Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, the face of South Africa’s anti-immigrant protests

Unknown outside KwaZulu-Natal where she hosted a radio morning show, today Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma is a regular commentator on South African broadcast media as the head of March and March. Through a steady stream of social media videos and podcast appearances since 2025, she has become one of several South African voices blaming migrants for the country’s social and economic problems.

She argues that foreign nationals are central to job scarcity, overcrowded classrooms and strained healthcare. Her organisation runs a YouTube channel and claims 500,000 social media followers in what its website describes as its campaign for “immigration reform and citizen protection”.

The making of a movement

Whether as well-dressed mom and wife on podcasts and interviews, addressing meetings in casual attire or in protest regalia during demonstrations, Ngobese-Zuma is media savvy and politically astute. Styling March and March as the ‘voice of the voiceless’, she has become a prominent figure in grievance politics.

Ngobese-Zuma’s rise reflects a shift in South African politics in which worries over socio-economic stagnation, joblessness and a weak state are put into a mixer to produce hostility towards African foreign nationals. In the recent protests, which spread from eThekwini (Durban) to Johannesburg, moving through the country, such sentiment boiled over into violence.

The Human Science Research Council (HSRC) South African Social Attitudes Survey captured this shift. Some 42% of respondents said they opposed immigrants, 15% said they would welcome all, while 77% of respondents said foreigners increased crime, according to data published in May 2026.

“One important dimension of this change has been an attitudinal shift among poorer and working-class adults. It could be argued that these groups are scapegoating foreign nationals for the failures and inequalities of the post-pandemic economic recovery,” the survey said.

For Ngobese-Zuma, it is straightforward. “I should not feel displaced over a foreigner,” she said on the popular Podcast and Chill show hosted by MacG, when asked about crowded public classrooms.

A lot of South Africans are faced with the reality [that] they are pushed back and made second in their own country

“Why are foreigners not the ones going to private school? Everyone has a right to education, but where does it stipulate that the education must be in a public school? It doesn’t,” she said.

Speaking at a meeting held under the Archdiocese of Durban banner on 13 June, she said: “A lot of South Africans are faced with the reality [that] they are pushed back and made second in their own country.”

From KwaMashu to the national stage

Ngobese-Zuma was raised by grandparents in KwaMashu, KwaZulu-Natal, one of the oldest Durban townships. Her high-profile wedding to Xolani Zuma in August 2024 was attended by former president Jacob Zuma’s wife, Thobeka Mandela-Zuma.

She graduated from the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she developed an interest in radio. As an award-winning producer and host, she moved between Durban-based radio stations, including Gagasi FM. When Vuma FM did not renew her contract in mid-2025, she launched a YouTube interview show, Zoom In with Jacinta MaNgobese-Zuma.

She founded March and March in 2024. The movement rose to prominence the following year, as the wave of anti-immigrant activism associated with Operation Dudula made headlines across South Africa.

A constituency politicians can’t ignore

Operation Dudula leader Zandile Dabula recently joined ActionSA, the opposition party headed by Herman Mashaba, who is contesting for Johannesburg’s mayorship in the November municipal elections.

“We have met with them and held discussions about illegal immigration in South Africa and identified policy areas of agreement and disagreement,” ActionSA chairperson Michael Beaumont tells The Africa Report, referring to March and March. He adds that ActionSA and March and March leaders have attended each other’s demonstrations and events.

When political parties such as Zuma’s MK Party and the Patriotic Alliance engage with Ngobese-Zuma, it reflects the growing political weight of her March and March movement.

The DA’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, met Ngobese-Zuma and her husband in June as part of a party delegation.

“I listened to her, and then I set out the DA’s policy on migration to her. The purpose of the meeting was not to reach agreement on anything, but to hear each other out,” Zille tells The Africa Report, dismissing the controversy around the meeting as a “storm in a teacup”.

“It is a normal meeting in a democratic society where people who disagree meet all the time to set out their stall,” she says.

According to Statistics South Africa, some three million immigrants live in South Africa, representing approximately 5% of the 61 million population. The World Bank estimates net migration was 146,370 in 2025, down from just over one million in 2015. According to the basic education department, just under 2% of learners are foreign nationals.

(The Africa Report)