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MK Party MPL Siphiwe Mbatha-Moyo believes March and March founder Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma’s campaign against undocumented migrants makes her a heroine.
Speaking on the sidelines of the March and March demonstration in Durban on Tuesday ― where about 3,000 people gathered ― he attributed social ills such as drugs and human trafficking to undocumented migrants.
“The best way of protecting the country is to remove all the illegal immigrants and stabilise the economy so that you can get social cohesion. You can’t deal with those things when you have people who are undocumented.
“What Jacinta has done ― I rate her as one of the best females to come from this country ― we have people like Winnie Madikizela-Mandela who did an exceptional job during the apartheid era.
“During this dispensation where the economy is not in our possession, we have people like Jacinta who are saying before we deal with the economy let us first deal with the illegal immigrants then we can deal with our domestic issues.”
He said for this reason the political party founded by former president Jacob Zuma supported the anti-migrant sentiment.
“That is why this issue is important for the MK, for people in the legislature, for every member of society so we can live a better life,” said Mbatha-Moyo.
In response to government’s impending laws and policies to deal with immigrants, he said: “The problem with the president ... is that the ANC has been in power for more than 30 years and the problem is still here.
“People are dying on the streets, people are losing their lives because of drugs while they are still dealing with their papers, so it won’t work. The best thing is go to the streets and remove them [foreigners] forcefully.”
The demonstration in Durban got off to a sluggish start ― it was set to commence at 9am but only got under way around midday ― with about 1,000 people. But by the time they reached the end of the route near the Point police station, the crowd had grown to about 3,000 people.
There Ngobese-Zuma and Nkosikhona “Phakel’umthakathi” Ndabandaba of the Insizwa Ngobunsizwa Development Foundation addressed the gathering.
Ngobese-Zuma made several demands including calling for government to drastically enhance border management authority staff from 800 to 10,000.
She said the group will demonstrate every Thursday until all undocumented foreign nationals have left the country.
President Cyril Ramaphosa met Ndabandaba and other anti-migrant leader Ngizwe Mchunu, representing the AmaBhinca nation, on Monday, urging them to ensure the protests were peaceful.
Ndabandaba said he will reveal what was discussed at the meeting ― which Ngobese-Zuma did not attend ― on Wednesday.
He said there are attempts to sow divisions between himself and Ngobese-Zuma, but this won’t work.
While there were no reported incidents during the march, several demonstrators were arrested after they clashed with metro police when the group dispersed.
North Beach community policing forum chairperson Mahomed Essa said a group of demonstrators pushed against a metro police formation in an attempt to enter the area.
“They wanted to come into the area and a handful of them were arrested because they were asked to disperse and they pushed police.”
Imtiaz Syed, councillor and Mayville CPF chairperson, said the march was “excellent” from a security point of view.
“It wasn’t meant to be violent. This wasn’t an issue of frustration, but a cause which wasn’t theirs to fix, yet they were doing something about it because the government isn’t.”
Syed, who was on the ground, said there was an interesting and diverse mix of people.
“There was quite a number from the MKP ― about half of the crowd with other political party representatives, including the IFP and the PA, because this is an issue which affects us all.”
He said there were also opportunists in the crowd, people who started drinking early in the morning as well as vagrants who were determined to cause trouble.
Police and private security had to respond to several flare-ups involving locals who attempted to engage foreigners living in Clairwood, Mariannhill, Newlands and Pietermaritzburg.
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