Nigeria's parliament boycotts South Africa — four weeks into Pretoria's SADC chair

We said on 8 September that Kenya's hawker order put East Africa's common market on trial; South Africa's version has run since June, and a peer parliament has now sent the bill. Ramaphosa set the right rule himself on 7 June — enforcing immigration law “rests with the state and the state alone” — and our Scorecard rates his conduct 4.2 out of 5, but by Abuja's count the attacks kept coming while the state's visible answer was deportation. The grievance the vigilantes exploit is jobs, and our data locates that stall at home: since 2018 South Africa's development delivery sits at the 10th percentile of African countries, with GDP per head down 4% to 2022 while the median African country's rose 1%. Nigeria's move is calibrated too — the legislature pulled the lever, not Tinubu's executive, and the directive binds only parliament. The real test for the SADC chair who pledged in August to lift regional trade to 50% is whether voters hear about a prosecuted ringleader, not a scapegoat, before the 4 November municipal elections.