South Africa’s Afrophobia Leader Claims Imminent Arrest Days After Report Exposes Her Government Contracts

Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma’s movement claimed this week that she and her husband face imminent arrest. Police and the National Prosecuting Authority say that isn’t true.

The Claim Came From the Movement Itself

March and March spokesperson Sandile Dube said in an Oct. 14 statement that a warrant had been issued for Ngobese-Zuma and her husband, Xolani Zuma, the SA First Forum’s acting CEO, and that the pair could be arrested by Oct. 16.

The movement called the timing, three weeks before the Nov. 4 local elections, political interference, and claimed prison beds had already been prepared to detain its leaders.

Xolani Zuma told Daily Sun he and his wife had “been advised” of a possible warrant but said they were still trying to confirm it, and he urged members to stay calm.

Police and the NPA Say There’s No Case on Record

The NPA’s Kaizer Kganyago said on Oct. 15 the authority “wishes to categorically deny that any warrant of arrest was issued,” and added that it takes no instructions from political parties or public officials.

KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Robert Netshiunda said police have no trace of any case registered against either Ngobese-Zuma or her husband and called the claims baseless.

Netshiunda said anyone who believes a warrant exists should contact police directly to verify it, rather than leaving the public to speculate.

Ngobese-Zuma denied her movement was responsible for spreading the claim, saying members had been told not to associate themselves with criminal activity.

Before March and March, She Trained in Spotting Disinformation

Two years before founding the movement, Ngobese-Zuma was still a Vuma FM radio presenter when the University of KwaZulu-Natal nominated her for the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program.

She traveled to the US in September 2023 for the three-week program, officially titled “Media Responsibility in an Age of AI Disinformation.”

Prior iterations of the same program, run for journalists from dozens of countries, have included visits to fact-checking organizations and briefings on identifying state-sponsored disinformation, media ownership transparency and protections for journalists.

She completed her education entirely in South Africa; she studied supply chain management at UKZN and is currently a law student.

The Claim Follows Days After a Report on Her Own Government Ties

Three days before the arrest claim, a News24 investigation found Ngobese-Zuma and her husband had received close to R12 million through government contracts since 2021, through a company registered less than a year before its biggest tender.

The couple’s company, XJ Family Enterprise, holds a three-year contract with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Rural Development for “farmer support and development,” and Xolani Zuma’s law firm has separately received more than R1 million in legal-services payments from a provincial department, News24 found.

The story’s substance was less about wrongdoing than hypocrisy: Ngobese-Zuma has spent the past year campaigning against the same government whose contracts have enriched her family.

The timing raises the possibility that the arrest claim was an attempt to shift attention away from that story, replacing a question about her own finances with a claim that she was the one under threat.

Ngobese-Zuma responded to the contracts story by posting the reporter’s phone number on Facebook, which the South African National Editors’ Forum condemned as doxxing after the journalist received more than 100 threatening messages.

News24 has since served her over the matter.

Unrelated to this week’s claims, police confirmed they opened a separate case against Ngobese-Zuma in January over an incident at a school, which she has denied, and said she presented herself voluntarily at Point police station afterward.

A Documented Pattern of Unverified Claims

This week’s claims fit a longer record.

A GroundUp fact-check in June found no evidence for Ngobese-Zuma’s claim that immigrants are disproportionately criminals, and noted South Africa’s foreign-born population is about 5%, not the far higher figures she has cited.

News24 found in August that her claims crediting March and March’s protests with freeing school places, cutting healthcare costs and lowering crime were either false or unsupported, including a crime-reduction statistic that predated the protests entirely.

Africa Check, reviewing five years of SAPS data, found undocumented immigrants made up just over 2% of people convicted of crimes nationally, far below their share of the population.

Stats SA and OECD research cited by Smile 90.4FM found no evidence immigrants drive unemployment, and found immigrant households contribute hundreds of billions of rand to the economy, not “nothing,” as claimed.

The Department of Basic Education has separately said foreign learners make up only 1.8% of students nationally, contradicting claims that they strain the school system.

The Pattern Points to a Movement Losing Its Grip on the Narrative

Twice in one week, Ngobese-Zuma’s movement has put out claims that she faces imminent arrest, that journalists are lying about her contracts, that have been directly contradicted by the institutions she named.

The NPA’s pointed response, that vague arrest claims should come with an actual charge, reads as a rebuke of a movement that has repeatedly announced crises without matching documentation.

That timing question sits alongside March and March’s thinning marches since September and its public split with Women for Change over the movement’s gender-based violence rebrand, each one a moment where the movement’s own claims outran what was independently verifiable.

Whether the Nov. 4 election becomes the next test of that gap, or whether Ngobese-Zuma’s base simply doesn’t require one, remains open.