Africans are reeling in shock at viral videos showing what appear to be South African vigilante groups conducting street-level crackdowns on suspected undocumented migrants.
In the clips, the groups are seen stopping people in public spaces, demanding identification documents, and confronting foreigners in scenes that many observers have termed “low-budget” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
Other disturbing clips appear to show black foreign nationals being assaulted with punches and crude weapons. Reports have also emerged of businesses owned by foreign nationals, including Somali traders, being attacked and looted in what critics say reflects a fresh escalation of xenophobia in the country.
While past incidents have often focused on Nigerians and Zimbabweans living in South Africa, recent reports suggest Ghanaians are now also feeling the heat.
The core grievance voiced by some South Africans is that foreigners are entering the country illegally, settling in communities, competing for jobs and resources, and in some cases contributing to crime.
Across West Africa, especially in Ghana, emotions are running high over the treatment of their compatriots. While Ghanaian authorities have largely pursued diplomatic channels, sections of the public are openly questioning why South African citizens and businesses continue to operate peacefully in Ghana, even as Ghanaians face hostility abroad. Such frustrations risk creating a dangerous cycle of retaliatory nationalism.
Many Africans also struggle to reconcile this hostility with history.
During the anti-apartheid struggle, several independent African states offered support to South African liberation movements through funding, training grounds, diplomatic backing, and sanctuary.
Leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere championed the idea that African freedom was indivisible. Nkrumah famously argued that Ghana’s independence meant little if the rest of Africa remained unfree.
For some Ghanaians and other Africans, today’s treatment feels like a betrayal of Pan-African solidarity.
Similar tensions have been palpable in other regions of Africa over the years, despite a series of high-level summits to discuss a common market.
Kenya and Tanzania, despite being key partners in the East African Community, have periodically clashed over trade barriers, transport access, investment, and border controls.
Diplomatic friction between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam has at times spilled into public disputes, travel restrictions, and retaliatory measures.
Elsewhere, disputes between Morocco and Western Sahara, Ethiopia and Somalia, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and many others show a continent still burdened by mistrust, rivalry, and unresolved territorial questions.
This is where the ambitious dream of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) meets hard reality.
AfCFTA was launched as the world’s largest free trade area, bringing together 55 African Union countries to create a single market of over 1.3 billion people and trillions of dollars in combined economic output. In theory, it could unlock industrial growth, intra-African trade, jobs, and poverty reduction on a historic scale.
However, treaties signed in conference halls do not automatically erase suspicion and hate on the streets.
A free trade area cannot flourish where Africans fear other Africans, where border officials frustrate movement, where petty protectionism overrides partnership, and where migrants become convenient scapegoats for deeper economic failures.
Some countries, including Kenya, have taken encouraging steps to ease visa restrictions for fellow Africans. Yet across much of the continent, travel remains burdened by bureaucracy, arbitrary rules, and systems that discourage trade, investment, and human mobility.
The disconnect is absolutely glaring in that African leaders speak the language of integration, while many citizens still live the politics of exclusion.
This means the Agenda 2063 flagship project is being oversold as an economic fix without equal investment in social cohesion, civic education, and Pan-African consciousness.
If Africans are taught to view one another primarily as competitors, intruders, or enemies, no customs union will save the vision.
To succeed, AfCFTA requires a serious attitude rehabilitation to accompany the revision of tariffs.
African governments need to address unemployment, insecurity, corruption, and weak institutions so that foreigners are not blamed for domestic frustrations.
African leaders should actively promote the idea that African prosperity can be shared rather than hoarded behind colonial-era borders.
AfCFTA could become the masterstroke that helps Africa reduce dependency, industrialize, and finally trade with itself at scale.
But if ordinary Africans continue to turn on one another, then the continent’s biggest free trade project may become a very expensive shiny paperweight.
