March and March Suspends Operations as Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma Enters Talks with AfriForum for “SA First Forum”
By Mpho Tumelo Modise | Editor-in-Chief, EZA News
The March and March movement – the civil mobilisation organisation that rose to prominence over several months of sustained protest action focused on safety, governance accountability, and community rights – has formally suspended its operational activities while its leader, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, leads the group into a consultative process with other civil society organisations, including AfriForum.
The suspension was confirmed by Ngobese-Zuma on Tuesday, 18 August. “Today we do more consultations for SA First Forum… March and March work is on hold,” she said.
To understand the significance of this pivot, you need to understand what March and March built. The organisation established its credibility and its following through active street presence – the willingness to mobilise ordinary South Africans into visible, physical demonstrations of civic concern. That is the currency that civil society movements in this country live on, and it is not something that can simply be stored or banked while leadership conducts consultations. Every week that the marches do not happen is a week in which the public association between March and March and the act of civic accountability weakens slightly. In a movement, momentum is not a metaphor. It is the actual mechanism of influence.
The SA First Forum appears to be an emerging coalition framework under which different civil society groupings are seeking to coordinate advocacy strategy – the kind of coordinated structure that, if it materialises, could amplify collective impact in the run-up to the November 2026 local government elections. The inclusion of AfriForum in these consultations is the detail that has attracted the most attention. AfriForum is a well-resourced, legally sophisticated civil rights organisation with a predominantly Afrikaner constituency and a track record of effective private prosecution and litigation. It is also, for many in March and March’s core community base, an organisation whose history and political positioning makes any partnership or knowledge-sharing arrangement politically sensitive in ways that require careful navigation.
Ngobese-Zuma has defended the engagement directly. “Why are we being held to the same [standards]?” she said in response to questions about the movement’s political consistency. Her implicit argument is that a civil society movement representing a broad community of grievance can engage strategically across ideological lines without those engagements defining its fundamental identity – that learning from AfriForum’s advocacy infrastructure does not make March and March an AfriForum ally. It is a coherent position. Whether it is sufficient to maintain the trust of the communities whose participation gave March and March its energy is a question that the suspension of operations makes more urgent, not less. With 77 days to the November elections, the organisations that can convert community grievance into active civic participation will have a disproportionate impact on the outcome. March and March, right now, has chosen to pause exactly that work.
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