In Durban two weeks ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa faced a consequential diplomatic crisis of continental magnitude. South Africa was hosting the 46th Summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) against the backdrop of ongoing xenophobic violence in the Rainbow Nation. He chose to confront the matter directly.
Ramaphosa said South Africans were “deeply concerned and ashamed” that nationals of other countries had faced discrimination, ill-treatment and threats of violence. South Africa, he said, could not “preach integration at summits” while practising exclusion in its streets. In a separate diplomatic gesture, he apologised “with all humility” to Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo for violence committed by South African citizens against foreigners, including Mozambicans.
Responses to his apologies, across Africa, were understandably sceptical. It was not South Africa’s first expression of regret over xenophobic violence, and previous assurances have not prevented its recurrence. Mozambican analysts welcomed his gesture, but judged it insufficient to resolve a longstanding problem.
Within South Africa, anti-immigrant movements such as March & March and Operation Dudula derided the apology and saw calls for restraint as a sign of weakness. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, leader of March & March, told the media that there was “nothing to apologise for.”
In parts of Africa, organised campaigns against migrants have become increasingly visible. They target foreign-owned businesses, picket clinics and conduct street-level identity checks. In Ghana, the Ghana Union of Traders Association has periodically closed Nigerian-owned shops, and as recently as last year, protesters in Accra and Kumasi carried placards declaring: “Nigeria Must Go.”
Such campaigns are often presented as patriotic acts. Yet the self-appointed “patriots” commonly substitute scapegoating for solutions; they habitually trade in spectacle and resentment. Economic hardship, weak governance and public anxiety have created fertile ground for this politics. It is the age of uncertainty; many who claim to defend the nation are not patriots but charlatans trading in fear.
To put a basic question to the stress test: who is a patriot? Properly understood, a patriot is someone who seeks the long-term welfare of the nation. Patriotism is not nationalism, and it is different from ethnic loyalty. Sadly, later two may wear patriotic clothing while serving narrower ends. There is a clear line between the patriot and the charlatan. Patriots seek to strengthen the nation; charlatans seek to strengthen their political position.
Charlatan patriots flourish today because three conditions have converged to make their message attractive. The first is economic insecurity, such as unemployment, inflation and poverty. The second is political disappointment over elite failure and broken promises. The third is weak institutions because of poor governance and declining public trust.
When citizens lose confidence in the structures meant to protect them, they become susceptible to simple explanations, and charlatans thrive precisely in that complexity, because they offer simplicity where the honest answer is complicated. South Africa offers the clearest current case study in the politics of scapegoating.
The campaign against Zimbabwean, Nigerian, Ghanaian, and other African migrants has produced marches, business closures, and, more troubling documented violence. Historically, societies have frequently united themselves by defining outsiders such as immigrants, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or neighbouring countries. This manufactures a kind of emotional unity that feels, in the moment, like national purpose. It rarely solves any problem underneath. Charlatan patriots often build solidarity by identifying enemies.
It is worth acknowledging what is legitimate in the public mood; states do have a right to control their borders, illegal migration is a real policy issue, and undocumented migration does place pressure on already strained public services. Retail competition and undocumented status are genuine friction points, but they are not the origin of unemployment, corruption, or governance failure. They are simply more visible than those failures, and therefore easier to blame.
Neither Nigerians in Ghana nor Zimbabweans in South Africa created the institutional weaknesses of the host countries. But for the charlatan patriot, it is far easier to mobilise a crowd against foreigners than to build the slower, harder project of a shared national identity.
Genuine patriots are often not immediately visible; they tend to refuse simplistic narratives, resist ethnic mobilisation, reject scapegoating, and speak uncomfortable truths. These qualities do not build a movement quickly. In moments of anxiety, the crowd prefers certainty to complexity. The charlatan offers certainty and gains applause; the true patriot offers responsibility and earns criticism, or worse, irrelevance.
Today across Africa, where charlatanism is rife, the voices asking the harder structural questions are often drowned out by the ones offering a single, satisfying enemy for the slaughter. Why should citizens place the nation above tribe, religion, or region? How can the loyalty of the true patriotic standard be earned?
Citizens become genuinely patriotic when the state provides justice, security, opportunity, fairness, and dignity. Without these, patriotic rhetoric becomes increasingly a performance rather than a bond, easily redirected toward whichever target is convenient in that season, for the charlatan.
There is a difference between loving a nation and using one. Every sovereign state has the right to regulate immigration and enforce its own laws, South Africa and Ghana included; this right is not in dispute. What is in dispute is the line between legitimate state policy and political opportunism dressed up as patriotism. Genuine patriots confront the causes of national decline. Charlatan patriots search for convenient targets. One builds nations; the other merely harvests public anger.
Perhaps the most important question that all of Africa should be asking is this: when politicians tell us who to blame, are they helping us solve our problems, or helping us avoid the harder questions about why those problems exist in the first place? The question elevates migrants’ issues beyond mere migration policy matters, to something larger, into a need for serious reflection on patriotism, citizenship, and the unfinished work of nationhood across contemporary Africa.
Dr Richard Ikiebe is a Media and Management Consultant, Teacher and Chairman, Board of Businessday Newspaper
