March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma has landed in the middle of a storm after confirming that her organisation will meet with AfriForum on Tuesday.
The meeting comes weeks after March and March mobilised supporters around its June 30 anti-illegal immigration protests, with the government estimating that the nationwide policing operation would cost more than R600 million.
The movement’s mobilisation had already drawn thousands to marches, including a major demonstration in eMalahleni.
AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel confirmed the sit-down on X, saying he looked forward to engaging with Ngobese-Zuma and her team.
He also pointed to AfriForum’s long track record of working with fellow South Africans.
The timing has amplified the backlash, particularly because of AfriForum’s previous involvement in contentious debates over South Africa’s land policies and its engagement with the Trump administration.
The controversy later fed into the wider diplomatic tensions surrounding President Cyril Ramaphosa’s White House visit, which South African officials described as a deliberate Oval Office diplomatic ambush.
The tensions continued as the US Congress advanced the US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act of 2025, which sought to review bilateral relations and identify ANC leaders and government officials who could face sanctions.
South Africans condemn the March and March-AfriForum meeting
Reaction on social media has been swift and largely unforgiving.
Ahmed Kathrada Foundation board chairperson Derek Hanekom delivered one of the sharpest political rebukes.
Per the X post below, pointed out that numerous African countries sheltered South Africa’s liberation movements during apartheid and, despite the cost, “did not expel us from their countries,” he said.
Poet and media personality Ntsiki Mazwai, who was recently announced as the Johannesburg mayoral candidate, took a similar line.
She questioned whether Ngobese-Zuma knows AfriForum members’ farms sit on what she calls stolen land, adding that “the irony of this is hilarious,” she said.
Land Party leader Gcobani Ndzongana accused AfriForum of undermining Black job seekers and school admissions while March and March aligns itself with the organisation.
“Your alliance with AfriForum contradicts what you claimed to be fighting for,” he wrote.
Another X user, as shown below, user went further, accusing AfriForum of manufacturing global genocide claims that nearly dragged South Africa into conflict. She also told followers to “wake the hell up”.
A more forgiving camp backs March and March
Not everyone condemned the decision to meet AfriForum.
Mopheme Taoli welcomed the engagement as part of a broader shift towards civil-society and rights-based organising rather than party politics.
“People are less and less looking to political parties for solutions,” he said, adding that he had started a similar group in his own hometown.
Azania echoed that sentiment. She stressed that March and March is not a political party and argued that street protests alone would not deliver change.
“We won’t win by going to the streets only,” she said, calling instead for court action and Black-owned business building.
Ngobese-Zuma defends the AfriForum engagement
Facing mounting pressure, Ngobese-Zuma defended the decision to meet AfriForum, stressing that the engagement was not about forming an alliance.
In a TV media interview, she said March and March was not opposed to AfriForum because of its racial identity, but remained focused on undocumented people in South Africa.
“I’m mean Afriforum is South African…. we are not against anyone because of their race, the only thing we always talk about is people who are undocumented in the country,” she said.
Ngobese-Zuma said March and March also wanted to learn from AfriForum’s approach where it believed the organisation was doing things effectively.
“We are saying we are going to go to Afriforum and learn from them. Because it’s important for us to take lessons from people if they’re doing something right.
“And the right things that they are doing, we’re going to be learning from them,” she said.
She also rejected the suggestion that engaging AfriForum meant March and March would simply accept its positions.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re saying now we’re going to be worshipping AfriForum. That’s not what we’re saying. We also told them that we disagree.
“But here we want to learn about the things that you are doing correctly for the people who are in your forum.”
The comments underline Ngobese-Zuma’s argument that the meeting is intended as an engagement rather than an alliance, even as critics question whether the two organisations’ positions can sit comfortably alongside each other.
She also asked whether people who disagree with March and March “shouldn’t hear us out or learn from us,” she said.
What March and March says it stands for
March and March describes itself on its official website as a citizen-led movement advocating stronger immigration enforcement and protecting opportunities for South African citizens.
That positioning helps explain why immigration and employment have remained central to the movement’s public campaigns, while also making its decision to engage AfriForum particularly contentious among some critics.
Whether Tuesday’s meeting shifts that positioning or deepens mistrust remains to be seen.
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