In South Africa, it is referred to as the “Third Force.” It’s a way to describe the mysterious external actors supposedly moving to destabilize the country by stirring up protests, strikes, and other forms of resistance. The term itself dates back to a very real conspiracy: the covert support of the apartheid government and the shadowy factions of security forces for the Inkatha Freedom Party’s campaign of violence against African National Congress–aligned forces and unions in the late 1980s and early ’90s. This campaign, which is perhaps best thought of as akin to the Contras in the Central American dirty war, led to thirty thousand deaths and nearly plunged the country into a full-scale civil war.

Today the term “Third Force” is usually used to delegitimize those who criticize the African National Congress (ANC) government. “There definitely is a Third Force,” said S’bu Zikode, leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the country’s largest social movement, in response to such accusations. “The Third Force is all the pain and the suffering that the poor are subjected to every second in our lives.”

Tarnishing “unapproved” dissent has real-world consequences for activists like Zikode. Since its foundation in 2005, more than twenty of Abahlali baseMjondolo’s leaders have been assassinated. The same “Third Force” idea was used to justify the 2012 massacre of striking mineworkers in Marikana. Moreover, the Third Force idea is no longer limited to the ANC — opposition parties such as the center-right Democratic Alliance also deploy the term on occasion, albeit in a slightly different fashion, to allege that social movements or community protests in the Western Cape, the province they govern, are led by covert ANC leaders trying to destabilize their rule.