Everyone Knows We Are African. Except Us.

I was born South African. I am Zulu by heritage. I was raised to carry both identities with pride.

Growing up in KwaZulu-Natal, I was constantly reminded that being Zulu meant something. Our history was taught as one of resilience, strength and resistance. We were told about our ancestors, our victories, our traditions and our language. Pride in being Zulu was not simply encouraged—it was expected.

Like many South Africans, I learned to understand myself through layers of identity. First I was Zulu. Then I was South African.

It took leaving Africa for me to discover something neither of those identities had prepared me for.

To the rest of the world, I am simply African.

For the past thirteen years, I have lived abroad—first for more than a decade in the United States and now in Northern Europe. Something became obvious almost immediately.

Nigerians call me South African.

South Africans call me Zulu.

But everyone else simply calls me African.

That distinction changed the way I see the continent—and the way I see ourselves.

It seems to me that Africans are the only people who do not fully recognize the oneness of who we are.

This realization became especially painful whenever I read headlines about xenophobic violence back home. South Africans attacking Zimbabweans. Nigerians blamed for crime. Foreign shop owners assaulted. Families forced to flee communities where they had built their lives.

I am not writing this because I believe another call for "African unity" will magically solve these problems. We have heard those speeches before.

I am writing because ignorance survives when nobody challenges it.

Xenophobia is a different kind of violence.

It is not simply hatred of foreigners.

It is self-hatred disguised as patriotism.

The painful irony is that the people we attack because they come from another African country are often the very same people the rest of the world sees exactly as they see us.

Racism outside Africa does not stop to ask whether you are South African, Kenyan, Nigerian or Congolese.

It does not care whether you are Zulu, Xhosa, Shona or Yoruba.

To someone who hates Black or brown people, you are simply African.

Their prejudice does not become less severe because your passport is different.

Yet somehow we have convinced ourselves that the language another African speaks, or the border they crossed, is enough to make them less worthy than we are.

That should disturb every one of us.

Ironically, it was leaving Africa that made me feel more African than I had ever felt before.

Living abroad has introduced me to some of the most generous people I know—Africans from Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea and many other countries.

There is something beautiful that happens when Africans meet outside Africa.

There is an unspoken recognition.

A quiet relief.

Before we know each other's professions, politics or tribes, we already understand something about one another.

We understand what it means to leave home.

We understand what it means to have people mispronounce our names.

We understand the assumptions made about our continent.

We understand the homesickness.

We understand the pride.

We understand the resilience.

We recognize one another long before we know one another.

Our Africanness becomes the first language we share.

Some of the first women who embraced me overseas and made me feel that I belonged were African women.

Not because we came from the same country.

Because Africa was our common home.

That experience has forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth.

The pride I have always carried as a South African has become accompanied by sadness.

Not because I love South Africa any less.

But because from this side of the world, it seems that only Africans are missing the memo.

The rest of the world has already decided who we are.

We are the ones still arguing over imaginary lines drawn across one continent.

The greatest irony is that many of the borders we now defend with such anger were never drawn by Africans in the first place.

They were drawn in European capitals by colonial powers that divided kingdoms, communities and families with rulers on maps. People who had traded together for centuries suddenly became "foreigners." Brothers were separated by borders they never consented to. Languages, cultures and entire nations were split apart to serve imperial interests, not African ones.

Today, generations later, we have inherited those borders as sovereign states—and they deserve to be respected. Every nation has the right to regulate immigration, protect its citizens and enforce its laws.

But there is a profound difference between protecting a border and dehumanising a person.

Somewhere along the way, we began treating colonial boundaries as if they were older than our shared humanity.

We have become so invested in defending lines drawn by others that we sometimes forget the people those lines divided were our own.

This is not an argument against nations.

It is an argument against forgetting that before we became South Africans, Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Kenyans or Congolese, we were Africans.

The passport I carry is an accident of history.

My humanity is not.

And neither is yours.

This is not to ignore the real complexities of immigration.

There are genuine concerns about undocumented migration.

There are victims of identity theft.

There are pressures on public services.

There are legitimate policy debates that every sovereign nation has the right to have.

But those debates should never require us to abandon our humanity.

If we stopped seeing fellow Africans as enemies before seeing them as human beings, perhaps we could build immigration systems rooted not only in law but also in dignity.

Perhaps we could solve problems without creating new victims.

Because every time we reduce someone's worth to the country printed inside their passport, Africa loses.

I remain proudly South African.

I remain proudly Zulu.

Nothing about embracing Africa asks me to surrender either identity.

If anything, it asks me to understand them more deeply.

Because I can honour my ancestors without denying someone else's humanity.

I can love my country without hating another African.

I can celebrate my culture without believing it makes me superior.

Perhaps the greatest revolution Africa still owes itself is not political.

It is psychological.

The borders may define our citizenship.

They should never define our humanity.

The world already knows we are Africans.

The revolution begins the day we finally believe it too.