On Saturday, Nigeria’s foreign minister Aminu Wali precipitated a diplomatic crisis when he told his ambassadors to South Africa – Acting High Commissioner Martin Cobham and deputy Uche Okeke – to get on the first plane home to Abuja. In a public statement, Cobham explained that this extraordinary “invitation” was “in connection with the ongoing xenophobia in South Africa targeting foreigners”.

Before we continue, it’s worth noting a few things.

First, Wali was careful to acknowledge that President Jacob Zuma had condemned the xenophobic attacks in parliament.

Second, Wali – along with the rest of the Nigerian cabinet – is a lame duck. He is an appointee of President Goodluck Jonathan, and will almost certainly be making way for a new foreign minister when President-elect Muhammadu Buhari takes office on May 29. In other words, he is keen to shore up his legacy, and won’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, Wali did not formally recall his ambassadors (as implied by the South African government response). Instead he demanded that they present themselves for a “consultation”, which is a slightly lesser diplomatic insult.

Nonetheless, in the highly-ritualised world of diplomacy, this is still a very severe censure – and a shocked South African government responded in kind. In a statement, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation said: “We are not sure which actions or behaviour of the South African Government the Nigerian Government is protesting. It is only Nigeria that has taken this unfortunate and regrettable step. If this action is based on the incidents of attacks on foreign nationals in some parts of our country, it would be curious for a sisterly country to want to exploit such a painful episode for whatever agenda.”

The statement continued, in distinctly un-diplomatic fashion, with a dig at troubles that South African citizens have faced in Nigeria: “South Africa remains committed to a strong bond of friendship and bilateral relations with Nigeria. It is for this reason that when 84 of our citizens perished on Nigerian soil, we did not blame the Nigerian Government for the deaths and more than nine (9) months delay in the repatriation of the bodies of our fallen compatriots, or for the fact that when these bodies eventually returned, they were in a state that they could not be touched or viewed as required by our burial practice.”

The comparison between xenophobic attacks in South Africa and the building collapse in Nigeria which killed 84 South Africans last year is not entirely unjustified. Both affected nationals of one country working in or visiting the other; both, while not directly the fault of the governments concerned, only happened because those governments failed to address similar disasters in the past.

Nonetheless, it’s hardly the calm, measured response one should expect from South Africa’s diplomats, and the tit-for-tat exchange leaves relations between the two countries at a nadir. Which is saying something, because the relationship has been very poor for quite some time.

This should come as no surprise. For all their lofty talk of unity and pan-Africanism, both Nigeria and South Africa are actually locked in a fierce struggle to be sub-Saharan Africa’s preeminent superpower. This competition manifests itself in several different ways.

Most prominent is in the diplomatic arena, where both countries vie for influence and control at continental and global institutions. South Africa is marginally head on this front: a bruising battle ensured that Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was appointed as chairperson of the African Union Commission, over Nigeria’s objections, and South Africa revels in its status as the African partner of the BRICS alliance. Up for grabs in the future is a potential African permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, should meaningful UN reform ever happen.

Less visible, but even more important, is the economic rivalry between the two nations. Until recently, South Africa was the undisputed economic superpower, with a stable, relatively diversified economy that was also the largest in Africa. This changed when Nigeria rebased its GDP figures (a long overdue action), catapulting its economy ahead of South Africa’s (to the tune of tens of billions of dollars). Foreign investors are also beginning to favour Nigeria over South Africa, seeing a huge potential for growth there that’s not obviously apparent in South Africa.

Then there’s the competing cultural influences. Nigeria’s got Nollywood, which produces more films annually than anywhere else on earth, and a thriving music and arts scene. But South Africa has DStv, which supplies satellite television to so much of the continent, and its shops and restaurants have expanded all across Africa, doing far more to shape the day-to-day living of Africa’s urban elites than any Nigerian products (not to mention shaping the continent’s perception of Nigerians: for example, the derogatory depiction of Nigerians as drug dealers and prostitutes in the South African-made film District 9 prompted protests from Nigerian government officials).

The latest diplomatic spat between the two countries takes place in the context of this tense rivalry. It’s also significant that no other country has threatened to withdraw diplomatic representation over the xenophobic attacks, indicating that the official missives exchanged by the respective foreign ministries are more about embarrassing each other than the issues being mentioned. And it’s working: neither Nigeria nor South Africa comes out of this looking like the African superpower they both aspire to be. DM

Photo: Nigerian Foreign Minister Aminu Baschir Wali during a press conference at the Foreign Office in Berlin, Germany, 21 October 2014. EPA/BERND VON JUTRCZENKA

Read more:

• South Africa and Nigeria spar over xenophobic violence on Al Jazeera