March and March tells Durban crowd: don't vote ANC on November 4

March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma told supporters in Durban on Tuesday not to vote for the ANC on November 4, the first time she has put an election instruction to the movement she leads.

Speaking outside the Home Affairs office on Moore Road, she said no official from President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government had come to hear the movement’s grievances in 21 months of marching. “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.

Protesters marched in heavy rain from Moore Road towards Berea police station in Musgrave, under a heavy security presence. Police officers were seen blocking them from proceeding with the planned march to the station. The memorandum was presented at the station.

Ngobese-Zuma accused Ramaphosa of sending police officers and SANDF members to hurt her members, and said the government had gone to court to interdict the march. “We have been told that we are no longer allowed to march,” she said. She compared the treatment of marchers to the apartheid government’s handling of protest.

The Enquirer has not independently established the status of any court application against the march, and the source material does not name a court, a case number or a date.

As IOL reported on 27 October, the march was called over an alleged attack on a South African citizen by a foreign national riding a motorcycle, alongside the movement’s standing demands on delivery and e-hailing work and on immigration enforcement.

Two motorbike drivers who took part put the jobs question at the centre of it. Mlungisi Mbonambi said he and others feed their families from delivery work and that the government must ensure most South Africans benefit from it. “If you go to many stores, you will see that there are many foreign-nationals delivering on motorbikes,” he said. Zola Mkhwane said delivery jobs have been taken over by foreign nationals and that government and local businesses should prioritise local residents. His figure, that 70 percent of foreign nationals are in the motorbike business, is his own estimate. No official count of who works in the delivery sector was supplied with the story, and the Enquirer has not verified the number.

The memorandum handed over at Berea police station sets out six demands: fair employment opportunities for South Africans, regulation of the e-hailing and delivery industry, support for South African-owned small business, police accountability, effective immigration enforcement, and a call for police to investigate credible complaints of unlawful practices within its operations or contracting arrangements.

Three departments now carry the file. Home Affairs owns the immigration enforcement demand and the online asylum registration system the movement has campaigned against. Labour and the e-hailing and delivery industry fall to the department responsible for employment and to regulators, none of which the source material shows has responded to Tuesday’s memorandum. The South African Police Service owns the accountability and contracting complaints, which were handed to it in writing at Berea.

The record so far is that the movement has marched for 21 months, held a motorcade protest for e-hailing drivers on 21 October, and now says it will shut the city down on 10 November if the government proceeds with the online asylum registration system. That threat was made at the motorcade, as Sunday Tribune reported at the time. Whether the shutdown goes ahead, and what the state does about the asylum registration system before then, are the two dated questions the movement has put on the table.

What the source material does not answer: whether any court has in fact interdicted the march, whether any arrest was made on Tuesday, and what response, if any, Home Affairs, the police or the department responsible for labour has given to the memorandum. Those answers belong to the institutions named above, and the Enquirer will report them when they are on the record.