The ANC Veterans League has called for decisive action against March and March, accusing the movement of fuelling vigilantism and attacks on foreign nationals following violent clashes outside a Durban Home Affairs office.
The organisation says the clashes on Thursday, 3 September, broke out after about 100 March and March supporters attempted what they called a “clean-up campaign” against foreign nationals camping outside the Home Affairs office on Che Guevara Road.
According to the Veterans League, the migrants had fled anti-immigrant tensions in their communities and were seeking refuge outside the government office.
In a strongly worded statement issued on Friday, the Veterans League said the conduct and language associated with March and March were increasingly dangerous.
“The language and conduct of March and March evoke the dangerous logic of ethnic cleansing,” the organisation said.
“Such words and deeds have no place in South Africa.”
The Veterans League said the movement’s actions were fundamentally at odds with South Africa’s constitutional values, including non-racialism, human dignity and the rule of law.
The organisation said reports from Thursday’s confrontation included alleged attacks on monitors, followed by the use of rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray.
It praised monitors and activists who were allegedly attacked and said the violence could have been avoided through more proactive intervention by government and law enforcement agencies.
The Veterans League also took aim at law enforcement, accusing authorities of failing to act decisively against March and March.
It alleged that the movement had been allowed to gather and march in eThekwini and other parts of the country without permission, while committing what it described as violent attacks against foreign nationals.
“Left unchecked, what March and March are doing to foreign nationals, they are starting to do to other South Africans on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality or identity, as they feel,” the organisation warned.
The Veterans League further accused March and March of seeking alliances with groups it described as “ethnic chauvinists and racist players such as AfriForum”.
Its warning comes against the backdrop of growing concerns about xenophobia and racism.
The organisation cited concerns reportedly raised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination over a surge in xenophobia and racist hate crimes against migrants in South Africa.
For the ANC Veterans League, the international warning was particularly damning, given the ANC’s longstanding emphasis on non-racialism and unity.
‘No one has the right to take the law into their own hands’
The Veterans League wants law enforcement agencies to step up visible preventative policing while ensuring that police do not appear to take sides.
It is also demanding proper investigations and prosecutions in cases involving killings, looting and unlawful evictions.
The organisation wants authorities to stop unlawful identity checks and raids on homes and businesses and to take action against organisers, including where hate speech is alleged.
“No individual, organisation or political movement has the right to take the law into their own hands,” it said.
The Veterans League has also urged ANC members to support efforts to integrate documented foreign nationals into communities and protect them from what it describes as opportunistic vigilante groups.
It said the ultimate goal should be to ensure that foreign nationals in eThekwini and elsewhere no longer feel compelled to camp outside Home Affairs offices because they fear returning to their communities.
