I learned the word Xenophobia because of South Africa

The first time I heard the word Xenophobia, I thought it was a word used to describe the hatred South Africans had for Nigerians. It was the only time I ever heard that word get pulled out, when the two countries were having twitter wars, or after Nigeria would beat South Africa in a match and Everyone would tell the Nigerians in South Africa to stay safe- and so naturally, It just always felt very much like a term exclusive to their banter.

Imagine my surprise then, when a few years later in one of my Broadcasting classes, I discovered that it had nothing to do exclusively with these two countries but was merely a term used to describe the fear, dislike or hatred of people from other countries.

Nigeria and South Africa have been going at it for more than a decade now, and it just makes you wonder why two African countries who have a positive history together would hate each other that much. The most recent case of this Hatred was when Beauty pageant Queen Chidinma Adetshina was shunned by her Fellow South Africans because her name sounded ‘too Nigerian’.

She was unofficially investigated by some unemployed twitter users, who took it upon themselves to find out everything about her heritage and contest the fact that she wanted to be Miss South Africa.

There was a lot of foul exchange, and after the relentless threats and bullying, Miss Chidinma decided to opt out of the competition for the safety of her and her family.

Everybody knows how the rest of the story goes, but it does make one wonder why South Africans hate Nigerians that much to begin with. It is believed that the conflict comes from issues like unemployment, which leads to poverty, which leads to locals wondering why the hell they don’t have any jobs.

And then, when they find out that these jobs— which would’ve probably given them some leverage— have been taken by the over ambitious Nigerian man who cannot just sit unemployed no matter where he finds himself, It immediately leads to all the violence (clearly those guys don’t believe in dialogue) that you hear of in big cities like Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape town.

They launch into attacks on foreign owned businesses, looting them, destroying them, and sometimes even killing the people there as well.

Nobody knows if the South Africans who hate Nigerians will ever have an Epiphany, but we can only hope that if they ever do, it’ll come as soon as possible.