Lawrence Enyoghasu
They were first expected to arrive on Tuesday, September 17, but the South African authorities contrived excuses to delay them, using a trumped up charge that some of them came into the country illegally using fake passports. After the Immigration perambulation, the Nigerian evacuees were eventually airlifted from a country that has become a hellhole for them. Their plane touched down at 7:22 pm in Lagos on Wednesday at the NAHCO Hajj ground and they deplaned from Air Peace ‘s Boeing 777 with registration number 5N-BWI, 315 in all, visibly relieved at being back in their country in one piece.
They were tired and stressed after spending 24 hours at the OR Tambo International airport. The only ones not feeling the pain were the 25 infants among them. For example, twins Emmanuel and Emmanuella had quickly made themselves at home. They played and held each other, walking around the Immigration centre. They had both pulled off their clothes, handing them to their mother, ready to explore the airport when an Immigration officer screamed: “Everybody hold your child!”
The order provoked a diatribe from their mother: “Please, I didn’t come back to be afraid again.”
This sudden vent of pent-up emotion spoke volume of the nightmare the Nigerian contingent passed through in the hell-on-earth that was xenophobic South Africa where they had survived by the skin of their teeth before their evacuation.
Stories from hell
Saturday Sun spoke with a cross-section of the returning Nigerians and they recounted their harrowing experience in South Africa’s cauldron of systematic violence against foreigners. They relived the horror, the hate and the trauma of ceaseless attacks that took the colouration of a pogrom in which Nigerians were the primary targets.
The mother of the twins still shuddered from the horrors of having to safeguard the lives of her children from the South African mob who sought to kill them. She refused to talk to the reporter.
Another returnee, Chuks Okon, though numbed by fear, mustered the courage to tell his story. The haggard-looking Delta State indigene affirmed that he survived on the streets of Joburg for six years, admitting that it was a mistake in the first place, his emigration from Nigeria.
“They were burning houses. They were killing people. If I didn’t come back, they would have killed me,” recalled Okon who unwisely forfeited the chance to be among the first batch of evacuees airlifted. “But a friend of mine told me they would kill me just because I am a Nigerian.”
A review of his time in Joburg was tinged with regret. “Surviving was hard. I was jobless, surviving by street instincts. I left Nigeria because there was nothing for me in this country. Unfortunately, when I got there, it was the same condition––emptiness. There was no job. I didn’t learn anything in that country; they will not allow you to learn. We survived on the street only when someone brought something for us to sell. There was nothing we could not sell. When you go to apply for a job as a Nigerian, South Africans won’t give you the job. It was a gang-up, particularly against Nigeria.”
Olumba Cyprian’s woes run deeper, is resounding, and more devastating with psychological ramification––his son, Chigozie, was taken away from him by his South African mother.
Cyprian, 45, an Imo State indigene who lived in Joburg for eight years, said his relationship with his South African woman turned sour immediately the last wave of attacks broke out.
“It is not easy to take a South African woman away from her country, not to talk of her child; it is even harder under the circumstance. At a time she was agreeing, but her people convinced her not to allow me to take the child. I was not legally married to her. Our courtship had resulted in the child, a boy named Chigozie. I am not married here in Nigeria.”
Those who had seen some of their compatriots at the receiving end of the mob’s viciousness were not economical with words in their rage. “They (South African) don’t bloody care how long you have stayed with them or what they have gained from you,” raved Osazuwa Friday who gave a picture of the kind of assault inflicted on them. “They would search your house, fumble with your wife’s body; they would assault your girl child and beat your son. It was an all-family attack.”
He continued: “There must be something of value they can obtain from you, otherwise you lose a part of you if you are lucky not to be killed.”
Luckily, his family were not with him in South Africa. “I am happy I didn’t move them into the country; if they did to my family the evils I saw happening, then I would either be dead by now or joined the Nigerian defenders.”
The returnees were mostly children and women, some of them pregnant, like Olamitan Ayiti who avoided the reporter from the point where she was cleared by Immigration to the NEMA bus that conveyed her to Hajj hall.
Eventually, she agreed to a brief interview. The tall, dark-skinned lady said she would not forget in a hurry the cruelty visited on her by South Africans. She vowed to tell her child the stories. “And he or she would do the same to the next generations,” she wailed.
She, however, refused to revisit that traumatic past, saying: “I don’t have a story. You can see that I am pained. I don’t have anything now except these (bag and pregnancy) that I carry. My husband is still there trying to see if the South African government would compensate him for what he has lost. If not that I know that my husband would stay alive to see his baby, I wouldn’t leave him in that country alone.”
Forgive or forget?
The Federal Government has pleaded with Nigerians to forgive South Africa of its xenophobic attacks. The statement resonated differently with the returnees who experienced first hand the savageness of the South African mob.
Hear Chucks Okon: “I might forgive them, but I can’t step in that country again. I won’t forget in a hurry what they had done. We should tell our children and they also should tell their children about this horrible tale.”
Then he reversed with vehemence: “I change my mind––I don’t even think I can forgive them when I close my eyes and remember what I saw. They don’t have a conscience.”
Olumba Cyprian was a bit temperate. “On my part, I have forgiven South Africa, but it will be a shame on the country if actions are not taken because, in the nearest future, other attacks will happen,” he stated.
Where Osazuwa Friday was ambivalent–– “Since the government said it has forgiven them, I don’t think I have the right to say no but if I was asked I would have said that we, Nigerians, should pay them back with their evils. Those people are not human beings they are beast. Most of us need to be taken for therapy by our government”––Olamitan Ayiti was very vindictive: “If the federal government forgave them, I can’t forgive them. I will tell my baby what I went through when he was in the womb. Once the first batch had been evacuated, the citizens have been rejoicing on the streets that we are leaving; some of them have already started packing into rooms occupied formerly by Nigerians. It was scary seeing someone who hates you being their neighbour. After the first evacuation, we could not rest or sleep.”
Chinedu Adibe, an Anambra indigene, who claimed he would not forget to tell his children why their father became poor after his travel to a foreign country, voiced similar sentiments.
“Immediately they heard that our government is repatriating us they started calling us weak. They had said that we left our country to steal their wealth and destabilize their economy and if they hurt us we will have to go back to our misery because our government would lose more if our country and theirs are at loggerheads,” he stated.
He added: “I would I tell my children that I lived in South Africa for six years, but could not bring them something tangible. I would tell them the truth because it has become part of our history, especially coming from a country we helped put on their feet. Federal Government can forgive them, not me.”
An unrepentant South Africa
Saturday Sun asked if the apology rendered by the South African authorities truly reflects the mood of the country.
The returnees were unanimous in their response: negative.
Paul Ezeamananma said they were almost attacked last Saturday, three days after the first evacuation.
“I can’t go to the country again even though you promised me hundred millions of naira,” he railed. “The South African government supported them but didn’t know that it would escalate to this level. The apology is a ruse. They tried to attack us again on Saturday last week only that the police was informed.”
Kennedy Peters corroborated this view. The Mechanical Engineer graduate from Edo State claimed some South Africans are still attacking Nigerians secretly even “as we speak.”
He pointed at the issue of fake passport cooked up by the country’s Immigration as a way of jailing some Nigerians. “There is nothing like fake passports in that country; you can only have expired passport, and that is, sometimes some people lose their passport. The South Africans apology is not genuine. They are still perpetrating their evil act even after the apology,” he stated.
As far as Comfort Akpan is concerned, the South Africa apology was a sham. A leopard will not lose its spot overnight, she said.
“They are full of s**t. They hate foreigners, even white. If they get any white in a corner, they would obtain (rob) the person. They just want to steal and take from foreigners,” Akpan raved.
On her own volition, she wouldn’t have relocated to South Africa, but the husband she married had been living there, even before they met. That left her with no choice after marriage but to migrate.
Her husband is still stuck there. “He would come back before December. They burnt my shop and my car. After the first evacuation they brought hell in bureaucracy,” she stated.
Those that would return to South Africa
Some of the returnees swore never to set foot on the country again. If they were to be taken by their words, wild horses would not drag them back to the shores of South Africa, not even in their wildest dreams. This includes the likes of Osazuwa Friday who claimed, “we were treated as savages. I can’t see myself again in the country. We are not welcomed in the country.”
Others, however, claimed they have unfinished business there and hoped to go back someday to ‘close their account.’
Cyprian, for instance, said he cannot forgo his six-year-old son to the boy’s South African mother. “I know that Chigozie would not be happy because I left, but I would go back for him,” he stated.
Chinedu Adibe hinted that he has a score to settle with South Africa. “The South African government seized my bag for reasons best known to them, but I will get them back. A friend of mine is fighting for it.”
That, however, is not the true reasons he yearned to go back. “It is something I can’t discuss, I am sorry,” she stated. “What I know is that I will go back to that country and [take] revenge. I know the boys who looted my shop. I saw them use my stuff. I came back home because the government provided free transport but I will go back.”