S/AFRICA: A bond that must never be broken (5)

Vanguard News | 07-08-2026 05:59am |

By Femi Fani-Kayode To buttress the point permit me to share the words of Mr. Kio Amachree, a Stockholm-based Nigerian writer. On July 13, he wrote the following on X: “I do not know a Nigerian who would sell his soul the way the anti-immigrant mobs of South Africa have done this past month. “Every unreconstructed apartheid nostalgist is laughing behind his locked gates at how easily these movements were turned against their fellow Africans, doing the dirty work of division for free and making the power grab of others so much easier”. He added: “Ask the obvious question: Who is writing the cheques? March and March charters buses across provinces, prints shirts by the thousand, stages press conferences and floods social media with coordinated campaigns, yet its own public crowdfunding raised barely thirteen thousand rand. “Researchers at Wits University say plainly that this is not a grassroots movement of the unemployed, that there is external funding. “A Stellenbosch professor calls the movement inorganic, coordinated and amplified by people with a political agenda, with money moving in ways no one can trace. “Former President Thabo Mbeki calls it what it is, a funded counter-revolutionary project that does not come from the people. “Somebody with deep pockets is bankrolling the spectacle of Black South Africans hunting fellow Africans, and every day the financiers stay hidden, the beneficiaries of a divided, burning South Africa sleep more peacefully behind their locked gates. “Follow the money and you will find the true authors of this shame. “The movement is led by Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, a former radio presenter enjoying her 15 minutes of fame, flanked by Zulu regiments and regional agitators like Mthokozisi Gumede in KwaZulu-Natal. “This is not patriotism. It is a political project wearing the stolen clothes of liberation. “Stockholm Syndrome is too weak a term for what ails this movement. “Its foot soldiers appear to have been taught to hate themselves, and they have no regard for the sacrifice of the thousands of freedom fighters, many sheltered and armed by the very African nations they now terrorize, who gave them the right to breathe as free men and women”. He concluded with the following: “Meanwhile, those who dreamt of the good old days of white rule watch Black South Africans do to fellow Africans what apartheid once did to them, and they could not have scripted it better themselves. “Every burnt shop, every checkpoint, every whip raised against a Zimbabwean domestic worker or a Nigerian trader is a gift to those who always said Africans could not govern themselves. “The freedom fighters who died from Sharpeville to Soweto did not die for this. “South Africans deserve to know whose money is buying their liberation back from them, rand by rand”. Amachree is right. South African Minister of Justice, Mamoloko Kubayi, hit the nail on the head when she said “foreign entities are stoking unrest in South Africa”. Fragment, imperialistic and neo-colonialistic design The truth is we do not have to dig too deep to know just who those foreign entities are when we consider the words of an essay written by Israeli columnist Grant Arthur Gotchin that was published on January 2, 2026 in the Times of Israel in which he argued: “Africa must fragment and South Africa must be the first to fragment”. The objective is clear. It is an imperialistic and neo-colonialistic design and construct whose purpose is to destroy, divide and rule us ALL. Outside of that, permit me to ask Minister Ntshaveni and those that think like her the following questions: Are the majority of Nigerians in South Africa not properly documented, hard working, responsible, decent people who have major investments there? Is it fair for you to suggest that the majority of Nigerians in South Africa are undocumented and illegal immigrants, drug dealers and criminals who “live in shacks” when you know very well that this is not the case? Is it Nigerians that bring drugs into your country through your ports and borders? Is it Nigerians that manufacture drugs there? Is it Nigerians that make up your police force, customs and law enforcement agencies that colluded with the drug dealers to bring drugs in and sell them? Is it Nigerians that consume drugs in your country or force others to consume them? Are Nigerians the only ones that are involved in the drug trade in South Africa? Are 98% of the people in South African prisons South Africans and not Nigerians? Is it not a fact that, as South African Minister of Correctional Services, Dr. Pieter Groenewald, recently confirmed, there are only 28,000 foreign prisoners in South Africa and that less than 300 of them are Nigerians? Does this not torpedo the absurd notion that all Nigeria

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