Commissars, Fighters, comrades, fellow South Africans, dear brothers and sisters,
This morning, 30th of June, as the so-called March and March protests are supposed to unfold across our country, I insist with every fibre of my being: these marches are a dangerous diversion from the real issues that we need to fight! Today should simply be an ordinary working day — a day dedicated to production, organisation, and the hard work of building our beloved country. It must not be hijacked by forces seeking to turn South Africans against our fellow African brothers and sisters through Afrophobia, xenophobia, and wanton violence.
I, Carl Niehaus — MK veteran who joined the underground struggle in 1980, political prisoner, former national spokesperson of the ANC when it was still a national liberation movement and had not sold out, and later Ambassador to the Netherlands under President Mandela, and now EFF Member of Parliament — have seen this deadly script before. In 1992, I stood with President Nelson Mandela in Boipatong after the massacre. What unfolded there was not spontaneous “Black-on-Black violence.” It was the deliberate, calculated work of the apartheid regime’s “third force” — securocrats, Vlakplaas operatives like Eugene de Kock, and their collaborators who supplied arms, intelligence, and provocation to fracture the oppressed, derail negotiations, and preserve white minority rule.
Today, the same sinister pattern stares us in the face. Only now the strings are pulled by a more sophisticated alliance: Western intelligence networks, Zionist financiers furious at South Africa’s principled stand at the International Court of Justice on Palestine, and local proxies operating along Afrophobic and ethnic fault lines. This is hybrid warfare updated for the multipolar era — the third force reborn. March and March, led by figures like Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, cloaks itself in the language of patriotism and border security. Its rhetoric, however, is unmistakably Afrophobic: fellow Africans from Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia and elsewhere are dehumanised as “rats who breed uncontrollably,” drug dealers, and cartel mafias controlling spaza shops. Selective hatred spares European or American expats while targeting Black brothers and sisters. This is not organic popular anger. It is a colonial strategy designed to keep the oppressed divided, to punish a nation that dares to stand with the oppressed, and to fracture African unity. That as Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma recently warned, South Africa cannot exist and prosper isolated from the rest of the African continent. Our only future is a future in a united Africa.
NO TO AFROPHOBIA. NO TO XENOPHOBIA. NO TO DIVISION. A LUTA CONTINUA!
Our struggle is not against our African brothers and sisters fleeing poverty, war, or instability created by the very global forces that oppressed us for centuries. No African is a foreigner in his or her own continent! These protests distract from the real crises that demand our urgent attention: the Phala Phala scandal and ongoing ANC corruption; the criminal neglect and decay of our SANDF and the plight of military veterans; the failure to expropriate land without compensation; the persistent grip of white monopoly capital on our economy; and the deep structural problems of unemployment, inequality, and service delivery failures that no amount of scapegoating can solve.
Afrophobia is not a natural sentiment — it is a social construct and a weapon of power that diverts attention from neoliberal structural inequalities, shields elite interests, and obscures the unfinished tasks of decolonisation and Radical Economic Transformation. The very invocation of “xenophobia” or “Afrophobia” by certain voices functions to erase the real governance failures — including the corruption and incompetence at the Department of Home Affairs and the failures of our intelligence and security apparatus — while protecting those who benefit from keeping our people divided.
I have also exposed the smoking gun of external involvement, the political and ideological grooming of key figures such as Jacinta Ngobese Zuma in these movements, through programs like the United States International Visitor Leadership Program. This is not conspiracy — it is documented pattern. Just as the apartheid third force was engineered from above, today’s version draws on foreign networks and funding trails that must be exposed without fear or favour. Those who stoke Afrophobia while claiming patriotism are playing a reactionary game that serves imperialism, not the people.
To the youth, the workers, the unemployed, and all genuine Fighters: Do not participate in these divisive, Afrophobic marches. Do not indulge in violence or illegal activity against our fellow African brothers and sisters. Reject hate. Organise peacefully and channel your righteous anger into the real struggle. Today must be an ordinary working day — a day of building, producing, and advancing solutions. Our beloved country and our continent face profound challenges: from climate change and underdevelopment to the need for genuine industrialisation, land reform, and sovereign control over our resources. These require Pan-African solidarity, BRICS cooperation, and Radical Economic Transformation — not mob violence that plays into the hands of our historical enemies.
As a loyal member of the EFF, today, on this ordinary working day, I will dedicate my time to registering new voters to vote for the EFF in the local government elections on the 4th of November this year. To address our deeply seated economic problems, the restitution of land without compensation and to work tirelessly for economic freedom in our lifetime. To work tirelessly to achieve our generational mission for economic freedom in our lifetime.
To the government: Act decisively to prevent violence, hold accountable those who incite it, and address the root causes through orderly, humane, and sovereign management of our borders and documentation. Strengthen institutions rather than betraying the people through corruption and with empty so-called GNU promises. Expose and dismantle the networks, local and foreign, that seek to resurrect division.
We defeated the third force in the early 1990s through unity and revolutionary resolve. We can — and must — defeat this new manifestation the same way. Every true South African, every Pan-Africanist, every revolutionary committed to the ideals of the liberation struggle and the EFF’s fighting programme must stand up against this hate movement tooth and nail. Expose its lies. Challenge it in Parliament, on the streets, and in our communities. Mobilise our people in unbreakable unity.
Revolutionary love demands that we stand together. Let 30 June not become another chapter of self-destruction and division, but a moment where we reaffirm our collective resolve against the true enemies of the people — white monopoly capital, corruption, imperialism, and all who seek to keep us fragmented.
VOETSEK MARCH & MARCH! VOETSEK ALL RACIST AND AFROPHOBIC DIVIDERS!
NO TO AFROPHOBIA. NO TO XENOPHOBIA. NO TO DIVISION. A LUTA CONTINUA!
FORWARD TO ECONOMIC FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME!
A LUTA CONTINUA!
MPANGAZITHA
* Ambassador Carl Niehaus, EFF Member of Parliament.
* The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL.
