Министр образования Надели Пандор призвала ЮАР к стратегическому единству перед лицом расколов

Transcript of extracted remarks of Dr. Naledi Pandor in her interview with Mbuyiseni Ndlozi on the African Renaissance Podcast, 10 August 2026 Pandor: [F]or me, the most distressing [thing] has been a lack of understanding of the kind of society we want to build. We’re not going back to being an African or white dominated country. We want a country where everyone can live, where each person’s rights are respected and where we build and strengthen the notion of community. I think some people, when they’re facing difficulty, they resort to a kind of racial notion of South Africa. And that one, those arguments, which I heard sometimes, I just found ridiculous. And they indicated to me that these people had not really understood why we struggled for freedom and the kind of country. Ndlozi: A lot of the, suddenly in some of these sections of the white intellectuals of, I would say, conservative institutions have a concept that they marshal these days that we are facing the possibility of a complete, a future completely subdued to enclaves in South Africa. And they say the union might not hold. You know, that this is, there were only two entities that really could hold South Africa together as a union, apartheid and the ANC. And the weakening of the ANC has revived this question of South Africa might fall apart held by a very lean state into enclaves, some of which are poverty stricken, some of which live in the first world, richness and poverty. And you do a lot of work over Madiba’s legacy. And it seems to me that is to say the thread of Mandela’s project from 1994 faces the most, the biggest test ever in relation to the questions of a united, democratic, non-racial South Africa. How do you rate the union at this moment? Would you agree with these assessments? If not, threats that face South Africa, unemployment, poverty, but people think we are now in ethnicism, we are now in the true demons that shield the real issues. Would you agree with that assessment? And what would be the role of keeping the legacy, fighting back in the form of the foundation look like? Pandor: I think conservative liberals have a negative view of the ability of Africans to manage democracy. And so they constantly have this practise of raising a bogeyman image to illustrate that we can’t succeed in a vibrant democracy being sustained by us as Africans. So they’ve got to push these notions because their idea of black people is that we are tribal and so we must always be divided, that we cannot manage development and so we must not have infrastructure and other things, that we are unable to manage an economy and so they won’t invest their capital which they hold and have acquired illicitly through colonialism and imperial dominance. So these ideas are associated with conservative liberalism. And as black people, we should not be surprised. Our task as black people, however, is not to constantly be captured in trying to persuade white people that we’ve got brains, that we have capability and so on. Our task is reconstruction and development. And that’s what we should be focused upon. We should make sure we address our inadequacies ourselves and do so properly. And we should be wary of this propensity to reify the worst images of being an African. There’s a lot that’s at fault with us but much of it has to do with the white perspective, the conservative liberal view of what an African is. And unfortunately, we fall into the trap all the time. There’s a lot of money out there devoted to particular imagery of Africans, brilliant use of propaganda, brilliant use of creating a notion that we’re incapable. Look for a moment at the entertainment industry and cite for me, because I know as young people, you are the ones who watch these Showmax and Netflix, cite how many of those films or series you watch show you a truly successful family that pursues education. That’s not a drunkard. That’s not a womaniser. That’s not tribalist. So you’re watching it. That’s not, you know, some of it, but not a lot. And I think we allow others to create a particular image of ourselves and we fall into the trap. So I think the ideal of Mr. Mandela and other leaders was that we will work hard at building a different South African. And we’re going to do it ourselves on our terms, in the interest of our people. Our people are not foolish. You know, you think you’re going to go to Cape Town and divide Western Cape and the majority who are African are going to accept that. It’s not going to happen. Ndlozi: It won’t be accepted. I saw this campaign thing you’re speaking about, the scaling numbers that came from some of the media reports about AfriForum’s finances and how they spent hundreds of million rands in campaigns. And we know that the key of those campaigns recently has been to portray South Africa as engaged in this slaughter of white people, which has resulted in this American response to us. I’ve had a little privilege of being outside the country in people who don’t speak our language. The biggest identity when you say you’re from South Africa that comes immediately is Madiba. So genocide is not apartheid anymore. Apparently in the past, the biggest thing associated with South Africa was the term apartheid, is Nelson Mandela. And it seems to me the campaign would have been to invest in a complete destroying of that image of this peace man, the man that could build peace at the face of an animalistic war, of rejection, of bestiality, could come in and reconstruct a society of peace. And AfriForum has spent millions, hundreds of millions of rands invested in the destruction of the image of South Africa. Does the Nelson Mandela Foundation for instance, can you match these budgets? Pandor: No, we can’t. I mean, they withdrawn the minute you mentioned Palestine. We lost a lot of funding and I warned the foundation not to have me as chair because I expected the reaction that we have had. UCT passed a resolution on Gaza supporting that Zionists were acting in an apartheid fashion and intent on genocide. They lost over 250 million rands in donor funding in a very short space of time. So you’re dealing with very powerful forces and we shouldn’t neglect the danger that confronts us. You know, the fact that a university [Akademia] that intends to be Afrikaans medium is being built and is receiving hundreds of millions of rands or billionaires is just something, you know, and the only person who comments, Jonathan Jansen. The rest of us were quiet. We’re too complacent with our freedom. And it’s a huge undertaking because what we are battling is centuries of racism and colonialism and people who’ve had control don’t let go easily. You know, so what they do, they find other ways. So they’ll get, you know, entrepreneurs who become their tools who work against you, but you think they’re working for what you aspire toward. So we also need to have regard that we’re not just in a democratic South Africa. We are in a process of building a fundamentally different and durable progressive democracy. And if we understand that, then AfriForum won’t have currency. But because we have no answer, we’re too casual. You know, we just take things for granted. And I am afraid sometimes at the lackadaisical response that we have to conservative liberalism. And I really think we need to have a conversation about building organisations which are political, but which understand history and which when they develop a response, understand that it needs to be strategic. It can’t just be ordinary because we’re not just in an ordinary world. We’re in very difficult and dangerous circumstances. And we have a lot that makes us a desirable object. So this and the ability to act decisively and strategically are absolutely necessary. And I’m not sure with the crop of leaders we’ve got at the moment that we understand these things. Source: