The middle class is not one thing. It is not a single, neat bloc that thinks, votes or acts in the same way. It is fractured, uneven and easily divided, writes Sandile Memela.
That matters because some accuse us of using “middle class” as an insult, an excuse or a way to silence people. But we also know that, for many, having a bond, a car and medical aid can make them soft, silent and self-serving.
It should not. But often, it does.
Enjoying middle-class benefits does not disqualify you from being a genuine and committed activist. Comfort is not a crime. Privilege is not necessarily proof of betrayal.
History may judge you by your payslip, your suburb or the car in your driveway. You can even fly first class if you wish. But life will judge you by what you do here and now — not by what you say or the privileges you happen to enjoy.
You can live in a complex with a security gate and still show up to march. You can have medical aid and still fight for a public healthcare system that works for everyone. You can send your children to a decent school and still demand that every child receives the same opportunity.
It is not a contradiction to be middle class and radical. Some of the people who shook the foundations of unjust systems came from the very class those systems were designed to protect. They chose to turn against the machine that fed them.
So why does it so often feel like a contradiction?
Because the middle class tends towards conservatism. It can become reactionary — and for understandable reasons.
Black South Africans still do not own the economy. A person can lose their so-called middle-class status within 100 days of losing their job.
When you have just enough to lose, you become cautious. You have a mortgage, a job with benefits and a child in Grade 10. You have climbed one or two rungs and do not want the ladder kicked away beneath you.
That makes people cling to the status quo, preserving neo-colonialism of a special kind. Not always out of cruelty, but often out of fear and self-preservation.
Fear of falling. Fear of instability. Fear that change will cost you everything you have worked for. Fear of being forced back into the township.
That fear is selfish, yes. But it is also human. If activists fail to understand it, they will continue preaching to an empty room.
The real test is not whether you enjoy middle-class comforts or have white neighbours. The test is what you do with what you have.
Do you use your access to open doors for others, or pull them shut behind you? Do you use your education to question power or defend it? Do you speak when it is risky, or only when it is safe and on-brand?
You can be comfortable and still pose a threat to an unjust system — but only if you are willing to risk that comfort.
That is the dividing line. Not income. Not postcode. Action.
What have you done in the face of injustice and inequality?
Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and March and March: When comfort chooses conscience
This is where the abstract becomes real.
Look at Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, leader of March and March. By every outward measure, she is middle class. She has the education, networks and lifestyle that millions of South Africans do not enjoy.
She could have done what millions of others do: keep her head down, protect her position and turn a blind eye.
In an unjust and unequal society, that is the easiest option. Keep the privilege. Do not make noise. Do not get called names. Do not lose contracts, friends or invitations.
She chose differently.
She broke from the so-called middle-class ranks and chose to stand with those who believe they have been abandoned. As the face of March and March, she has put her name, time and reputation on the line to confront one of the most volatile issues in South Africa today: illegal immigration and the collapse of law enforcement, public services and employment opportunities in poor communities.
It is not a popular position in boardrooms or among the economic establishment. It is not a safe position on social media. It comes at a cost, but she took it anyway.
That is the point.
You cannot say that middle-class people never take such risks, because here is one who did. She used the access and voice provided by her class position not simply to protect the gate, but to ask whom the gate is protecting while the country continues to bleed.
March and March is not a charity walk. It is a confrontation. Its message is clear: if the state refuses to enforce its laws, while hospitals collapse, schools become overwhelmed and jobs disappear, citizens must march — repeatedly, if necessary — until someone listens.
The backlash was immediate. Ngobese-Zuma was called xenophobic, populist and divisive. People were quick to ask who funds her.
That is what happens when you touch a live wire.
But notice what she did not do. She did not retreat into comfort. She did not release a statement and disappear. She kept marching.
That is what makes the middle-class radical not a contradiction, but a choice.
South Africa: A melting pot that has not melted
To understand why her choice matters, you must understand the country in which she is marching.
South Africa is complex and chaotic. More than 30 years into democracy, we remain a society struggling to define its vision and values around economic justice and equality.
We are a melting pot that has not melted.
We have 12 official languages, nine provinces, two economies and borders that are crossed every day. We have a Constitution that promises dignity for all and a lived reality in which dignity is rationed according to postcode.
Here is the hard truth that few want to voice in polite company: there is enough in this country for black and white alike. There is enough land, mineral wealth, expertise and money in circulation.
The problem is not simply scarcity. It is distribution, governance, selfishness and greed.
For too long, the benefits have flowed to a white minority and a select black cohort that learned to speak the language of BEE and transformation while turning its back on the suffering black majority.
Tenders, BEE deals, board positions and television appearances. The ladder was pulled up behind them.
In that vacuum, poor South Africans in townships and informal settlements have watched public services collapse: clinics without medicine, schools with 60 pupils in a classroom and social grants that do not stretch far enough.
At the same time, they see undocumented migrants accessing the same broken system, often with nothing to lose and everything to gain.
That anger cannot simply be dismissed as hatred. It is also about survival, scarcity and the belief that the state has abandoned its own citizens. It is dishonest to pretend otherwise.
This is the terrain that March and March entered — not merely with slogans, but with feet on the ground.
Why the middle class recoils
Many middle-class South Africans will read about Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and feel two things at once: admiration and discomfort.
Admiration because she said what some whisper around the braai. Discomfort because she said it publicly, carrying a banner and standing before the cameras.
That discomfort reveals the middle-class default: stability over justice.
If you work in human resources, finance or government, you may have been trained not to “make things political”. If you run a business, you may have been trained not to offend clients. If you have children, you may have been taught not to risk what you have built.
So you post, sigh, vote and return to protecting what is yours.
There is nothing inherently evil about that. But it is not leadership, and it does not produce change.
Ngobese-Zuma’s choice exposes that default. She is saying that you can own the house and still have a spine. You can have medical aid and still fight for the clinic. You can send your children to private school and still demand that public schools work.
That is radical, not because it is extreme, but because it rejects the unspoken bargain: “I will remain quiet as long as you let me keep my comforts.”
The merit and limits of this activism
Is March and March the final answer to South Africa’s problems? No.
No march is.
Its merit lies in breaking the silence and forcing a conversation that the political and comfortable classes would rather avoid.
It demonstrates that you do not have to be poor to care about poverty. You do not have to be unemployed to care about jobs. You do not have to be standing in a Home Affairs queue to care about borders.
Its limitation, like that of all activism, lies in what follows the march.
Marching must become organising. Anger must be transformed into policy proposals. Noise must become sustained pressure that produces law enforcement, improved service delivery and accountability.
But you cannot reach the second step without taking the first. The first step is someone with something to lose standing up and saying: “This is wrong.”
The question facing all of us
Let us return to the beginning.
You are not a sellout or a fraud simply because you enjoy benefits. You become a fraud when you use all your energy to protect those benefits while your neighbour’s child drinks brown water.
South Africa does not need more frightened middle-class sellouts. It needs more middle-class people willing to be brave.
Brave enough to admit that inequality is not only about race, but also about class betrayal within racial groups.
Brave enough to say that “transformation” means nothing while the black majority remains at the bottom.
Brave enough to say that law matters, borders matter and compassion without order can descend into chaos.
Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma could have remained silent. Millions did. She chose not to.
The question is simple, and it applies to all of us — rich, poor or somewhere in between:
What did you do when you had something to lose?
History will not ask what car you drove. It will ask whose side you were on when South Africa was deciding what kind of country it wanted to become.
When that moment comes, the middle class must choose between the comfort of the status quo and the discomfort of justice.
Defaults can be overridden. Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma did exactly that.