JOHANNESBURG The recall of Nigeria's top diplomat after a spate
of xenophobic attacks in South Africa follows several similar spats
that expose the two countries' deep rivalry for economic and political
dominance in Africa.
Nigeria's Acting High Commissioner to South
Africa Martin Cobham said on Saturday he had been "invited" to Abuja to
discuss this month's anti-immigrant attacks in South Africa, which have
killed at least seven people.
Televised images of armed gangs
attacking immigrants and looting foreign-owned stores in Johannesburg
have sparked a backlash in Nigeria, where hundreds protested in front
of shops owned by South African brands like MTN and Shoprite.
South
Africa's foreign ministry on Sunday called Cobham's recall an
"unfortunate and regrettable step", before taking a swipe at Abuja for
its own record on protecting foreigners.
Last September, a church
hostel collapsed in Lagos, killing 115 people, most of them South
African. Nigeria was criticised for its slow response to the disaster
and what some saw as a haphazard rescue effort.
"It would be curious
for a sisterly country to want to exploit such a painful episode for
whatever agenda," a foreign ministry statement said in response to
Cobham's recall.
"We did not blame the Nigerian government for the
deaths and more than nine months' delay in the repatriation of the
bodies of our fallen compatriots."
Such tit-for-tat slights are becoming increasingly common.
Weeks
after the hostel collapse, South Africa seized $9.3 million from a
private jet carrying two Nigerians, funds Abuja said were for a
legitimate arms deal. South Africa said the deal was being conducted
without relevant permits.
Abuja accused South Africa of xenophobia
when Nigerians were deported after staff at Johannesburg airport
believed their yellow fever certificates were fake. Arik Air, Nigeria's
biggest airline, briefly cancelled flights to South Africa.
CANNIBALS
Nigeria
banned 2009 film "District 9", a hit movie directed by a South African
that depicted Nigerians as cannibals, criminals and prostitutes who had
sex with aliens.
Rows over Hollywood movies and yellow fever
certificates are reflective of a more serious battle for economic
dominance and control over Africa's representation on the global stage.
"It's
no secret that Africa's would-be superpowers don't like each other very
much," analyst Simon Allison wrote in a column in the Daily Maverick, a
leading South African political online newspaper.
"For all their
lofty talk of unity and pan-Africanism, both Nigeria and South Africa
are actually locked in a fierce struggle to be sub-Saharan Africa's
pre-eminent superpower."
Nigeria overtook South Africa as the
continent's biggest economy last year after re-basing its GDP. Pretoria
said the numbers reflected Nigeria's larger population and not the
sophistication of their respective economies.
"Despite what was said
publicly, Nigeria's rebasing was resented by the South African
government," a Pretoria-based Western diplomat told Reuters.
Diplomats
say that when South African politician Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the
ex-wife of President Jacob Zuma, won a close race to chair the African
Union Commission in 2012, Nigeria strongly backed her opponent.
Both countries are also lobbying for a permanent position to represent Africa on the United Nations Security Council.
Given
their political and economic heft -- together, the two economies are
larger than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa's combined -- relations
between South Africa and Nigeria could be decisive for the future of a
continent of 1 billion people.
"Nigeria and South Africa are like
two prisoners in the same cell of poverty, inequality and bad
leadership," Nigerian writer and political commentator Elnathan John
told Reuters.
"Together they could muster the strength to break
their bonds and overpower the jailer but instead they spend time
feuding with each other in a needlessly fractious relationship."
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