A Ghanaian real estate developer, Kofi Anku, has shared a striking piece of personal history amid the current wave of renewed xenophobic attacks against Ghanaians and other Africans in South Africa.

In a post made on Facebook on April 26, 2026, Anku shared a 1994 personal cheque written by his late father, a Ghanaian doctor, to Nelson Mandela for $10,000.

The image of the cheque issued by his father, Vincent Anku MD, was drawn on First National Bank of Ohio and made payable directly to Nelson Mandela in the year of South Africa's first democratic elections.

"A Ghanaian doctor, thousands of miles away, putting his money where his conscience was, standing against apartheid, standing for the dignity of Black people everywhere," Anku wrote.

Anku noted the disturbing reports of xenophobic attacks against Ghanaians, citing how Ghanaians and other African citizens stood by South Africa during the height of apartheid.

"Right now, Ghanaian migrants in South Africa are being attacked and intimidated. In the very country my father believed in enough to help fund its liberation. The same South Africa whose freedom many across the continent wept, prayed and sacrificed for.

"Dad understood that what happened in Johannesburg was connected to what happened in Accra. That Black dignity is indivisible," he wrote.

Anku then addressed Ghanaians and other Africans bearing the brunt of the violence, stating that they have every right to be in South Africa, especially as their other generations are responsible for its liberation.

"To every Ghanaian and every African feeling afraid in South Africa right now: You are not strangers on that soil. Your parents' generation helped liberate it. And to the leaders, on both sides of this: There is a legacy watching," he said.

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He closed with a question he described as one his generation must now answer:

"What are we willing to do for each other?"

The post comes at a deeply charged moment. Ghana's Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa recently summoned South Africa's envoy to Ghana and called for an intervention to prevent further escalations after videos circulated online showing a Ghanaian being violently harassed.

In that incident, the Ghanaian legal resident in KwaZulu-Natal was confronted and told to leave South Africa and go "fix his country."

Anti-migrant groups have targeted foreign nationals at clinics, schools, and businesses, demanding identity documents and accusing migrants of draining public services, with mobs ransacking shops, cars, private homes, and even entering hospitals to forcibly remove foreign nationals seeking medical treatment.

Ghana's foreign affairs minister has similarly invoked the spirit of Pan-Africanism in his response to the crisis, appealing that "the long-standing bonds between African nations must not be derailed by the hostility of those he described as fringe elements."

Vincent Anku, the doctor who wrote that cheque thirty years ago, is described by man as proof that the solidarity of an earlier generation of Africans was real, costly, and worth remembering, especially now.

See the post below:



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