An Open Letter to the South African High Commissioner to Ghana : On Xenophobia, Memory, and the Future of African Solidarity
By Seth K. Awuku for GhanaianNewsCanada | May 24, 2026
Your Excellency,
I write not in hostility toward South Africa, but in sorrow and concern as an African who, like millions across this continent, once viewed South Africa’s liberation as a shared continental triumph.
For many Africans of my generation, South Africa was never merely another country. It represented suffering, resistance, courage, and ultimately redemption. Across the continent, ordinary Africans prayed, marched, sacrificed, mobilised resources, and spoke with one voice against apartheid. South Africa’s freedom became a collective African dream.
It is therefore painful to witness recurring xenophobic attacks against fellow Africans – including Ghanaians, Nigerians, Malians, Zimbabweans, and others – within a nation whose liberation was nourished by continental solidarity.
Recent incidents involving African nationals living in fear, including the repatriation of a Ghanaian citizen reportedly compelled to leave South Africa for his safety, have deepened anxieties across the continent. These events raise difficult but necessary questions:
Who truly counts as African within the South African imagination? At what point does nationality displace fraternity?
Yet this letter is not written to condemn South Africa alone.
Ghana itself carries its own historical contradictions. Barely six years after independence, Ghana – pioneer of Pan-Africanism and a leading architect of the Organisation of African Unity – expelled thousands of West Africans under the 1969 Aliens Compliance Order. The contradiction was profound.
How could a nation so committed to African unity turn so quickly toward exclusion?
Yet history also teaches that nations can mature through their mistakes. Efforts by Ignatius Kutu Acheampong of Ghana and Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria later helped rebuild trust and contributed to the formation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1975 – a lasting symbol of regional cooperation and African reconciliation.
South Africa now stands before a similar moment of reflection.
No serious observer denies the immense pressures confronting South Africa: unemployment, inequality, poverty, crime, migration pressures, and the lingering scars of apartheid. These are real and painful realities.
But structural hardship cannot justify turning fellow Africans into scapegoats. Violence against African migrants risks undermining the very moral authority that made South Africa a beacon of global justice.
True, Your Excellency, Ghana too faces legitimate concerns regarding immigration, including complaints that some foreign nationals engage in economic activities or occupations reserved for Ghanaians under our immigration and investment laws. These tensions have, at times, provoked public frustration and demonstrations by sections of our citizenry.
Yet successive Ghanaian governments have sought to address such concerns through lawful institutional processes while consistently discouraging citizens from taking the law into their own hands. That distinction remains vital.
The challenge for all African states is not whether migration pressures exist – they do – but whether we confront them within the rule of law and the spirit of African fraternity.
President Cyril Ramaphosa himself acknowledged Africa’s historic role in South Africa’s liberation when he declared on Freedom Day:
“We did not walk alone into freedom. We were carried by a tide of solidarity from the nations of Africa.”
He further warned:
“It cannot be, and it must never be, that we trample into the dust the African fellowship that made our freedom possible.”
Those words captured an essential truth.
At its core, Pan-Africanism is a refusal to replicate among ourselves the exclusions once imposed upon us by outsiders.
The contradiction becomes even more striking when viewed through the lens of African economic integration.
In Ghana, South African-linked investments continue to flourish, including the majority South African-owned Gold Fields Ghana operations at Tarkwa, widely regarded among the country’s most successful mining enterprises. As discussions emerge ahead of the possible renewal of its long-term mining lease beyond April 2027, difficult questions inevitably arise about reciprocity, continental partnership, and the responsibilities accompanying African economic presence across borders.
Yet the answer cannot lie in retaliation or bitterness.
Rather, it must lie in a deeper commitment to mutual respect, lawful protection, reciprocity, and the Pan-African ideals that make such cross-border partnerships possible in the first place.
The continuing relevance of continental cooperation was underscored by President John Dramani Mahama during his 2026 State of the Nation Address when he stated
:
“No single African country, no matter how well-endowed, can thrive alone in this new global environment.
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Indeed, Africa’s future prosperity and security cannot be built on fear of one another.
Your Excellency, South Africa remains one of Africa’s most influential nations. Precisely because of that influence, the continent expects more from South Africa – not perfection, but leadership. Not exclusion, but moral courage. Not hostility toward fellow Africans, but renewed commitment to ubuntu and continental fraternity.
I am reminded of lines from a poem I wrote in 1986, when South Africa symbolised moral courage for oppressed peoples across the world:
Oh South Africa – once a wounded giant
How did you become a stranger to your own?
Why now do you turn against your kin,
Casting them into shadows, into fear?.
How does liberation forget its own memory?
South Africa now stands at a defining crossroads.
It must choose between ubuntu as a living principle and exclusion as convenient practice; between moral leadership and moral retreat; between a bold continental identity and a fearful nationalism.
The continent is watching. History is watching.
May South Africa rise once again as a beacon – proving that true liberation does not end with freedom from oppression, but with the courage to extend dignity and belonging to others.
Respectfully,
Seth K. Awuku
Takoradi, Ghana
About the Author
Seth K. Awuku is a Ghanaian writer . He writes on governance, diplomacy, and Pan-Africanism. He is the Principal and Founder of Sovereign Advisory Ltd in Takoradi Ghana
