OPEN LETTER TO JACINTA NGOBESE-ZUMA, LEADER OF THE ANTI-IMMIGRANT MARCH AND MARCH MOVEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA
By Lauren Meyer
3 July 2026
Dear Mrs Ngobese-Zuma
I read, with mounting astonishment, your interview with Zohra Mahomed Teke of The Independent Online (IOL) which took place at the five-star Beverly Hills hotel in Umhlanga near Durban.
The journalist wrote that she expected you to be “loud”, “brash” and carrying “an air of arrogance”, “a raging, angry Zulu woman”, but instead you came across as “soft-spoken” and “vulnerable”. You confessed you were “just so tired” and “exhausted”. At one point you even struggled to hold back tears.
This is not how you appeared on camera on Friday June 19, 2026 when you were whipping up the mob at the start of the anti-immigrant protest march through the CBD of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. Then you were brimming with confidence and vitriol, which clearly resonated with the huge crowd armed with “traditional weapons” comprising wooden sticks, knobkerries (clubs), sjamboks (whips), spears, and shields.
One wonders who the real Jacinta is.
And I wonder if you will take any responsibility for the resulting murder of the Malawian national, 29-year-old Mishack Banda, who was so viciously attacked. It was reported that a breakaway group armed with sticks moved into the Jika Joe informal settlement, where foreign nationals were chased and assaulted. Mr Banda was chased through the settlement, severely beaten, and stoned to death.
This vicious murder has made news headlines around the world, a shocking indictment of South Africa’s so-called “Rainbow Nation”.
And, staying with Malawians, I wonder if you took the time out of your “comfortable life” to read the article “Terror and tears as Malawians are forced to abandon their lives in SA” by Lerato Mutsila, published in The Daily Maverick.
Some of the older Malawians you and your fellow organisations have so ruthlessly and aggressively forced to leave the country may be former farm workers in Zimbabwe who were brutally attacked and dispossessed by war veterans, ZANU PF supporters and President Mugabe’s youth militia or “green bombers” during the 2000 land invasions because they were perceived to be opposition supporters.
As Al Jazeera reported on June 11, 2026, “thousands of Malawian farm workers who had been displaced by the Zimbabwean land grabs fled to South Africa for safety and economic survival. However, these migrants have ultimately become targets in South Africa during widespread xenophobic protests and forced repatriations.
The Trauma of Displaced and Dispossessed Zimbabweans
While I am deeply troubled at the trauma and pain caused to all African refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, I can only speak for Zimbabweans, having worked on this crisis since late 2000, and having witnessed the trauma and destitution that hundreds of thousands have suffered as a result.
Given that you may not have taken the time to find out why there are so many traumatised Zimbabweans in South Africa, I would like to point out that Zimbabwe’s 2002 elections, which were proven to be fraudulent, were rubber-stamped by the South African government, which was fully aware – both of the Mugabe government-initiated violence – and the fact that the elections had been rigged.
As the Daily Maverick reported on November 17, 2014, the South African government fought for more than 12 years to keep the contents of the definitive Khampepe Report on Zimbabwe’s stolen 2002 Presidential elections under wraps. Finally, the Mail and Guardian newspaper took the government to court, and it was forced to release the report. When the details of this damning cover-up were revealed, they confirmed that the elections had been rigged – and that South Africa had known all about it! Zimbabwean citizens have been paying the price for this ever since.
At this point it is important to remind you that on March 4, 2003, South Africa’s then Foreign Affairs Minister, Mrs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former wife of President Jacob Zuma, told the press: “The problem with is that you are waiting for one word – condemnation of Zimbabwe (the ZANU PF government). You will never hear that. It is not going to happen as long as this government is in power.”
True to her word, South Africa’s ANC government has continued to shamelessly support the brutal regimes of former president Robert Mugabe and the current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, ever since.
And so, Mrs Ngobese-Zuma, this is one of the numerous reasons why so many bona fide Zimbabwean refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants are in your country. It is not because they want to live in an unwelcoming land terrorised by xenophobic and vindictive organisations such as yours, but because they have no option. This is either because, as opposition supporters, their lives are still at risk in Zimbabwe, or because they have no way of making sufficient money there to support their families.
The statistics for unemployment in South Africa range from 32.7% to over 46%, depending on the definition of “unemployment” used. Given the parlous state of Zimbabwe’s economy, unemployment levels are widely believed to be much higher, but it’s difficult to get accurate figures, especially as subsistence farmers are conveniently classified as “employed” to inflate government employment statistics. Over 90 percent unemployment is estimated by many to be realistic.
Given that you yourself are a mother, I wonder if you would have felt the slightest remorse if you’d personally seen all the desperate Zimbabweans – men, women and children – sleeping outside the Zimbabwean consulate in Cape Town for five icy nights ahead of your arbitrary June 30 deadline.
Adding to the misery, it rained heavily on the Sunday morning as the City of Cape Town, the Department of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwean Consulate began relocating people to the Home Affairs refugee centre in Epping. Babies, wrapped in blankets, were crying as people lined up to board vehicles.
I wonder if any of the Zimbabweans whose lives and livelihoods that you have so brazenly and carelessly destroyed, were victims of Operation Murambatsvina. Another quick history lesson for you.
Launched by the Mugabe government in May 2005, Operation Murambatsvina (“drive out the trash”) was a massive, nationwide campaign of forced evictions and demolitions to destroy the MDC’s urban support base. Using police and military force, the government destroyed tens of thousands of homes and informal businesses, leaving approximately 700,000 people homeless or without livelihoods.
The 2008 Elections and Mass-scale Government-strategised Violence
Pause for a moment, Mrs Ngobese-Zuma, and imagine what it must have been like to have been a Zimbabwean mother crawling with a child on her back through the razor wire of the Beitbridge border fence to escape the terrifying pre-election violence in Zimbabwe during March 2008.
While you were tucked up safely in bed in your comfortable home, she would have been facing a frightening arrival in South Africa and an uncertain future.
Talking of the 2008 elections, did you know that the late Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party won the Presidential election, but was forced into a brutal run-off for which Mugabe strategised such shocking violence that Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw?
And did you ever see any photos of this horrific period? It was difficult to get the press to publish them.
Rape Campaign – 2007/2008
Were you aware that there was a deliberately strategised rape campaign during 2007 and 2008? Aids-Free World produced a report in 2009: “Electing to Rape: Sexual Terror in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe”. I suggest that you read all 65 pages carefully. Some of these women may have fled to South Africa in search of safety, only to be hounded and further traumatised by your organisation.
Clearly you cannot be held accountable for the devastating 2008 election tragedies, but if you have any humanity at all, you owe it to Zimbabweans to understand what they have endured at the hands of the power-obsessed Mugabe and Mnangagwa regimes.
Your Accountability
Lastly, I do hold you accountable for forcing a friend of mine, a bona fide Zimbabwean refugee from the early 2000s, to leave South Africa. This is a man who, with great courage, managed to build a life for himself and his family in your country, despite having had a leg amputated due to diabetes. Regrettably, he is now wheelchair-bound.
Imagine, for a moment, being confined to a wheelchair and having your family – and yourself – threatened with xenophobic violence, either in your street, in your home, at your children’s school or in a hospital waiting room? Imagine how you, as a parent, would feel being unable to protect them.
Right now, the family is on a bus going back to Zimbabwe and I hope and pray it will be a safe journey. But how will they manage when they get back to the city where they used to live? This man’s family members have all passed away and he has no home to return to. South Africa had become his home, and he had contributed positively to his local community.
How will he get his diabetic medicines when so many hospitals and clinics are dysfunctional? And how will he be able to afford to send his children to school? You, as a mother, should worry about that.
In closing, Mrs Ngobese-Zuma, I suggest you give this open letter serious thought before you and your colleagues embark on another xenophobic and inhumane rampage.
Yours sincerely,
Lauren Meyer (human rights activist)