Illustrative image: March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma. (Photo: Per-Anders Pettersson / Getty Images) | Former South African president Jacob Zuma. (Photo: Per-Anders Pettersson / Getty Images) | Fikile Mbalula. (Photo: Gallo Images / OJ Koloti) | People protest against illegal immigration in Durban on 20 May 2026. (Photo: Gallo Images / Darren Stewart) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca)
By Victoria O’Regan, Reitumetse Pilane and Salim Nkosi
As March and March’s 30 June ‘deadline’ looms, politicians have helped to move anti-migrant rhetoric from the fringe to the centre of politics.
Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, the former radio show host at the centre of South Africa’s current xenophobic unrest, says her movement, March and March, is apolitical. But, while multiple parties have legitimised her anti-immigrant agenda, at least two parties have actively furthered it, stoking fears ahead of March and March’s ominous 30 June deadline, with multiple immigrants killed and thousands already displaced across the country…