South African women married to Nigerian men have narrated the
discrimination they face for marrying men outside their country. Seeing
the disaffection their kinsmen show them after finding love in the
hands of Nigerian men, the women decided to form an association, the
United Nigerian Wives in South Africa (UNWISA) club about two years ago
where they give support and succor to each other.
42 year old Lindwela Uche who serves as the chairwoman of the group told
AFP that they saw the xenophobic attacks coming and alerted their
husbands but they did not take their warning seriously
"We saw this thing coming and that’s why we formed this association. If
only they (the authorities) had listened to us… they would have known
that there’s a fire burning slowly and they would have seen how to
tackle it.”she said
One of the members of the association,“Lufunu Orji who is married to a
Nigerian resource consultant, Ogbonnaya Orji, says being married to a
foreigner is very challenging
"Being married to a foreigner is very challenging. You often spend your
time defending yourself and then you defend your foreign husband for
being himself. Just before I got wed to my husband, I lost two very best
friends of mine. They thought I was out of my mind" she said
Another member of the group who gave her name as Uche, said her
13-year-old daughter returned from school a while ago, complaining that
her teacher had told her “not to bring that Nigerian mentality here”
after she and classmates were noisy in class.
“We need to be protected, we need our children to be protected… and our husbands to be treated with dignity,” Uche said
37 year old Thelma Okoro, says the attitude towards them “are negative
everywhere we go,”. According to her, wearing traditional Nigerian
dress on the street can attract bad comments. She spoke of how her
eight-year-old daughter gets mocked by schoolmates over her name “Ngozi”
which means “blessing” in Igbo but literally translates to “danger” in
Zulu.
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