South African Ambassadors in different countries across the globe, have reportedly been instructed to “stick to a script” when asked about xenophobic attacks in their country, Igbere TV has learnt.
The ambassadors were said to have been instructed to respond to questions in a specific way and relay the government’s “blanket condemnation” of the attack, in their respective places of assignment.
A South African newspaper, Sunday Times, reports that the diplomats were instructed to condemn the violence “in the strongest possible terms” in response to the outrage from African nations to avoid “people saying what they want to and giving in to provocation”.
The newspaper reported on Sunday that President Cyril Ramaphosa played the same “script” when he received Ahmed Rufai Abubakar (President Buhari’s special envoy to the country) on the attack of Nigerians in recent xenophobic violence in the country.
Ramaphosa was said to have insisted when he met Abubakar that the recent attacks in the country were acts of violence (caused by foreign drug dealers) and not xenophobia.
The South African President was said to have “pushed back” when the envoy related President Buhari’s concerns to him, while insisting that the Nigerian Government must do something about its citizens who commit crimes and live illegally in his country.
Meanwhile, Igbere TV had reported that Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, last week, said some South African government officials were encouraging xenophobia attacks in their country.
Onyeama was reacting to a statement credited to his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor, who said in an interview that Nigerians in the country mostly deal in drugs and harm its citizens.
Pandor had also asked the Nigerian Government to help South Africa rid its country of drug dealers and human traffickers from Nigeria.
“It is precisely this kind of outrageous stigmatization of a people from senior government officials that fuel xenophobia and embolden criminals,” Oyeama had responded to Pandors interview.
