The History of Intra-African Expulsions: From Ghana’s 1969 Aliens Order to South Africa Today
By A Concerned Ghanaian · 28 May 2026 · Diaspora
I must return to the telegram once more, carrying a heavy heart wrapped in a bit of dark humor, because the tragic comedy of the African continent has staged yet another repeat performance. I wrote to you a few weeks ago about our brothers and sisters domiciled in South Africa the land of Madiba, of all places where the indigenous population decided that other Africans were the sole albatross hanging around their necks. They gave all non-South African blacks an ultimatum to pack up and leave, and it turns out they were deadly serious, successfully driving our people out.
As I sit here looking out at a foreign landscape that is never truly mine, the wit dries up, and the raw emotion of our displacement takes over, making me reflect on the bitter irony of our existence. How does anyone born on a soil literally called the Gold Coast end up leaving that sacred earth to chase "greener pastures," trading literal gold for grass? Living abroad remains a permanent, bruising existential struggle where no matter how much money you accumulate or how flawlessly you perform the "American Dream," you are never truly comfortable in another man’s land, spending your life nursing a quiet, perpetual ache for home.
We comfort ourselves by thinking this xenophobic cruelty is a unique modern pathology, but history tells a much older, uglier story proving that the unity of the African state appears to be a beautiful mirage we completely invented. Right after they booted you from office in 1969, our own country expelled hundreds of thousands of West African migrants mostly Nigerians under the Aliens Compliance Order, meaning we drew the first blood and even renamed a place in Accra that used to be called Lagos Town to Accra New Town. Karma, having a wicked sense of humor, returned the favor in 1983 and 1985 when Nigeria expelled over a million West African migrants, targeting Ghanaians during their economic downturns. Most of our people who fled were teachers who practically taught Nigerians how to prepare Jollof rice, a dish they now have the absolute audacity to claim as their own. The history of intra-African expulsions continues through Uganda in 1972 where Idi Amin quietly booted neighboring Africans alongside the famous Asian expulsion, Equatorial Guinea in the 1960s and 70s under Macías Nguema who purged Nigerian and Cameroonian workers, and Libya from the 1990s to the 2010s where sub-Saharan migrants were repeatedly rounded up whenever the regime needed a political scapegoat.
When our brothers and sisters finally touched down at the Kotoka International Airport recently, stripped of their livelihoods but safely away from the wrath of Pretoria, their faces bore a complex mix of absolute trauma and the profound relief of just being home. The ultimate absurdity of the South African situation beats the mind because those who were forced to flee were highly skilled doctors and professors, leaving behind crying locals who do not possess the skills to fill those vacant positions. The others who left were the lifeblood of the gig economy and petty trading, engaging in work that anyone with hands and legs could do, making the narrative that they were "stealing" jobs a mathematical equation only politicians can solve. We keep borders that the colonial masters drew with rulers, and we guard them with a ferocity we should be using to fight poverty.
But beneath this cycle of migration lies the rot that drove us away in the first place: systemic corruption has completely undone us. Our vast natural wealth and resources continue to land directly in the hands of the white man, who carries them off while tossing back a miserable pittance. Even that meager pittance never reaches the ground; it goes straight into the pockets of the local politician, who sits comfortably in air-conditioned luxury, insulated from the heat of the collapsing economy outside. It brings to mind the tragic paradox of our neighbor, Nigeria. How does a nation that discovered oil all the way back in the 1960s, with an economic potential that should easily match the size and strength of the United States, end up begging others for money and drowning in foreign debt?
Until the next migration, I remain yours, wrapping my homesickness in a flag that feels further away each day.
So long,
Ato_KD