Ghana did the right thing by bringing its citizens home …but Africa must confront xenophobia

Ghana's decision to take responsibility for evacuating its citizens from South Africa was more than a logistical choice. It was a statement about what a government owes its citizens when their safety is at risk.

More than 1,600 Ghanaians have now been brought home following a wave of anti-immigrant tension and xenophobic attacks in South Africa. Ghana funded the operation, with support from private businesses, rather than relying on assistance offered by the South African authorities.

That decision now appears to have had an unexpected financial consequence: Ghana has been left outside a list of countries from which South Africa is seeking reimbursement for part of the cost of its own repatriation programme.

South Africa says it spent nearly $18m (£13.6m) housing and transporting migrants who sought to return to their home countries, and has asked Nigeria, Malawi, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to reimburse some of those costs.

But the financial saving for Ghana should not be allowed to obscure the more serious issue.

African citizens should not have to flee one African country because they fear violence in another.

That is the uncomfortable reality behind the figures.

The first duty is to protect citizens

When Ghanaians began asking to leave South Africa because of fears over their safety, the most important question for Accra was not how much an evacuation would cost.

It was how quickly those citizens could be brought to safety.

Ghana's response therefore deserves recognition.

The country became one of the first African governments to organise an evacuation after anti-immigrant protests intensified in South Africa. The first group of nearly 300 Ghanaians arrived in Accra in May, and further evacuations followed.

President John Mahama also called on the African Union to address the attacks, demonstrating that the issue was not simply a consular matter but one with wider continental implications. South Africa itself acknowledged Ghana's request for an AU debate on the issue.

Governments sometimes face criticism for spending public money to evacuate citizens from crisis zones.

But the alternative can be far more costly.

A government that waits until violence escalates, citizens are injured or lives are lost before acting has failed in its most basic responsibility.

Ghana's decision was therefore justified even without the subsequent benefit of avoiding a possible reimbursement claim.

But this is not really about an $18m bill

It would be easy to reduce the story to a satisfying financial headline: Ghana acted quickly, paid for its own citizens and escaped a multimillion-dollar bill.

That is only part of the story.

South Africa's request for reimbursement also raises legitimate questions.

The South African government says its repatriation operation involved substantial expenditure on buses,

temporary facilities, food, staff overtime and other operational costs. Its Home Affairs director-general, Tommy

Makhode, told parliament that letters had been sent to the governments concerned.

If South Africa has provided services on behalf of other governments and can establish the costs involved, it is reasonable for it to seek clarification and reimbursement.

But such claims must be transparent.

African governments should know precisely what they are being asked to pay for, how the amounts were calculated and what agreements or understandings existed before the repatriations took place.

This is particularly important because migration is not simply a financial transaction between governments.

People are at the centre of it.

The bigger failure is xenophobia

The real scandal is that Africans living and working elsewhere in Africa can become targets because of their nationality.

South Africa has struggled for years with xenophobic violence and anti-immigrant sentiment. The latest tensions have again exposed how quickly concerns about unemployment, crime, housing and pressure on public services

can be turned against foreign nationals.

Those concerns may be politically powerful, but they cannot justify collective punishment.

Foreign nationals cannot reasonably be blamed for every failure of government policy.

And violence against migrants cannot become an acceptable response to economic frustration.

South Africa has a responsibility to enforce its immigration laws. But enforcement must be carried out by the state, through lawful processes, rather than by mobs or vigilante groups.

That distinction matters.

A country can insist on proper documentation and effective border controls without allowing foreign nationals to become scapegoats.

Ghana should not stop at evacuation

The evacuation was necessary. But bringing people home is only the beginning.

Some of those who returned will have left jobs, businesses, homes and investments behind. Others may have experienced fear or trauma.

The reintegration support provided on arrival is therefore important, but it should not end with transport fares and an allowance.

Ghana needs to understand what happened to those returnees after they came home.

How many have found work?

How many lost businesses?

How many intend to return to South Africa?

How many no longer feel safe there?

And what support will be available to those who want to rebuild their lives in Ghana?

These questions matter because an emergency evacuation can become a long-term economic and social problem if

returnees are simply left to fend for themselves.

This should also change Ghana's diplomacy

There is a broader lesson for Ghana.

The country should not have to wait for xenophobic violence to erupt before developing a clear strategy for

protecting Ghanaians abroad.

Ghana has a large diaspora, and its citizens live, work and trade across the African continent.

The government therefore needs stronger mechanisms for early warning, consular assistance and emergency evacuation.

Embassies and high commissions should have clear contingency plans for situations in which citizens face threats to their safety.

And Ghana should continue to use diplomatic channels  including the African Union to push for a continental

response to attacks against African migrants.

South Africa and Ghana are important African economies and political partners. Their relationship should not be defined by this crisis.

But friendship between countries should not mean silence when citizens are attacked.

Africa cannot preach integration and practise exclusion

There is an even bigger contradiction here.

African governments regularly speak about free movement, regional integration and an African continental market in which people, goods and services can move more easily.

Yet African citizens can still be treated as outsiders sometimes violently when they cross borders in search of opportunity.

That contradiction cannot continue indefinitely.

The African Continental Free Trade Area is built partly on the idea that greater economic integration can create opportunities across borders. But economic integration cannot succeed if ordinary Africans are made to feel unwelcome in neighbouring countries.

Governments need to confront the political and economic conditions that feed xenophobia rather than merely reacting after violence has begun.

That means addressing unemployment and inequality.

It means improving immigration systems.

It means tackling organised crime without blaming entire nationalities.

And it means holding those responsible for violence to account.

Ghana's evacuation was the right decision

Ghana should not be congratulated merely because it may have avoided a $18m South African reimbursement claim.

The more important achievement is that the government acted when its citizens believed they were in danger.

The cost of bringing citizens home was secondary to their safety.

But the episode should leave African governments asking a much harder question: why did thousands of Africans feel they had to leave another African country to be safe?

That is the issue that deserves the continent's attention.

Ghana has shown what a government can do when it takes responsibility for its citizens.

South Africa must now demonstrate that protecting foreign nationals from violence and enforcing immigration laws are not mutually exclusive objectives.

And the African Union must show that solidarity among African states means more than statements after the violence.

If Africa genuinely wants an integrated continent, an African passport and freer movement of people, then the safety and dignity of Africans in other African countries must be treated as a continental responsibility — not merely an individual government's problem.

The bill for repatriation may be measured in millions of dollars. The cost of allowing xenophobia to become normalised will be far greater.