After Chidimma Adetshina suffered xenophobic abuse online, young Nigerians say they feel unwelcome living in South Africa. Johannesburg, South Africa – Anita Odunyao Solarin, a 21-year-old Nigerian who has spent her entire life in South Africa, finds it safer not to disclose her West African roots. She does her best to assimilate with her peers and rarely volunteers her origins.
This, she says, shields her from persistent bullying – a phenomenon she’s faced since childhood after moving to South Africa as a baby. “I try not to show where I am from or look Nigerian. I hide my identity socially,” Solarin told Al Jazeera.
“Because I’ve had to do it for so long, it has become normal.” Her earliest memories of the tensions between South Africans and Nigerians date back to kindergarten, where she was mistreated by a peer. “It was disheartening.
A child, just four years old, hated me even though we were in the same school, looked the same, and did the same things,” Solarin shared. “My school life was tough because I was bullied for my background. I was called names, especially the derogatory term, makwerekwere [a local slur for foreigner].
South Africans have this idea that if you’re not one of them, you don’t deserve to be here,” she added, her frustration still palpable. Solarin was brought up in Pretoria, but she doesn’t feel like she belongs in South Africa. Even decades on, she says it’s still easier for her – and other young Nigerians – not t.