1
0
How South Africa Forgot Those Who Fought for Its Freedom
By E. Frashie Ethiopian Tribune columnist
I. Introduction: A Nation Haunted by Historical Amnesia
South Africa today is witnessing a meticulously organised resurgence of xenophobic violence. The evidence is chilling in its precision.
At least five Ethiopians have been killed in Johannesburg in recent weeks, with four of the victims shot within 48 hours. On one occasion, three were shot inside a McDonald’s in the Johannesburg Central Business District, victims between 30 and 45 years of age who were having breakfast when the gunman entered and opened fire. CCTV footage reveals execution-style shootings. Police investigations stall. Vulnerable communities live in persistent fear.
Yet this same nation once depended fundamentally on the solidarity, sacrifice, and military expertise of Africans beyond its borders none more symbolically powerful than Ethiopia, the country that trained Nelson Mandela and sheltered the ANC’s armed struggle throughout its most perilous decades.
Among those who shaped that history stands a man whose contributions to South Africa’s liberation should be carved into the moral foundation of the post-apartheid state: Asnakew Sisay Tegegne — known to liberation fighters as ‘The General.’ Today, Ethiopians who might have looked to this legacy for protection are instead being hunted on the streets of Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. This is not merely a security crisis. It is a profound betrayal of history.
II. The Forgotten Ethiopian Who Trained the ANC
Born in 1954 in Azezo, Gondar, Asnakew Sisay grew up in a household steeped in patriotism and Pan-African conviction. His father, Shambel Sisay Tegegne, was a decorated officer under Emperor Haile Selassie. His mother was known for community service and moral leadership. From this soil emerged a young man who believed that African liberation was indivisible — not a series of isolated national struggles, but a unified continental imperative.
The Making of a Commando
• Military and intelligence training
• Strategic studies in guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency
• Hand-to-hand combat instruction
• Resistance organising and clandestine operations
• Years of political imprisonment as a teenager for anti-colonial activism
By the late 1970s, as liberation movements across southern Africa intensified their campaigns, he was selected to train liberation fighters from across the continent a position of extraordinary responsibility and trust.
Training the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Fighters
In Zambia, at military camps including the Gondar Military Camp, Asnakew became one of the key instructors for:
• Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC
• SWAPO fighters from Namibia
• Southern Sudanese liberation groups
• Somali resistance units
He trained more than 2,000 fighters in close-quarters combat, topography and infiltration techniques, survival skills, sabotage methodology, and political education the ideological foundation without which armed struggle becomes mere violence.
He worked closely with Chris Hani, who served as chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe and was tasked to establish ANC military bases in Tanzania and Zambia during the liberation struggle. To the fighters, Asnakew became known simply as ‘The General.’ To Latin American comrades operating in southern Africa, he was ‘Comandante.’ To Ethiopia, he remained a son carrying the torch of Pan-Africanism into exile.
III. Ethiopia’s Gift to South Africa Now Erased from Memory
When Mandela was released in 1990 and apartheid formally collapsed in 1994, Asnakew returned home. He never sought international acclaim. He never demanded public recognition or monuments. He continued serving Ethiopia in civil society, education, and national development work, operating with the quiet dignity characteristic of those who fought not for glory but for principle.
But South Africa’s political memory grew selective.
Today, many South Africans particularly the youth mobilised by contemporary xenophobic movements — do not know:
• That Mandela received military and political training in Ethiopia
• That Ethiopian officers shaped the ANC’s military doctrine and operational strategy
• That Ethiopia sheltered, armed, fed, and educated anti-apartheid fighters for three decades
• That Ethiopian taxpayers funded liberation movements long before the international community offered support
This amnesia is not accidental. It is politically convenient for those who wish to scapegoat immigrants without acknowledging the continent’s historical bonds of solidarity.
IV. The Rise of Black Apartheid: Vigilantism Repackaged as Populism
In the vacuum created by economic despair and political fragmentation, a new class of populist actors has emerged. Operation Dudula, a vigilante group that has evolved into a political party, mobilises its base around the slogan ‘Put South Africa First,’ using rhetoric that blames migrants for unemployment, crime, and service delivery failures.
Operation Dudula morphed from an online social media campaign propelled by the #PutSouthAfricansFirst hashtag into a xenophobic movement with real-world consequences. The digital-to-physical pipeline is direct: online incitement produces offline violence.
These populist actors do not speak of Ethiopia’s sacrifice. They do not acknowledge Mandela’s training in Addis Ababa. They do not invoke the memory of Asnakew Sisay. Instead, they tell economically desperate South Africans:
• “Foreigners are taking your jobs.”
• “Immigrants are criminals and drug dealers.”
• “We must reclaim our communities from outsiders.”
This rhetoric is carefully calibrated. It does not explicitly call for murder — but it creates what activists call ’emotional permission’ for violence to flourish. It normalises the idea that foreigners are legitimate targets for vigilante action.
The Political and Social Media Infrastructure of Violence
According to Witwatersrand University’s Xenowatch, xenophobic attacks resulted in 669 deaths, 5,310 looted shops, and 127,572 displacements between 1994 and March 2024. The rate of incidents has accelerated sharply in recent months.
According to Human Rights Watch, there were 59 reported incidents of xenophobic discrimination in 2024 and 2,946 individuals displaced as a result. But these figures capture only reported incidents. The true toll is substantially higher, as many attacks go undocumented, victims lack access to reporting mechanisms, and police investigations are routinely stalled or discontinued.
Social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube have failed to adequately moderate xenophobic hate speech, with campaigns like Operation Dudula first emerging online before catalysing real-world outbreaks of violent protests, vigilantism, arson, and murder.
V. The Human Cost: Ethiopians Under Fire Voices from the Community
The Recent Wave of Killings
An estimated 500,000 Ethiopians live in South Africa. In recent weeks, this population has experienced what they describe as a coordinated campaign of targeted violence.
In Johannesburg alone:
• Ethiopians have been shot in restaurants whilst having breakfast
• Executed on sidewalks in broad daylight
• Killed in their shops during business hours
• Targeted for extortion by vigilante groups
• Left largely unprotected by law enforcement
In Durban, six people of Ethiopian origin were killed in alleged xenophobic attacks over a single week, with victims killed in separate incidents, mostly during daylight hours, by South African nationals. One victim was doused in kerosene and set alight.
Victim Testimony and Community Voices
Yonas Fikru, an Ethiopian businessman in Durban, said he knew all six victims all men in their twenties who used to frequent his shop. He described attackers who “just come, steal and attack. They killed them without stealing anything from them. They just came and killed them.”
Tegegne Aboye, another member of the Ethiopian community in Durban, said locals have attempted multiple times to report incidents to police but “it always falls on deaf ears.” He expressed despair: “We see our brothers getting killed, doused with a three-litre jerrican of kerosene, and no one is helping us when this happens. We haven’t seen anyone sticking up for Ethiopian citizens here.”
The silence from law enforcement compounds the trauma. The Ethiopian Embassy in Pretoria released a statement advising Ethiopians to document and report incidents of violence and attack, and said it has requested the South African government to provide security protections to Ethiopians living in the country and to investigate the recent killings. But diplomatic statements, whilst necessary, cannot substitute for state protection.
School Violence and Children at Risk
The violence has extended into educational spaces. Members of Operation Dudula have stormed schools to forcefully eject children of other African nationals and block them from attending classes. Disturbing anti-immigrant videos circulating on social media show chaotic scenes of fear and tension, with schoolchildren in uniform seen running for safety as confusion rises. In one widely circulated clip, a visibly distressed child could be heard crying as his mother attempted to calm him, with her voice laced with fear and confusion. Moments later, gunshots rang out, sending pupils and bystanders scrambling.
Children some as young as five or six are now experiencing xenophobic violence as a routine feature of their schooling.
The Silence and Inaction of State Institutions
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has expressed grave concern over recent incidents of xenophobic violence perpetrated against nationals of other African countries in South Africa, noting a pattern that includes the 1998 killing of three foreign nationals in Johannesburg, the August 2000 killings in Cape Town, the May 2008 nationwide attacks resulting in over 60 deaths, 1,700 injuries and 100,000 displacements, and ongoing incidents in the 2020s linked to groups such as Operation Dudula.
This is not a new problem. It is a recurring crisis to which the South African state has consistently failed to respond with adequate investigation, prosecution, or prevention.
VI. The Moral Contradiction: Rights Preacher, Injustice Practitioner
South Africa positions itself as a global defender of human rights and continental peacemaker. The country has filed cases at the International Court of Justice. Its government issues statements condemning injustices in other nations. It presents itself as a beacon of post-conflict reconciliation and constitutional democracy.
But inside its own borders:
• Migrants are hunted with impunity
• Refugees are scapegoated for systemic economic failure
• African solidarity the very principle that sustained the anti-apartheid struggle is treated as a quaint historical artifact
• State institutions fail to investigate, prosecute, or prevent organised violence against vulnerable populations
This contradiction is not sustainable. A nation cannot preach justice abroad whilst tolerating systematic injustice at home without fundamentally compromising its moral authority.
VII. Accountability and Justice Denied
In November 2025, a South African High Court judgment confirmed that Operation Dudula perpetrated intimidation, harassment, incitement to violence and hate speech on grounds of nationality, social origin or ethnicity. The court interdicted Operation Dudula and its leaders from demanding that any private person produce identity documents to demonstrate their right to be in South Africa, and from making public statements on social media platforms that constitute hate speech.
This is welcome. But a court order alone does not stop violence. Implementation and enforcement remain uncertain. Advocacy groups note that whilst police have made arrests, those who sought to inflame tensions on social media and the masterminds remain largely untouched. The infrastructure of incitement persists.
VIII. Conclusion: Remembering “The General” in a Time of Forgetting
Asnakew Sisay Tegegne represents the best of Ethiopia’s Pan-African legacy a man who risked his freedom, his safety, and his life so that South Africans could one day live free from the terror of apartheid. He asked for nothing in return except acknowledgment that African liberation is a shared struggle, and that the bonds forged in struggle impose obligations.
Today, Ethiopians in South Africa are being killed in the very country he helped liberate. They are being killed by their neighbours. They are being killed with impunity. They are being killed whilst a state with a constitution that explicitly protects the rights of non-citizens fails to protect them.
This is not merely a tragedy. It is a betrayal of history, of Pan-Africanism, of the very principles that animated the anti-apartheid struggle.
If South Africa wants to genuinely honour its liberation struggle, it must:
• Protect African migrants and refugees with the full force of law
• Conduct prompt, thorough, and impartial investigations into all reported incidents of violence
• Identify, prosecute, and sanction all perpetrators, including those who organise or incite violence
• Reject populist scapegoating and address the real drivers of unemployment and inequality through structural economic reform
• Teach its youth particularly those born after 1994 the true history of African solidarity and continental struggle
• Implement the court order against Operation Dudula with rigour and consistency
And Ethiopia as a nation, as a government, as a diaspora community must reclaim its narrative. It must remind the continent that its sons and daughters, like Asnakew Sisay, paid the price for Africa’s freedom. It must demand that South Africa honour its commitments to human rights and African brotherhood not merely in rhetoric, but in practice.
History remembers those who fought for justice. It must also remember and condemn those who are dying because justice has been forgotten.
