“I Didn’t Put It the Way I Intended”: Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma Clarifies 'Zulu Universities' Remark
- Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma posted a video on social media addressing her controversial remarks about Zulu universities
- The March and March leader said she did not properly articulate her point and took full responsibility for the confusion
- Her comments came amid public debate around Akademia, an Afrikaans-medium institution planning a new Pretoria campus by 2028
PAY ATTENTION: Mark Briefly News as a preferred source, and our content will appear higher in your Google feed!
Source: Getty Images
SOUTH AFRICA -Activist and March and March movement leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma has publicly apologised after her comments about "Zulu universities" sparked widespread backlash.
In a video shared on social media, she admitted that her words did not land the way she intended and accepted full responsibility.
What did Jacinta actually mean?
Ngobese-Zuma clarified that her point was never about creating separate universities for individual tribes. Instead, she said she was drawing a parallel to AfriForum's Akademia model — an Afrikaans-medium higher education institution that has announced plans to construct a new main campus in Pretoria by 2028.
PAY ATTENTION: You can now search for all your favourite news and topics on Briefly News.
"I don't think I put it the way I intended to put it and I want to take full responsibility for it," she said in the clip. "I apologise for how the message came out."
Her argument, as she explained it, was that in the same way Afrikaans speakers can build an institution that caters to their language and culture, South Africans from other linguistic communities should similarly be able to establish universities that serve their respective languages and groups.
She attributed the resulting controversy to what she described as propaganda, suggesting her original remarks had been deliberately misrepresented or taken out of context.
The bigger picture
The clarification comes at a notable moment for the March and March movement. Ngobese-Zuma's comments surfaced during an active public conversation around Akademia and language-based education, and the timing was particularly significant given that March and March had been planning to sit down with AfriForum to explore possible areas of collaboration between the two organisations.
The apology reflects the pressure Ngobese-Zuma has faced since the remarks circulated, with critics accusing her of advocating for ethnic segregation in higher education — a reading she has firmly rejected.
Zwelinzima Vavi slams Jacinta over comments
Briefly News reported that South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi came out strongly against proposals to establish ethnicity-based universities in South Africa, calling the idea a threat to national unity. Vavi argued that public universities are national institutions, built to serve all South Africans regardless of their language, ethnicity, or home province. He cautioned that proposals for single-language or ethnically defined institutions amount to an attempt to fragment the country into separate political and territorial enclaves drawn along linguistic boundaries.
PAY ATTENTION: Follow Briefly News on Twitter and never miss the hottest topics! Find us at @brieflyza!
Source: Briefly News
