South Africa stands at a dangerous crossroads. More than three decades after the end of apartheid, we remain a nation carrying profound historical wounds while still struggling to realise the promise of liberation.
Poverty, inequality, unemployment and spatial injustice continue to define daily life for millions.
Yet instead of confronting these enduring structural failures, our public discourse is increasingly being captured by imported narratives of division that encourage us to turn against one another rather than towards the systems that continue to produce inequality.
Campaigns against migrants, LGBTQIA+ people, women’s reproductive rights and other vulnerable communities are becoming more visible in our political, religious and social spaces.
While often presented as authentic expressions of African values or local concerns, many of these movements are deeply embedded within transnational political and religious networks originating largely in Western countries experiencing a marked resurgence of authoritarian nationalism, democratic backsliding and exclusionary politics.
South Africans should pause and ask who benefits when our fragile democracy becomes consumed by internal conflict over manufactured cultural enemies.
It is certainly not the unemployed worker, the struggling family, the small business owner or the young graduate searching for opportunity.
Rather, societies consumed by internal suspicion become less capable of organising around shared economic justice, democratic accountability and national development.
History repeatedly demonstrates that divided societies are easier to manipulate than united ones.
This should concern us because South Africa occupies a distinctive position in contemporary international politics. Our Constitution emerged from one of humanity’s greatest struggles against institutionalised prejudice.
It deliberately enshrines equality regardless of race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, religion, nationality or ethnicity because its architects understood a timeless truth: oppression begins when societies are persuaded that some human beings deserve fewer rights than others.
Once that principle is accepted for one group, no community remains permanently safe.
Across Europe and North America, however, powerful political movements have increasingly and precisely embraced this logic. Anti-immigrant nationalism has become mainstream in several countries.
Women’s reproductive rights have been rolled back after decades of progress. LGBTQIA+ communities have become targets of coordinated political campaigns. Populist leaders increasingly frame democracy itself as an obstacle to national renewal while portraying minorities as existential threats to society.
Scholars have described these developments as part of a broader pattern of democratic erosion and authoritarian resurgence across several established Western democracies.
LEADERS TO NOT RESPECT BORDERS
Through international advocacy organisations, political consultants, social media ecosystems, religious institutions, philanthropic foundations and sophisticated digital campaigns, these culture wars are increasingly exported across the world.
Their language is adapted to local conditions, but their political architecture often remains remarkably similar.
Genuine public frustrations are redirected away from economic concentration, corruption, corporate power or governance failures and instead channelled toward vulnerable minorities.
Migrants become responsible for unemployment. LGBTQIA+ people supposedly threaten African civilisation.
Women’s reproductive autonomy is portrayed as moral decay rather than a question of bodily integrity and healthcare. Complex socioeconomic crises are reduced to simplistic narratives of cultural betrayal.
South Africa’s apartheid history makes us particularly vulnerable to these forms of political manipulation. Our society continues to carry unresolved trauma, deep economic inequality and fragile social trust.
Communities living under severe economic pressure naturally seek explanations for their suffering. Opportunistic political actors understand that prejudice offers a convenient substitute for policy.
It is far easier to mobilise anger against foreigners or sexual minorities than it is to confront entrenched systems of wealth concentration, state failure or global economic inequality.
This internal fragmentation unfolds alongside an equally significant geopolitical struggle. South Africa has assumed an increasingly prominent role internationally through its commitment to international law, most visibly through its application before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging violations of the Genocide Convention in Gaza.
Regardless of differing opinions about the legal arguments, South Africa has distinguished itself as one of the few states willing to challenge the conduct of a close Western ally through established international legal institutions.
In doing so, it has placed itself directly in opposition to powerful geopolitical interests.
It would be naïve to imagine that such a position carries no consequences.
Throughout history, states that challenge dominant global powers frequently become subject to intensified political, diplomatic and ideological pressure.
South Africa’s domestic failures are rightly matters requiring urgent attention.
Yet these shortcomings also become politically useful to those seeking to dismiss our international advocacy as hypocritical.
Every episode of anti-migrant violence, every attack on LGBTQIA+ persons, every expression of intolerance becomes material through which South Africa’s moral credibility can be questioned while diverting attention from the conduct our government seeks to hold accountable internationally.
This does not mean that criticism of South Africa is inherently dishonest. Democracies must remain open to criticism and self-reflection. Nor should domestic injustice ever be excused in the name of geopolitical struggle.
Rather, we should recognise that internal instability can be exploited externally.
A nation consumed by social conflict becomes easier to portray as morally compromised, politically unstable and, therefore, unqualified to speak on questions of international justice.
Such narratives enable powerful states to relativise their own conduct by arguing that their critics are no better. The effect is not necessarily to demonstrate innocence but to erode the legitimacy of accountability itself.
Israel occupies a particularly significant position within this geopolitical landscape. As a close strategic ally of several Western powers, including the United States, criticism directed toward Israeli state conduct often becomes entangled with broader contests over global power, legitimacy and international law.
South Africa’s willingness to pursue legal accountability has therefore assumed symbolic importance beyond the immediate dispute.
Simultaneously, domestic instability within South Africa provides opportunities for hostile political actors to portray our society as fundamentally hypocritical or dysfunctional, thereby weakening the persuasive force of our international interventions. The rehabilitation of powerful states’ international images frequently depends less upon disproving allegations than upon discrediting those making them.
South Africa’s independent foreign policy has long reflected historical relationships forged during the anti-apartheid struggle.
Numerous governments and liberation movements that supported South Africa’s liberation were regarded as adversaries by Western powers during the Cold War.
Conversely, several Western governments maintained political and economic relationships with the apartheid state long after its brutality was internationally recognised.
These historical realities continue to shape perceptions of South Africa’s international alignment and ensure that our foreign policy is often interpreted through the lens of geopolitical rivalry rather than principled legal commitment.
Across Africa, governments have adopted differing responses to these changing global dynamics. Some have chosen closer strategic alignment with established Western powers, prioritising security partnerships, investment and diplomatic cooperation.
Others seek greater strategic autonomy through institutions such as the African Union, the African Continental Free Trade Area and expanded South-South cooperation, including BRICS. These choices are neither simple nor uniform, but they reveal an ongoing contest over Africa’s future place within the international order.
What remains undeniable is that a more economically integrated, politically coordinated and strategically independent Africa would possess considerably greater influence in global affairs.
A continent speaking with greater unity would become less dependent upon traditional centres of geopolitical power and more capable of defining its own developmental priorities. Such a prospect inevitably challenges long-standing global hierarchies.
It should therefore surprise no one that movements toward greater African autonomy are frequently met with political, economic and ideological resistance.
South Africans must therefore exercise extraordinary caution whenever narratives encourage us to abandon the constitutional principles that emerged from our liberation struggle.
Our Constitution was not drafted as an abstract legal document but as a moral response to one of history’s greatest systems of organised prejudice. It recognised that discrimination rarely remains confined to its initial targets.
Every society that normalises the dehumanisation of one group eventually discovers that the boundaries of exclusion continue to expand.
This is why resisting xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and other forms of prejudice is not merely a matter of protecting minorities.
It is an act of defending South African democracy itself. We should reject attempts to convince us that equality for migrants diminishes citizenship, that dignity for LGBTQIA+ people threatens African culture, or that women’s bodily autonomy represents moral collapse. Such arguments reproduce precisely the politics of exclusion that apartheid taught us to recognise and reject.
Our historical responsibility extends beyond our borders. South Africa became a symbol of human dignity because generations before us refused to accept that any system built upon hierarchy, exclusion and dehumanisation could ever be morally legitimate. That inheritance imposes obligations upon us today.
We cannot oppose oppression internationally while tolerating prejudice at home. Equally, we cannot allow our domestic divisions to become instruments through which powerful states rehabilitate their own international standing or dismiss calls for accountability under international law.
The greatest tribute we can pay to those who struggled against apartheid is not a rhetorical celebration of liberation, but steadfast commitment to its deepest ethical lesson: that every human being possesses equal dignity, and that societies flourish not by manufacturing enemies within but by confronting injustice wherever it appears.
In an age when authoritarian politics increasingly seduces nations through fear, resentment and exclusion, South Africans must remember that our greatest contribution to the world has never been military power or economic dominance.
It has been our insistence, born from immense suffering, that humanity is indivisible.
If we allow imported politics of division to fracture that inheritance, we will not only betray our Constitution but weaken our capacity to stand against injustice wherever it occurs.
The unfinished struggle for South Africa’s soul is therefore inseparable from the unfinished struggle for a more humane world.
Dr Jamil F. Khan is an award-winning author, critical diversity scholar, and research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.
