21 months of marching, then Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma tells Durban: vote out the ANC

Delivery drivers who say the motorbike work that feeds their families has been taken over by foreign nationals marched through heavy rain in Durban on Tuesday, from the Home Affairs office on Moore Road to Berea Police station in Musgrave, to hand over a memorandum the government has not answered in 21 months of campaigning.

At the front of them was March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, who told supporters outside Home Affairs that she had never before told anyone how to vote, and that this time she would.

“I had never said you must not vote for the ANC before, but today I am telling you not to vote for the ANC on November 4,” she said. “No official from Ramaphosa’s government had come to hear our grievances.”

The grievances are not abstract. They are written into the memorandum presented at Berea Police station: fair employment opportunities for South Africans, regulation of the e-hailing and delivery industry, support for South African owned small business, police accountability, and effective immigration enforcement. The memorandum also calls on police to investigate credible complaints of unlawful practices within its own operations or contracting arrangements.

Motorbike driver Mlungisi Mbonambi put the case in the plainest terms available to a man who earns his living on a bike. “We are taking care of ourselves and feeding our families from this job,” he said. “The government needs to ensure that most South Africans benefit from this job. If you go to many stores, you will see that there are many foreign-nationals delivering on motorbikes.”

A second driver, Zola Mkhwane, went further on the scale. “Our delivery jobs have been taken over by the foreign-nationals,” he said. “It is a fact that 70 percent of foreign-nationals are in this motorbike business. We cannot live like this in our country. Government and local businesses need to prioritise local residents when it comes to job opportunities.”

That 70 percent is Mkhwane’s own estimate, given at a protest and not a figure this paper can verify from the record. What is not in dispute is the demand it carries: that stores and platforms hiring delivery riders should hire South Africans first, and that the state should regulate an e-hailing and delivery sector that has grown faster than the rules around it.

This is the load that March and March has been carrying since long before this week. It is the same demand the movement took to the streets in a motorcade of e-hailing drivers on October 21, organised to pressure the government on immigration enforcement and local labour prioritisation. It is the same demand that produced Tuesday’s march. And it is the reason Ngobese-Zuma’s warning of a full city shutdown on November 10, should the government proceed with the online asylum registration system, is not a threat pulled from nowhere but the next step in a campaign that has been refused a hearing.

Ngobese-Zuma did not confine herself to the ballot. She accused the state of turning its security apparatus on the people it is meant to protect. “All the police officers and members of SANDF are not here to protect you but to hurt you,” she said. “They are being sent by Ramaphosa to shoot you.”

She said the government had gone to court to stop the march. “As we speak, Ramaphosa’s government went to court to interdict you from marching,” she said. “We have been told that we are no longer allowed to march. Ramaphosa has stripped us a constitutional right to march.”

Police officers were seen blocking protesters from proceeding with their planned march to the station, and the march took place under a heavy security presence. The movement’s account of that morning is that a community with a memorandum and a 21 month record of asking politely was met with a court application and a line of officers.

Ngobese-Zuma drew the comparison herself. “Ramaphosa is doing the same thing that was done by the Apartheid government,” she said. “Ramaphosa has directed the police to arrest the people marching, which was done by the apartheid regime.”

That is her characterisation of the state’s conduct, and it is reported here as hers. What the record shows plainly is simpler and harder to argue with: a movement that has marched for 21 months, that says the President has never come out to hear its issues, and that on Tuesday walked through heavy rain to hand over a piece of paper listing what it wants.

The Sunday Tribune reported on October 27 that Ngobese-Zuma had called on March and March supporters to reject the ANC, and this paper credits that report for the quotations above.

What that report does not carry is the thing a South African reader needs in order to understand why the march happened at all. The queue at Home Affairs is not a metaphor. The delivery bike is not a metaphor. The man on it is feeding a family, and he says the work has been taken from him while the state looked away, and then, when he marched, the state went to court. A movement that reaches for the ballot after 21 months of being ignored is not a movement that has run out of patience for no reason. It is a movement that has tried everything else first.

The Enquirer will keep asking the enforcement questions the memorandum puts to the state: who is allowed to work the delivery routes, what the regulation of e-hailing and delivery will actually say, and whether the government intends to answer a memorandum handed over in the rain or wait for November 10 to find out what a shutdown costs the city.