The two political opposites have joined in a marriage of convenience where AfriForum is looking for a domestic image upgrade while March and March gets to learn valuable lessons in how to legitimise and normalise anti-black discrimination.

Last week, two organisations that look like political opposites sat down together for a photoshoot and announced a strategic alliance. AfriForum, South Africa's premier Afrikaner rights lobby, and the anti-immigrant movement March and March officially resolved to work together on border control, crime, "illegal migration" and the rule of law. After the latter's Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma "suspended" ubuntu earlier this year, it's now supposedly back on as the two organisations join forces.

As a white minority rights group and a black-led xenophobic group, they know they look like an odd couple. Both organisations are at pains to counter this perception, emphasising how much "common ground" they have beyond "differences on specific matters". This is technically correct, but not in the way that Afriforum's Kallie Kriel and Ngobese-Zuma present it to the South African public. Their supposed commitment to South Africa and joint condemnation of "illegal immigration" obscures what both of their efforts essentially amount to: preserving the racial order built by apartheid to serve only the people at the top of it. In doing so, both organisations deliberately weaponise nationalism with all the inherent dangers that this presents to a constitutional democracy.

Different politics, same outcome

To understand this...