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Article type :

Original article

Author :

AcheoahOfeh Augustine

Volume :

1

Issue :

2

Abstract :

This paper attempts a discursive perspective on the antithesis between the waves of xenophobic attacks on nationals from other African countries in South Africaand a litany of Pan-African philosophies around which all Africans united against the oppressive regimes that once held their brothers in Southern African states bound: Negritude of Sedar Senghor,Ubuntuism, Steve Biko’s“Black Consciousness”,“African Center Piece” (the ideological underpinning of Nigeria’s foreign policy since independence) as well as a betrayal of the South Africannational anthem “Nkosisikilel’iAfrica”. The post-Apartheid Afro-phobic killings inSouth Africa lay bare one of the diplomatic failuresof post-OAU regional diplomacy in Africa. The paper re-examines how these pre-independence philosophies came to bond African nationalists together in the struggle against minority rule in the Frontline States and how the other African states and the worldstood side by side with the Sothern African nations fromAgosstinhoNeto’s Angola to SamoraMachel’s Mozambique, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia), and Sam Nujoma’s Namibia, so as to reflect how reciprocal or not the post-Apartheid South Africa had been to their fellow African neighbors. While Mandela must be commended for his high sense of diplomatic reciprocity he showed after he regained freedom through a litany of shuttle diplomacy to several parts of the world, making Nigeria one of his first ports of call outside the frontline states. Mandela, “a humane, simplistic and pacifist par excellence” never attributed the victory over apartheid to himself alone, nor did he attributed it to the South African alone but Africa and indeed the world for even the role of other veterans of the anti-apartheid struggles were never omitted in his remark, he Knew he was because Walter Sisulu was, Gowan Mbeki was, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Andrew Mlangeni, JathyKathrada and Dennis Goldberg were. The paper seeks to put to perspective how the post-OAU regional diplomacy in Africa is failing in spite the touted “Union Concept without unity” without supranational jurisdiction nor the structures that sustained the European Integration in the 21st Century, a region that colonized Africa, fought wars among themselves over territorial, ideological and expansionistic disputes, yet could forge an uncommon integration. While Africa is still beset with deep intra-regional cleavages (at ethno-national levels), France and Germany have put behind them the vestigesand spasms of Alsace Lorraine, championing an unprecedented integration in continental Europe withone currency, one visa, collapsing national borders for common European citizenry. This Paper submits that thexenophobic attacksmet out to her African brothers in South Africa does not only reflect a betrayal of the African brotherhood,“Negritude”, Steve Biko’s“Black Consciousness”, Zulu’s “Ubuntuism” as wellas Nigeria’s foreign policy Doctrine of “African Center piece” upon which all the leaders of successive administrations and regimesin Nigeria since Independence(1 October, 1960) had underpinned their foreign policy objectives, it also reflects one of the institutional frailties of the African Union and post-OAU regional diplomacy in the 21st Century Africa. While the responses of president Cyril Ramaphosa is partly commendable, more has to be done at the intergovernmental levels through the African Union to save Africa from the Afro-phobic killings by one African nationals against another an antithesis to the“African Union Concept”.