Throughout this incoherent piece, terms such as “soft power”, “national interest”, and “appeasement” are bandied about without explanation.
The lesson of Soko’s article is that prejudice masquerading as analysis inevitably results in shoddy academic journalism.
BY ADEKEYE ADEBAJO
Adebajo is executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution
This article was first published in BDlive.co.za, June 15, 2015
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