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South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, Naledi Pandor
Naledi Pandor, South African minister of foreign affairs has called on the Nigerian government to keep citizens who are into drug peddling, human trafficking and other vices from coming into her country..
She said that South Africa needed the help of the Federal Government of Nigeria to curb crimes in their country, as she said that South Africans believe that Nigerians were into drug peddling, human trafficking and other vices that hurt their nation.
Pandor said, “Help us address the belief and the reality that our people have that there are many persons from Nigeria, who are dealing in drugs in our country, who are harming our young people by making drugs easily available to them.
“The belief that Nigerian nationals are involved in human trafficking and other abusive practices. This kind of assistance in ensuring that such people don’t come to our country would be of great assistance to our nation.”
Nigerians and other foreign nationals have been the target of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, since last week after a taxi driver was killed by an alleged drug dealer in Pretoria.
South Africa has shut its embassies in Nigeria over concerns of reprisal attacks.
South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, on Thursday acknowledged that prejudice against people from other African countries was one of the causes behind deadly attacks on foreign-owned businesses. This is coming a day after Pretoria was forced to shut its embassy in Nigeria over threats of retaliatory violence.
On Wednesday, South African companies, MTN, and Shoprite closed stores in Nigeria after retaliatory attacks in one of the stores.
Pandor said the government decided to temporarily close the embassy in Nigeria for security reasons after a protest march was planned there and threats of violence were received, NAN reports.
In an interview on the sidelines of a continental economic conference in Cape Town, Pandor said South Africa was in constant contact with Nigerian authorities and was also working to restore calm in areas affected by the violence.
“There is an Afrophobia we are sensing that exists, there is resentment and we need to address that,” Pandor said.
“There is a targeting of Africans from other parts of Africa, we can’t deny that. But, there is also criminality … because a lot of this is accompanied by theft,” she said, describing the attacks as a complex phenomenon whose root causes were not easy to define.
The violence in South Africa has overshadowed the conference of the World Economic Forum in Cape Town. Nigeria announced on Wednesday it would boycott the meeting.
The withdrawal from the summit of Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was scheduled to address a panel on universal energy access on Thursday, has cast a cloud over initiatives to boost intra-African trade.