Nigerian Richard Itoro is not sure when he will see his twin children again.
Fearing for his safety as the anti-migrant protests cranked up in South Africa this year, the 47-year-old left his family and business behind in Johannesburg and boarded one of the voluntary repatriation flights to Nigeria in June.
His is just one of many experiences fuelling diplomatic tension and threatening to rupture relations between South Africa and other countries on the continent.
Tens of thousands of foreigners have left South Africa over the past two months.
“It was painful for me to leave [the] person who’s my best friend,” Itoro tells the BBC, with tears welling up, as he reflects on saying goodbye to his South African wife.
Over 15 years, he had built up a car-dealership business, bought a home and created a family. That is now all gone for him.
Itoro became the target of harassment but his wife was not spared the intimidation.
He says his neighbours told her: “You’re married to a Nigerian. Those of you who are married to Nigerians, we are supposed to arrest you people.
“You guys betrayed us. Go and leave the country with your husband and don’t be here.”
Itoro was baffled.
“My family was just a small family, which was beautiful and peaceful. I had no issues with anybody.”
The pressure became too much.
“If I go home and start all over again, it’s better than being here, being harassed, being scared for my life,” Itoro says.
But, the businessman says, the Nigerian High Commission would not let his wife and children travel with him.
He describes how leaving felt like a movie where someone boards the last helicopter flight out of a besieged city.
“I wish I could have just begged the people from the embassy and said: ‘This is my wife, I can’t leave her behind and my kids,’ but I couldn’t.
“So my car started departing and I wished I had told her not to cry.”
The anti-migrant groups in South Africa said their protests were aimed at undocumented foreigners.
The country’s outspoken Culture Minister, Gayton McKenzie, who leads one of the parties in the coalition government, also emphasised this point.
“We say South Africa is open to our brothers on the continent but come here legitimately. Come with your papers,” he told the BBC’s interview programme.
But Itoro says his legal status did not protect him from hostility as he shows the BBC a copy of the document that he says proves he had the right to stay in the country.
He was not alone, according to the Nigerian authorities.
“We have records of Nigerians who have legitimate papers to remain in South Africa, yet they have been attacked,” Nigeria’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sola Enikanolaiye said during a recent meeting with South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola.
The temperature was raised recently following the death of a Nigerian who was killed as police were arresting him over suspected drug offences. An independent body is now investigating.
Lamola maintained that South Africa deals with those who take the law into their own hands, but added that President Cyril Ramaphosa was also “very firm on South Africa’s sovereign right to enforce its immigration laws.”
Despite the diplomatic efforts, South Africa’s reputation has been severely damaged.
Not least because of images and videos circulating on social media. Not all of them were what they were purported to be, but one, involving a Ghanaian, was genuine and it sparked huge concern once it started being shared in April.
In Lagos, Itoro is still pining for his family.
“It’s not easy. But we talk every day, and I’m broken. There is hope, because… my wife is going to join me very soon, as soon as God lifts me up. But it was heartbreaking, and that’s how I felt: like I lost everything,” he says.
*PHOTO CAPTION: Itoro.
*This piece was culled from bbc.com.
