President John Dramani Mahama has condemned the recent wave of xenophobic attacks in South Africa, telling Ghanaians at a London town hall that the violence betrays African unity.
Speaking on Sunday, May 31, the President said the unrest was deeply troubling and ran counter to the ideals of African unity that Ghana has long championed. The attacks have already prompted a government evacuation that flew home a first batch of 300 Ghanaians last week.
He cast the violence as a threat to continental integration rather than merely a security problem. “We cannot achieve it in isolation,” he said, arguing that no African country can progress without working with its neighbours.
Mahama pointed to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as the clearest expression of that ambition, saying the free movement of people it promotes is exactly what xenophobic hostility undermines.
The President also turned to domestic matters, acknowledging that his government had taken difficult decisions to meet International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme conditions, obligations he said were complicated by the facility’s derailment under the previous administration.
On illegal mining, he framed the task as bringing operators into a formal system rather than simply enforcing the law, noting that gold is found across most of the country.
