‘Keep Your People in Your Countries’: Jacinta Ngobese Zuma Challenges SADC Leaders

• March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese Zuma led a protest at the SADC Summit in Durban to hand over a memorandum on undocumented immigrants
• Jacinta said South Africa cannot afford to carry the burden of the rest of the continent while the country is falling apart
• She called on SADC leaders to move past the xenophobia label and address why people are flooding into South Africa

SOUTH AFRICA - March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese Zuma has called on SADC leaders to have an honest conversation about undocumented immigration into South Africa. She made the remarks during a protest held at the SADC Summit in Durban, where her group gathered to hand over a memorandum urging heads of state to place the issue of undocumented immigrants firmly on the agenda.

Jacinta was direct in her message to neighbouring countries.

"If they want to protect their people from the so-called xenophobia that they are talking about, they must keep their people in their countries," she said.

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March and March tells SADC leaders to take undocumented nationals home during Durban protest

SA cannot carry the continent alone

The protest leader argued that South Africa is a country under strain, and that the ongoing influx of undocumented migrants is making a difficult situation worse.

"We don't have enough resources to take care of everywhere, but we find ourselves having to carry the burden of all of Africa," she said.

"It's really unfair."

Jacinta said the country's future depends on South Africans being able to build with what they have available. In her view, that is only possible once the country addresses the root causes driving people across its borders.

Time for a real conversation

Rather than allowing the debate to remain stuck on accusations of xenophobia, Jacinta argued that the more important question is why so many people are leaving their home countries for South Africa in the first place. She said it is time for that real conversation to take place at the highest levels of regional leadership, and that the SADC Summit was the right platform to raise it.

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The group's decision to target the summit was deliberate, aimed at getting the issue in front of the leaders who, in their view, have the power to address it at the source.

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3 Briefly News articles on Jacinta and illegal immigration

• March and March founder Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma appeared on Sky News Australia to speak about South Africa's immigration crisis.
• On 7 July 2026, March and March founder and leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma posted on her social media pages and called for an anti-illegal immigration march on Thursday, 9 July.
• Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma fired shots at President Ramaphosa’s advisors over the president's five point plan on migration

Source: Briefly News