Abstract
Since Nigeria’s independence in 1960, Africa has been the centerpiece of its foreign policy. In terms of policy, this involved the total liberation of Africa from colonial domination, racial discrimination, and apartheid system. Colonization remained longer in Southern Africa than in any part of the continent. The white settler regime in South Africa was the last white rule regime to surrender power to an African majority government in the continent. Nigeria’s overall policy toward South Africa was derived strictly from its firm and total commitment to achieve accelerated decolonization and to uphold the dignity of the black race. This moral commitment manifests itself in Nigeria’s persistent support for the oppressed black people in Southern Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Since its independence in 1960, Nigerian government and its people have demonstrated their concern over the violation of human rights and denigration of the black’s dignity by the minority white regimes in Southern Africa. The first practical demonstration of this was the sympathy generated by the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960. This eventually led to the vigorous pressures mounted by the Nigerian public on Balewa’s government to condemn, unequivocally the inhuman, racist, and despicable action of the apartheid South African regime. As a result, Nigeria was in the forefront in the clamor for intensification of embargoes, boycotts, and economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
On the question of colonialism and racial discrimination, I am afraid that we in Nigeria will never compromise.
—Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa1
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Notes
Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 187–242.
For full details see Robert Harvey, The Fall of Apartheid: The Inside Story from Smuts to Mbeki, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.
For full details on the fall of apartheid see the following books: Allister Sparks, Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Road to Change, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995
Heather Deegan, The Politics of the New South Africa: Apartheid and Afier, New York: Longman, 2001.
Michael Crowder, A History of Nigeria, New York: Praeger, 1962, p. 213.
Segun Gbadegesin, ed., The Imperative of Cultural Democracy in Nigeria: Reflections from the Yoruba Diaspora, Mitcheville, MD: Pinnacle, 2006, pp. 88–98.
Brian Lapping, Apartheid: A History, revised edition, New York: George Braziller, 1989, pp. 1–3
Alan Burns, History of Nigeria, seventh edition, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958, p. 126.
Kehinde Faluyi, “Nigeria in the Nineteenth Century,” in Akinjide Osuntokun and Ayodele Olukoju, eds., Nigerian Peoples and Cultures, Ibadan: Davidson Press, 1997, pp. 171–172.
See Omo Omoruyi, The Tale of June 12: The Betrayal of the Democratic Rights of Nigerians (1993), London: Press Alliance Network Limited, 1999.
Eghosa E. Osaghae, Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Leonard Thompson, “The Subjectionof the African Chiefdoms: Great Britain and the Afrikaner Republic,” and “The Compromised of Union,” in Monica Wilson and Leonard Thompson, eds. The Oxford History of South Africa, 2 volumes, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 245–364.
For details of the origins of apartheid see Charles T. Loram, Education of the South African Native. London: Longman, Green and Company, 1917.
Muriel Horrell, African Education: Some Origins and Development until 1953. Johannesburg: South Africa Institute of Race Relations, 1953.
Richard Gibson, African Liberation Movement: Contemporary Struggle against White Minority Rule. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 24.
The Pass is a document that includes information on ethnic origin, age, birthplace, employment, etc. that must be carried at all times by each black person in South Africa under apartheid rule. For details on Pass see G.M. Carter and P. O’Meara, eds., Southern Africa: The Continuing Crisis, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979, p. 102.
R.A. Akindele, ed., The Organization of African Unity, 1963–1988, Ibadan: Vantage, 1988, p. 131.
Olayiwola Abegunrin, Nigerian Foreign Policy under Military Rule, 1966–1999, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003, p. 33.
Okon Akiba, Nigerian Foreign Policy towards Africa: Continuity and Change, New York: Peter Lang, 1998, p. 14.
Joy Ogwu, Nigerian Foreign Policy: Alternative Future, Lagos: Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, 1986, p. 66.
Joseph Garba, Diplomatic Soldiering: Nigerian Foreign Folicy 1975–1979, Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1987, p. 93.
Olajide Aluko, Essays in Nigerian Foreign Policy, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981, pp. 24
Olayiwola Abegunrin and H.E. Newsum, United States Foreign Policy towards Southern Africa: Andrew Young and Beyond, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987, p. 77.
Ibid. See also Adeoye A. Aldnsanya, “Multinational Corporations in South Africa: Armed Conflict and Majority Rule in Southern Africa,” International Review of Politics and Development, volume 3, June 2005, 14–51.
The Lusaka Manifesto: The Future of Southern Africa. Fifth Summit of East and Central African States held in Lusaka, Zambia, April 14-16, 1969. See Kenneth W. Grundy, Confrontation and Accommodation in Southern Africa: The Limit of Independence, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973, pp. 315–323.
Olajide Aluko, “Nigeria, Namibia and Southern Africa,” in Olajide Aluko and Timothy Shaw, eds., Southern Africa in the 1980s, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985, p. 53.
Adekunle Ajala, “Nigeria and the Conflict in Southern Africa,” in Gabriel O. Olusanya and R.A. Akindele, eds., Economic Development and Foreign Policy in Nigeria, Lagos: Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 1988, p. 203.
On June 16, 1976, thousands of black students revolted against a second-class rate education system that required them to take classes in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch descendants (white minority), who were the main architects of apartheid policy. See John Kane-Berman. Soweto: Black Revolt, White Reaction. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1978.
Olajide Aluko, “Nigerian Foreign Policy in the Year 2000,” in Timothy Shaw and Olajide Aluko, eds., Nigerian Foreign Policy: Alternative Perceptions and Projections. London: Macmillan Press, 1983, pp. 195–196.
The original members of the Frontline States are as follows: Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and later joined by Zimbabwe in 1980. The Frontline States objective was to bring about independence under African majority rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Allies in Adversity: The Frontline States in Southern African Security, 1975–1993, Athens: Ohio State University, 1994.
Ibrahim A. Gambari, Theory and Reality in Foreign Policy Making: Nigeria in the Second Republic. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1989, p. 118.
Robert Schrire, South Africa: Time Running Out, Adopt or Die: The End of White Politics in South Africa, New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1991, pp. 126–131.
Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorized Biography, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, p. xxii.
John Mukum Mbaku, “NEPAD and Prospects for Development in Africa,” International Studies, volume 41, no. 4 (2004), pp. 5–6.
Guy Martin, Africa in World Politics: A Pan-African Perspective. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002, p. 166.
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© 2009 Olayiwola Abegunrin
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Abegunrin, O. (2009). Nigeria and the Struggle for the Liberation of South Africa. In: Africa in Global Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623903_2
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