By Mapaballo Borotho
- AfriForum and the March and March movement have announced a new working relationship focused on legal issues affecting South Africans.
- The partnership has drawn criticism from GIWUSA, which accuses both organisations of contributing to the marginalisation of the black working class and harking back to apartheid.
- March and March leader Jacinta Zuma-Ngobese says the relationship is based on mutual respect and a shared goal of building a united South Africa that acknowledges diversity.
AfriForum and the March and March movement are set to work together on legal issues affecting South Africans, including fighting crime in communities and holding the government accountable.
The two organisations confirmed their working relationship on Tuesday, 19 August 2026, following a meeting between the organisations’ leaders, Kallie Kriel and Jacinta Zuma-Ngobese. The partnership comes despite the two organisations’ differences.
AfriForum is a civil rights lobby group that primarily advocates for the interests of Afrikaners, while March and March has positioned itself as an anti-immigration movement.
The March and March movement gained momentum in the months leading up to June after calling for the deportation of all illegal foreign nationals in South Africa – a move that turned the country upside down, with African governments organising transportation to bring their citizens back to their home countries.
The meeting between the two organisations followed Ngobese-Zuma’s announcement about the March and March’s SA First Forum, a social justice litigation body.
She said the movement wanted to establish itself as “an AfriForum for black South Africans” through the new legal advocacy forum and humanitarian foundation.
The partnership between the two organisations has not been received well by some unions in the country, with the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA) citing that both organisations want to hark back to apartheid.
“AfriForum’s relentless fight against any form of land reform, economic equity or social justice for the landless, poor black is essentially identical to March and March’s crusade against the most marginalised sections of the black working class – migrant workers.”
GIWUSA says both organisations are assaults on the poor blacks – one seeking to preserve the spoils of apartheid capital, the other seeking to enforce marginalisation and racialised labour reserve by expelling and terrorising the most vulnerable.
“They have openly declared their shared investment in keeping the working class fractured, fearful, and fighting among themselves along racial, national, and ethnic lines,” the union added.
However, Jacinta said the relationship is based on mutual respect, with both parties agreeing to complement and challenge one another in pursuit of the shared objective of building a united South Africa that acknowledges diversity.
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