The Dangerous Rhetoric of Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma: A Call for Accountability

I have never been one to mince my words or beat around the bush. I say what others may shy away from saying, because the truth must be spoken, no matter how uncomfortable. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma is not a revolutionary. She is not even an activist by any stretch of the imagination. She is a conspirator with, and an agent of, the United States of America and Western imperialism, together with Zionism. She is a traitor and a seditionist who should be charged with treason.

This is not rhetoric for effect. It is a cold, hard analysis rooted in history, in the lived experience of our liberation struggle, and in the concrete damage her so-called March and March movement has already inflicted on South Africa and on our standing across the African continent.

For months I have warned, in previous articles and public statements, that March and March is the latest manifestation of the third force that haunted our struggle in the 1980s and early 1990s. Then, as now, shadowy operators and their local proxies sowed division among the oppressed, pitting black against black, African against African, to protect white monopoly capital and imperialist interests. The Boipatong massacre and the engineered violence between Inkatha and the ANC were not spontaneous. They were orchestrated to weaken the liberation movement from within. Today, the same evil playbook has resurfaced under the false flag of “South Africans First,” led by Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma.

She and her movement cloak themselves in the language of patriotism and concern for the poor. They claim to speak for the unemployed, the homeless, and those struggling for basic services. Yet their actions achieve the precise opposite of any genuine revolutionary programme. Instead of uniting the working class and poor against the real enemies — white monopoly capital, land dispossession, privatisation, and imperialist looting — they turn the poor against one another. They stoke Afrophobia, directing rage at African migrants from our sister countries rather than at the structures that keep all of us in chains.

The results are visible and bloody. In the weeks leading up to and around the 30 June protests and deadline, at least four fellow Africans were killed, thousands displaced, and shops looted. Ngobese-Zuma and her followers made limp and unbelievable efforts to distance themselves from the violence in public statements. Yet their rhetoric — the ultimatums, the chants of “they must go,” the framing of African brothers and sisters as the primary threat — creates the poisonous atmosphere in which such attacks flourish. This is not activism. This is incitement. This is sedition.

A true revolutionary fights to unite the oppressed. A true activist organises the poor and working class against exploitation, not to scapegoat the most vulnerable among us. Ngobese-Zuma does the bidding of division. By promoting Afrophobia she isolates South Africa from the rest of our continent at the very moment when African unity is most needed — to resist USA and Western economic domination, to stand in solidarity with Palestine against Zionist genocide, to strengthen BRICS and the anti-imperialist front. She damages South Africa’s international image, turning us from a beacon of liberation into a byword for xenophobia and especially Afrophobia in the eyes of our African sisters and brothers. That damage is not accidental. It serves the interests of those who want a weakened, divided, inward-looking South Africa that can be more easily exploited and contained.

Her direct and undeniable ties to USA imperialism are laid bare by her participation in one of the United States government’s flagship political indoctrination programs. In 2023, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma was selected for the United States State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Selected in August 2023, she travelled to the United States in September 2023 to take part in this “prestigious” exchange. The IVLP is not a neutral academic course. It is a political grooming and indoctrination program explicitly designed to advance American national security priorities and foreign policy goals. It brings current and emerging leaders from around the world to the United States for short-term professional visits — typically up to three weeks — where they meet American counterparts, learn about USA government systems, society, culture and media, and develop relationships intended to shape their future outlooks in ways favourable to Washington.

It is entirely legitimate to ask whether Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma has not already been recruited into the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or at the very least, whether in her actions she is associated with and directed by the CIA. The specific theme of the programme she attended focused on “Media Responsibility in an Age of Disinformation.” While she now leads a movement that spreads inflammatory, divisive and often disinformation-laden narratives against African migrants, she willingly accepted training from the very imperial power whose interests are served by weakening African unity and South African sovereignty. This is the classic profile of a local figure cultivated through USA political grooming and indoctrination mechanisms — programmes that identify “promising individuals” in media, civil society and politics and expose them to American perspectives, networks and influence under the guise of “leadership development” and “mutual understanding.”

The hypocrisy is staggering and revealing. Here is a woman who mobilises thousands with xenophobic and Afrophobic rhetoric, demanding that “foreigners” (overwhelmingly fellow Africans) leave South Africa, while she herself embraced an official USA government political grooming and indoctrination programme that serves American geopolitical objectives. She rails against foreign influence in our communities and economy, yet she sought and received training, exposure and networking opportunities directly from the United States State Department. This is not the conduct of a revolutionary committed to African self-determination or even a consistent activist fighting imperialism. It is the behaviour of someone whose actions align with the strategic interests of USA and Western imperialism — interests that benefit from a divided, unstable and inward-looking South Africa unable to play its rightful role in continental unity, BRICS solidarity or the broader anti-imperialist struggle.

It is a disgrace that the recently formed uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party) — which must not be confused with the historic uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC known as the People’s Liberation Army — lent its support to these xenophobic and Afrophobic outrages. Even more shameful is the posture of Jacob Zuma himself. For years during the exile period of the struggle against apartheid, Zuma lived in African countries and was a direct beneficiary of African solidarity and hospitality, and travelled with a Sudanese passport. That he now directly supports the Afrophobic mobilisation of March and March in an opportunistic, vulture-like attempt to scavenge votes for the upcoming local government elections on the 4th of November, represents a profound betrayal of that solidarity and of the internationalist traditions he once claimed to uphold.

Ngobese-Zuma’s claims of connection to the so-called Zuma legacy only deepens the betrayal. She has addressed MK Party supporters and declared “I am a Zuma.” Yet the true spirit of the original uMkhonto weSizwe, that was formed on the 16th of December 1961, and of the broader liberation movement was internationalist and pan-African. Our first uMkhonto weSizwe liberation fighters were trained in Africa. Nelson Mandela himself received military training in Algiers, Algeria — hosted by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) — where he studied guerrilla warfare tactics, urban combat techniques, and the strategies of revolutionary armed struggle that would shape uMkhonto weSizwe. MK bases were hosted across the continent in countries such as Angola, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. The headquarters of the African National Congress was based in Lusaka, Zambia. These Frontline States and solidarity nations paid a heavy price for standing with us, facing repeated cross-border raids, destabilisation, and economic sabotage by the apartheid regime. It should also never be forgotten that in 1976 the Nigerian government enacted the Southern Africa Relief Fund Act, which established the Southern Africa Relief Fund (commonly known as the Mandela Tax). Under this fund, every Nigerian civil servant had 2% of their salary automatically deducted to support South African freedom fighters, refugees, students, and the broader liberation struggle.

Our struggle was never narrowly nationalist in the exclusionary sense that March And March promotes. Instead it drew strength from solidarity across Africa and the world. To weaponize the Zuma name, even with the cynical assistance of Jacob Zuma himself, in order to conjure up a false narrative that March and March can have any association with the original uMkhonto weSizwe, or that the MK Party is even a faint shadow of what the original uMkhonto weSizwe was and stood for, is to desecrate that sacred liberation legacy. The centre and the base of this treacherous project is Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma herself — a traitor who conspires with Western imperialism, the United States of America, and Zionism to create division and factionalism inside South Africa, to isolate us from the African continent, and to stoke the very Afrophobia and instability that imperialism has always used to maintain its grip.

History is clear: when movements like this arise, they rarely emerge in a vacuum. The promotion of migrant hysteria, the pitting of citizens against “foreigners,” the engineering of internal chaos — these are classic tools of Western intelligence agencies and their local proxies. They distract from the real plunder: the continued dominance of white monopoly capital, the failures of the so-called GNU to deliver radical economic transformation, the corruption and decay in state institutions. They prevent the united front we need against USA imperialism, against Zionist aggression, and against all forces that wish to keep Africa divided and subordinate. By weakening social cohesion and our continental standing, Ngobese-Zuma and March and March objectively serve those foreign agendas.

The violence and instability her movement has already delivered — the deaths, the displacement of thousands, the looting of shops, the fear in communities — are not side effects. They are the predictable outcome of stoking hatred instead of organising for justice. The damage to South Africa’s image, especially across Africa but also globally, is profound and lasting. All of this weakens our sovereignty from within while external powers smile.

I say again, without equivocation: Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma is a traitor and a seditionist. She should be investigated for foreign seditious links and funding. She should be charged with treason for her role in inciting division, undermining national unity, and objectively advancing the interests of USA and Western imperialism and Zionism against the people of South Africa and the broader African cause.

South Africans must reject this poison. We must refuse to be divided. The real fight is against white monopoly capital, for land expropriation without compensation, for nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, for free quality education and healthcare, and for a sovereign, united, anti-imperialist South Africa that stands shoulder to shoulder with the rest of our continent and the oppressed peoples of the world.

The treasonous March and March movement must be stopped. The clarion call is clear: charge Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma with treason. Defend our unity. Advance the true revolution of our generational mission for economic freedom in our lifetime.

* Carl Niehaus is an EFF Member of Parliament.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL.