LETTER: Pandor’s dubious legacy

To throw a couple more cents into the debate around the legacy of Naledi Pandor, I hope it’s not too hyperbolic to say this is an argument less about a particular politician and more about an overall outlook on the current state of the world.

In particular, Terry Crawford-Browne’s assertion that “the era of European colonialism is collapsing” is part of an extremely worrying anti-Western trend where the obvious, undeniable evils of European colonialism have been conflated with European liberal-democracy and enlightenment values (“Pandor’s brilliant service”, June 23). Western civilisation may have its flaws, but it’s infinitely better than the anti-Western alternatives Pandor and her supporters embrace.

Anyone raised with traditional, liberal moral values would be appalled, for example, by Pandor sending her support to Hamas after the Islamist terror group invaded Israel and committed the worst massacre against Jews since the Holocaust. But from an anti-Western viewpoint, whereby anything associated with Western Europe or the US is inherently evil, Pandor becomes a hero.

Under anti-Westernism, her forsaking America or Britain for communist China, Vladimir Putin’s Russia or the Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t seen as embracing anti-liberal barbarism but, ironically, as a defiant rejection of “colonialism”. It’s only under this philosophy that a defensive war against openly genocidal radical Islamists can be called a “genocide” or that oppressive regimes such as the Islamic Republic or Hamas can be celebrated as “freedom fighters”.

Do we want SA to be a country that embraces the liberal democratic values on which it was founded in 1994, or do we want it to go the way of Iran or Russia? I would think the answer is obvious, but as long as someone like Pandor isn’t just empowered but venerated, the closer we get to falling on the wrong side of history.      

Ilan Preskovsky
Via email

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