The X-men stirring hatred in South Africa

The daily anti-illegal immigrant marches and attacks roiling South Africa are led by a failed Zulu radio personality, a DJ dropped by a small regional radio station and an unheralded actor.

Ngizwe Mchunu, the former Ukhozi FM announcer who leads songs and speaks at his movement’s events, had to apologise last week for defaming EFF leader Julius Malema on social media.

Last week the Sunday Times quoted him as saying: “By the ruling of law, by the word ‘democracy’, it should be that the majority of people in parliament are Zulus because there is more of us than anyone else and we are the most influential.”

This tribalist is the genius whose supporters are stopping fellow Africans on the streets and demanding to check their papers.

Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, a former Vuma FM personality, said recently that ubuntu is the reason this country is broken.

Phakelumthakathi (real name Nkosikhona Ndabandaba), the third leader, is a two-bit actor who “commands” the men who appear in the garb of the amabutho (Zulu regiments); he says all illegal foreigners must leave South Africa by June 30.

Filling a void

This trio’s ominous deadline is amplified every day. What will they do to those African immigrants who do not leave by the end of June?

They have the nation in such a frenzy that even the generally unresponsive President Cyril Ramaphosa felt moved to address South Africa on Sunday.

As if waking from a 20-year slumber, the president spoke of changing immigration laws, patrolling borders and bringing corruption at home affairs to an end while working with African leaders to find solutions.

What has he been doing all along?

Let there be no doubt: this immigration crisis is the result of a state that is ineffective, corrupt, incompetent and absent. South Africa’s borders are completely compromised. Many home affairs officials are irredeemably corrupt. And the immigration system is hopelessly broken and unable to handle 21^st-century problems, or an unscrupulous person dangling a bribe.

So, people are gatvol. With Ramaphosa seemingly unwilling or unable to lead, charlatans such as Mchunu, Ngobese-Zuma and Phakelumthakathi are filling the void.

But there is more to it than these failed media personalities. Others will profit from this crisis. At every one of Ngobese-Zuma’s March and March protests, Jacob Zuma’s MK Party is omnipresent.

Yes, Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA and the Patriotic Alliance’s Gayton McKenzie contribute to the noise, but the movers and shakers are from MK. If there is a Trojan horse that can help MK win significant support in the local government elections on November 4, it is the deepening of this immigration issue, peppered with huge dollops of Zulu ethnic mobilisation. Victimhood, the vilification of “the other”, is the name of the game.

But is MK the only supporter – and perhaps bankroller – of these marches and protests?

Spreading misinformation

International relations minister Ronald Lamola has suggested there is a hidden hand behind the marches and the wild reactions to them from politicians in Nigeria and Ghana.

These worthies have rushed to elevate social media falsehoods into fact. Ghana’s foreign ministry claimed that 15 of its citizens were hospitalised after attacks on them. No record of such an attack exists. It is the product of a fevered mind, much like US President Donald Trump’s white genocide, ongoing for years but with no fatalities.

Lamola’s assertions about a third hand are self-serving, of course. If he knows something, he must prove it. Who is running an intelligence psyop against South Africa? If there is evidence of one, Lamola must share it. Otherwise, he should keep quiet.

South Africa should be careful about misinformation and disinformation pushed through social media networks and other means.

There is much we don’t know about these anti-illegal immigration protests. Yet there is much, too, that we do know, such as the discredited populist leadership of this so-called movement. Altogether, it makes for an unedifying and highly dangerous broth.

This story first appeared in the Financial Mail. Currency and Financial Mail are part of the Financial Mail Group.

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_{Top image: A March and March anti-immigrant protest on May 20 in Durban. Picture: Darren Stewart/Gallo Images via Getty Images.}