lost their souls
Contrary to the widely held belief, there are honest, hard-working Nigerians living in South Africa, but many of them are too scared to own up to their nationality
Emeka Nwandiko
Despite his neatly coiffured hair and delicate pencil moustache, Sammi’s serenity is betrayed by the violent gesticulations of his arms towards the street beyond his hairdressing salon in Hillbrow.
Outside a car stereo blasts Nigerian fuji reggae music, adding to the already chaotic scene. People line the streets, some in heated discussion, while idle minds’ eyes stare at passers-by, diffuse smoke rises from a braai where a crowd watches cow intestines being grilled, bedsheets and clothing hang unceremoniously from a myriad of balconies.
A skinny white prostitute crosses the street in the hope of being solicited by one of three black occupants of a car that has pulled up outside a hotel. Trees that line either side of the street look like menacing statues without their leaves. It looks and feels like an urban squatter camp for nationals from the African continent.
Sammi says despondently: “South Africa is not a place for Nigerians to live.” He arrived in South Africa over a year ago, lured by the prospect of working in an economy far superior to that of his native Nigeria.
Dressed modestly in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, he says he had intended to work as a quantity surveyor in South Africa, but he was not granted a work permit. Now he works as a barber in a three-by-three metre brick hut which he built nine months after he arrived. Sublime it isn’t: a single antiquated hairdryer stands solemn guard in a corner, while two assistants lie fast asleep huddled in a heap on plastic chairs.
The 38-year-old father of four says trade is sluggish but he thinks it will improve as summer approaches. Nevertheless, he has found that despite his sincere efforts, he is viewed with a degree of suspicion by sections of the host society. “I started out by borrowing money to buy clippers and a tent so I could cut hair on the pavement here in Hillbrow, and even though I built this shack with my bare hands, I am called a drug dealer,” he says.
Nigerians have found living in South Africa a bit of a culture shock, to say the least. Some had thought that on arrival they would be welcomed with open arms out of gratitude to the government of Nigeria for its role in providing arms and cash to the African National Congress during its protracted battle to end the last bastion of white rule on the African continent.
Instead, Nigerians have found – much to their amazement – that black South Africans have a rather insular attitude which, at times, explodes into xenophobic fits of rage. During a demonstration against foreign street traders in Johannesburg last month, Sammi, a Yoruba (one of three main Nigerian ethnic groups) from western Nigeria, says he was lucky that his shop was not torched by a mob on the rampage.
He says he cannot understand why he and other black foreigners (who are called, collectively, kwere-kwere) are so loathed when they are simply conducting business at a time when black South Africans feel too proud to do menial jobs and do not have the same level of entrepreneurial acumen as their West African counterparts.
Nigerians live in fear of their lives in a country reminiscent of the old Wild West: where disputes are more likely to be settled with the pull of a trigger than the flapping of the tongue. Every Nigerian in Hillbrow knows of a compatriot who has been gunned down. Sammi still cannot believe that three of his closest friends are dead, shot in bars while having a drink. Since the murders, Sammi has curtailed his late- night soirees into bars and clubs lest he suffer the same fate.
Not only do they live in dread – law- abiding Nigerians are saddled with the image of being fiendishly corrupt, drug- dealing individuals linked to any one of the numerous financial scams exposed by the media and busted by the much overworked South African Police Service.
Nigerians have found, to their cost, that even to whisper in a crowded room their nationality would be a foolhardy exercise, as they are very likely to run the risk of being shunned, abused or ridiculed by the company they keep. Some Nigerians say they have had the misfortune of mentioning their nationality in Hillbrow to SAPS officials. The result, it is claimed, is several nights in detention without charge in the new democratic South Africa.
Dr Raymond Nkado, a lecturer in quantity surveying at Witwatersrand University, is all chuckles when he recalls the time when he was constantly ribbed by his head of department on whether he “had the stuff?” – a reference to cocaine. At the time he was overwhelmed by a deep sense of shame at the villainy of some of his compatriots.
In his plush office in Sandton, Johannesburg, the head of the Union Bank of Nigeria in South Africa, Austin Aikhorin, says people react with shock, followed by a deep wariness, when he mentions that he is a Nigerian.
As a defensive ploy, Nigerians do not disclose their country of origin, let alone allow themselves to be seen within a metre of their compatriots (unless, of course, they live in Hillbrow). A diplomat at the Nigerian consulate in Johannesburg reveals there are many expatriate Nigerians who have spent over a year working for reputable firms in South Africa, but have decided to live incognito because of the stigma attached to being a Nigerian.
This strange behaviour of Nigerians prompted a much-travelled South African businessman, MK Malefane, to remark that most of the Nigerians he has met outside South Africa are a felicitious bunch who like all to know they are fun-loving people. But “the Nigerians I have met in this country have lost their soul”. Life for the Nigerian in South Africa is one of virtual social isolation, almost as if apartheid were still in place.
There are an estimated 10 000 Nigerians residing in South Africa, living in two distinct and exclusively separate communities. The haves – doctors, university lecturers and teachers, and the managing consultant – generally live in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg; and the have-nots -university graduates and small businessmen, denied work permits – languish in the depths of Hillbrow. The former are contemptuous of the latter for bringing shame to their country and forcing them to live like hermits. The latter only wish for their dilemma to be heard. Never the twain shall meet.
But there is one thing they do have in common: a strong sense of patriotism and of living abroad in self-exile. A vast proportion of Nigerians believe they have no option but to seek prosperity abroad. In a sense, the Nigerian migrational trend is comparable to the flight of white South Africans to New Zealand, Australia, Europe and North America, which has increased over the years since the transfer of power from the white minority population to the black majority in 1994.
Both exoduses are political in origin: one born out of fear of what the country might become; and the other a result of what the country has become after nearly 40 years of self-rule.
In Nigeria today the infrastructure is either degraded or dilapidated. It is virtually impossible to drive a distance in Nigeria equivalent to Johannesburg-to-Cape Town without causing serious harm to yourself, or damage to your vehicle. Interstate highways are not just riddled with pot-holes; whole gullies intersect roads, making them treacherously impassable. Despite being blessed with abundant mineral resources, electricity blackouts – some lasting more than five hours – are the norm.
Even more remarkable is the fact that a country whose chief export is crude oil – over 90% – in parts of the south, where oil is extracted, kilometre-long queues for petrol are not an uncommon sight.
Among the Nigerian community here in Johannesburg a joke is currently doing the rounds.
As part of the conclusion of a world economic summit during the 1980s, each head of state paid homage to God and asked Him when their respective countries would be self-sufficient. The Almighty boomed to each of them in turn that it would happen, but not in their lifetime. Crestfallen and much in tears the delegates returned home.
When it came the turn of the Nigerian head of state to ask when his country would be self-sufficient, it was God who wept, replying: “It won’t happen in My lifetime.”
Nowhere is the sense of a nation foresaken by its God more evident than outside The Sands Hotel in Hillbrow, one of several hotels in the area where Nigerians have formed colonies. With Star beer drunk in abundance and Igbo, one of the three main Nigerian languages, the lingua franca, one would be forgiven for thinking one is in an eastern Nigerian town.
The conditions inside the hotel are squalid. There is also much talk among lodgers of not being able to afford the rent; a majority of the lodgers are unemployed. Rooms designed for one person sleep four people instead. At any one time, up to 100 Nigerians can be seen outside the hotel, engaged in different activities. On a patch of derelict land a small group watches a game of table tennis, some are in deep conversation, others roam the streets, more still are drinking bottles of Star beer. The rest deal in drugs.
It is not hard to witness drug transactions taking place. A car drives into the hotel parking lot. The occupants, usually white, hand over money to a look-out who promptly disappears. Within seconds an accomplice appears and hands over what looks like pipes to the driver of the vehicle. All this is ignored by police who constantly patrol the area.
Michael, a rather handsome man in his mid- twenties, is spokesman for his peers from his community in Nigeria. He explains their plight: “We came to this country because we thought there was a greater prospect of finding work.”
When asked about the drug dealing reputation of Nigerians, the becapped Michael professes to know nothing about the illicit trade. But he adds wryly: “Nigerians are involved because it is the only way to earn some money to get out of this country.” And he offers the information that those who peddle drugs earn little money, as it is a commission- based job.
He is quick to blame the Chinese, Pakistanis, and Indians for importing drugs into South Africa and asks the indignant question: “Have you ever heard of cocaine being made in Nigeria?”
He is joined by Nnamdi, with whom he studied for a political science degree at the University of Nsukka in eastern Nigeria. Nnamdi interjects: “We are stranded here. If someone gave us a ticket to leave South Africa today we would gladly take it” – but only if the destination is anywhere other than Nigeria.
A cellphone rings. Nnamdi is in deep conversation for a few minutes. He returns and announces that the pair have been advised by a friend in America to apply for a US green card in the lottery scheme run by the US government.
Such is the desperation of Nigeria’s youth that they are willing to gamble their future in any country but their own which, they feel, has failed effectively to use its own natural resource, namely, its citizens, as a result of rampant corruption and economic mismanagement.
As if to emphasise the point Edwin, who once had a legitimate pharmaceutical business in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, says forlornly: “Fuck-all is happening here and back home.” He darts off towards a car to solicit the needs of its occupants.
Ask any of the Nigerians, young men in their prime – each with a university degree or a background in small business – and the reply is often the same. Emenike, a recent graduate in economic science at the University of Port Harcourt in south- eastern Nigeria, and Ali, a computer components salesman, comment on the disastrous state of affairs back home. They strongly urge the need to end corruption and build a stable economy. Ask them what can be done to achieve these goals and derisive laughter is the reply.
There is nothing more pitiful than to hear a people crying out to be saved by their country. There is nothing more disheartening than to see the failure of will and imagination among these same people as the main cause of their woes.
Aikhorin is certain that democracy will be the panacea for all his country’s ills. “What they want to see is political stability,” says the banker. He astutely warns that if the current state of affairs continues, Nigeria “will remain stagnant – or get worse”.
The khaki-clad businessmen who run the country have earmarked 1998 as the year when political power will be transferred to a democratically elected head of state. For the first time in its history, the northern hegemony that has steadfastly gripped Nigeria since independence will be relinquished, with the introduction of a unique formula of power-sharing among the diverse regions of the country.
Whether this arrangement will work in a country that has well over 250 ethnic groups and a population above 100-million is anyone’s guess.
Nevertheless, Nigerians in South Africa hope the reins of political power will be firmly in the grasp of civilians by October 1998 and beyond. However, many seem to have forgotten that civilians are equally to blame for Nigeria’s turbulent past. Six years after independence in 1960 bitter ethnic rivalry resulted in the deaths of thousands, and the army intervened in an unsuccessful attempt to arrest the disintegration of the new republic into regionalism and anarchy.
Many of the young men outside The Sands Hotel were not even born when their parents fought a savage three-year civil war when Igbos from the eastern region attempted to secede from the federation to form the Republic of Biafra in 1967.
They were teenagers about to enter university in the early 1980s when their elders failed them yet again during Nigerias second experiment with democracy. It was a time when education was a growth industry – textbooks were scarce, teachers were on strike but it seemed that every state government had enough resources to build a university in every local government capital; one was even called Pope John Paul University.
To put an end to this madness, the military intervened. In a radio broadcast, Sani Abacha, then a brigadier, proclaimed to stunned citizens that he and his colleagues in the armed forces deemed it necessary to “effect change in the system of government” after excessive “squandermania” (corruption) by civilians.
The country’s political instability is borne out by the composition of its exiles. A vast majority of Nigerians are southerners by origin. It is rare to find a northerner in the depths of Hillbrow or lecturing at Wits; one finds them in high government positions or in the diplomatic corps. Since independence northerners have dominated Nigerian political history, which explains, to an extent, why the presidential elections of 1992 were annulled.
The avidity of generals aside, Nigeria stands to be in a unique position if its impending and latest experiment with democracy succeeds. It will be the first ethnically diverse country with a huge population in Africa to settle harmoniously, once and for all, the competing aspirations of ethnic groups within one boundary.
It could be the first to keep the generals (and aspiring ones) where they belong: in the barracks, and not in the business of arresting the development of millions as if they were commodities to be disposed of during their quest for power and self- aggrandisement.
And if the experiment fails? Life as an exile in South Africa will continue unabated for the men standing around The Sands Hotel in Hillbrow, and for thousands more. Bogeyman or not, who – in their right mind -wants that?