South Africa: Foreigners First, NGOs Next - the Buried Demand Inside a Viral Constitutional Campaign

South Africans for Constitutional Reform has presented itself as a campaign to put citizens ahead of foreigners - but one of its most significant aims may be a little-noticed demand for state oversight of NGOs.

Princy Mthombeni has sold South Africans a campaign about foreigners.

In an interview on eNCA that Mthombeni posted to her TikTok account on 30 May 2026, she was asked to explain the main proposals of South Africans for Constitutional Reform (SACR), the group she co-founded and chairs.

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Mthombeni produced a list which is familiar in South Africa's current anti-immigrant climate, including changing the Constitution's preamble to specify that South Africa belongs to "its citizens", restricting foreigners' access to "free healthcare, free education, social grants," and reserving "mineral resources to benefit South African citizens".

That pitch has fallen on fertile ground and made SACR the most successful citizens-first online constitutional campaign of the past year.

The group gathered more than 30,000 signatures from a petition initially launched in May 2025. Just over a year later, it raised more than half a million rands in only two weeks to take Parliament to court for a perceived failure to consider its constitutional submissions.

But 12 days after the eNCA interview, Mthombeni gave a quite different reason for entering the fight to rewrite South Africa's Constitution.

Asked by popular YouTuber Penuel Mlotshwa why she had taken up the cause,...