This week, in what can only be described as a blindside move no one saw coming, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma had a much-publicised meeting with Kallie Kriel. The feisty March and March leader – forthright to the point of brutality with journalists and anyone else who takes umbrage at her unwavering anti-immigration stance – appeared cordial and even spoke Afrikaans next to the Afriforum CEO who in turn reciprocated the niceties with wide grins and pleasantries of his own.
The nation’s collective gasp reverberated across media platforms, with influencers and keyboard warriors all rushing to make known their sentiments on what is inarguably the topic that has totally flipped the script. Ngobese-Zuma, some were adamant, had clearly lost her marbles, colluding as she was with an Afrikaner-centric lobby group that seeks nothing other than to tarnish the country’s international image, assert some sort of Afrikaner homeland (volksstaat), and regress to the days of segregation and racial subjugation.
From there, the laagers and kraals soon formed with names like Biko and Hani being dropped at a whim right alongside Black Consciousness, Die Stem, General de la Rey, and references that are unpublishable here. It soon became a racialized piss-up marred by contempt, allusions to a chronically corrupt and incompetent government, genocide of white farmers, and questions as to who really built South Africa anyway.
Basically, according to the Afro Left, Ngobese-Zuma had sold out or abandoned her loyal marchers for nothing but a seat at the table of thinly disguised supremacists. Not one to shy away from the online mudslinging, she soon found herself up against both well and lesser-known figures in cyberspace, and they clearly weren’t going to let her off the hook without some intense back and forth. In a lengthy comment steeped in sarcasm and stinging broadsides, Mamiya (who goes by the X handle @Phumla_N) invoked the Black Consciousness angle:
‘Steve Biko was not a member of the ANC,’ she wrote, ‘he was the founder of Black Consciousness Movement and a movement that taught us the black nation how to break the chain of our inferiority complex that is instilled in us by the apartheid regime, how to believe in a black power and abilities and how to have confidence to rule over our own selves without being dependent on white people, groups, organisations or forums … What you have done Jacinta is to tell the masses of our people that you and those who follow you have no confidence in black leadership including yours.’
Sol Phenduka, co-host of Podcast and Chill, which is billed as the biggest podcast on the continent, echoed the words of ‘Mjomane,’ yet another avid TikToker. The latter framed his defence of Ngobese-Zuma’s decision around former ANC president Oliver Tambo’s utterances that not everything that the enemy (in this context, the previous regime) did was wrong. At a moral level, apartheid might have been repulsive, but Tambo also conceded that economically it had pretty effective logics and models.
In the same vein, Mjomane recognised Afriforum’s efficacy. So he asked: what is wrong with Ngobese-Zuma seeking to emulate their strategy in her organisation’s pursuit of starting a similar group aimed at uplifting the black community? This was – not unexpectedly – met with some backlash which questioned how the same group that has been seeking to undermine the state on global platforms could ever offer March and March or any other black entity meaningful developmental assistance.
Surprisingly, though, the general reaction (at least the scores of accounts and comments this writer has been poring over) has been divided, suggesting some perceptible appetite for the exploring of new ways of doing. There is an undeniable sense that some people are no longer satisfied with the nation’s trajectory, have a strong desire to see things getting done, and realise that this may require robust civic activism rather than waiting on the government to hold the people’s hand.
The nub of the debate seems to come down to this: was it wise of March and March to become an ally of an organisation that doesn’t appear to have the interests of people who look like Ngobese-Zuma at heart? Has she not lost all credibility, and effectively betrayed the entire ‘abahambe’ objective? After all, it has been the anti-immigration point that has catapulted her to continental prominence.
The eloquent Ngobese-Zuma might have been able to explain all of this, even convincingly so, were it not for a video that has been widely circulated in the aftermath of the meeting, in which she comes out in full support of Akademia, the Afrikaans-medium university associated with Solidariteit, Afriforum and various other Afrikaner-oriented backers.
However, in her potential defence, she also suggesting that similar institutions should be built for members of other ethnic groups, and only teach in single indigenous languages. This inevitably opened her up to accusations of already having torn a page from what some perceive to be Afriforum’s separatist playbook. (She has since posted a video to apologise about the way those comments sounded.)
As regards her audience with Kriel, Ngobese-Zuma has stated that Afriforum is South African. ‘We are not against anyone on the basis of their race. We’re saying we’re going to go to Afriforum and learn from them because it’s important to us to take lessons from people who are doing something right. And the right things that they are doing we’re going to be learning from them.’
At the time of writing (around midnight om Friday 20 August), the news feeds and timelines were churning out clips of MP Fadiel Abrams at the Madlanga Commission, as well as Ngobese-Zuma and Kriel. Their unlikely union has forced the conversation down a path where many would rather criticize off the bat, cringe or go into a flat panic. One thing no one seems capable of doing is to ignore it. Interesting times, indeed.
Featured image : Afriforum CEO Kallie Kriel with March and March founder Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma.