Unwavering: Chairperson of the board of trustees at the Thabo Mbeki Foundation Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. Photo: Supplied
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi has spent much of her life where politics and principle meet. From her years in the anti-apartheid movement to her work in diplomacy and governance, she has carried one conviction: peace is built through dialogue, not decree.
As chair of the board of trustees at the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, she now watches a world fractured by power and fear, where global cooperation feels both urgent and elusive.
This week, she turns her attention to the 23rd Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, to be delivered by UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese. The theme, “Enhancing Peace and Global Co-operation”, could hardly be more apt.
“The reality of multipolarity,” Fraser-Moleketi says, “is we no longer live in a world dictated by one power. The contestation you see now between old hegemons and emerging blocs exists because people will no longer coalesce around a single view.”
It is a grounded reflection from a veteran of South Africa’s liberation struggle and former minister for public service and administration.
Fraser-Moleketi, who joined the ANC in exile at 20, still keeps a weathered copy of the Freedom Charter close at hand. “It’s been with me since 1980,” she says. “It reminds me what peace meant when I was young.”
She reads softly: “There shall be peace and friendship … The people shall strive to maintain world peace and the settlement of international disputes by negotiation, not war.”
Then she looks up. “That’s what guided us then, peace anchored in friendship and equality, not domination. The charter recognised the sovereignty of all nations and insisted that South Africa, when free, would resolve disputes through dialogue. I can’t look at peace in any other way.”
Peace is not a slogan but a discipline, the opposite of indifference.
“We must want future generations to remember this era not for perpetuating war but for trying to make a difference,” she says.
“Yet, look around. The military-industrial complex drives policy more than conscience. Budgets favour weapons over development. We talk of a rules-based order while powerful nations violate those very rules.”
When the subject turns to Gaza, her tone hardens. “Gaza is the most horrible reality playing out,” she says. “And I fear we are becoming desensitised as it unfolds.”
She has long argued that South Africa’s moral authority lies not in nostalgia for its own liberation but in how it wields that memory for others. It is what makes Albanese’s visit, she believes, more than symbolic.
“Francesca’s presence here matters,” she says. “She is fearless and she has been vilified for it. Her report ‘Genocide as Colonial Erasure’ was not rhetoric; it was a legal argument about the attempt to erase a people.
“She warned that Gaza’s genocide was a tragedy foretold, rooted in decades of dispossession. For her to speak from South Africa, a country that knows apartheid, is powerful.”
“This is a land that has witnessed genocide on its continent,” she continues. “Namibia under German rule, Rwanda, Sudan today. We can’t pretend not to recognise what’s unfolding. For the foundation, and for me personally, her lecture is a moral moment. It’s not about taking sides; it’s about refusing to deny what’s in front of us.”
Her memories return to the 1980s, when South African women organised across racial lines under the United Democratic Front.
“We said we don’t want our children killed, whether on the borders or in the townships. That shared humanity cut through ideology.
We have the same responsibility now, to ensure there are no future Katrine Schoons,” she says, recalling the five-year-old killed by a parcel bomb sent to her activist parents by apartheid agent Craig Williamson.
“We can’t allow children to keep paying for the politics of men.”
The parallels between apartheid and occupation are there, though she resists easy equivalence. “History doesn’t repeat; it warns,” she says. “But when we see mass displacement, collective punishment, denial of sovereignty, we must name it.”
Asked whether peace in Palestine can exist without justice, she answers without hesitation: “Absolute peace cannot mean surrender. It cannot be a pause between bombings or an illusion of calm. Peace must come with justice and recognition by all parties.
“The Palestinians have been displaced from their land. This didn’t start on the seventh of October; it stretches back through decades of occupation and erasure. Any resolution must acknowledge that history.”
Even overwhelming power, she insists, cannot extinguish resistance.
“People never simply surrender … they fight because dignity leaves them no other choice,” she says. “That’s why global solidarity is not optional; it’s a duty.”
Her idea of solidarity is practical, not sentimental: “It needs sectoral interventions, political, cultural, academic. Dialogue, not silence.”
Dialogue is her constant refrain. As a minister in Mbeki’s cabinet, and as the UN Development Programme’s special envoy on gender, she saw how fragile post-conflict societies become when conversation stops.
“Words are simpler than reality,” she says. “But every resolution begins with people talking. Nobody should decide who belongs in the room. For a conflict to end, everyone must be there, and all sides is rarely just two.”
She finds parallels between South Africa’s own moment of drift and crises elsewhere.
“That’s why the Thabo Mbeki Foundation has been driving peace and security dialogues across Africa,” she says. “We’re not an alternative to the AU Peace and Security Council. We’re creating spaces for genuine conversation.”
Her definition of peace is layered: moral, political, deeply human. “It means a permanent end to violence. It means lifting sieges and restoring dignity. It means a political settlement that reflects the aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis. And it must include mechanisms for justice and accountability.”
She adds this cannot be misread. “We have never been anti-Semitic. We have been anti-Zionist, because extremism of any kind dehumanises. A genuine solution must confront historical wounds on all sides.”
That insistence on moral coherence runs through her reflections on Mandela’s legacy.
“Madiba believed peace was active,” she says. “He was no pacifist; he knew negotiation required courage and sacrifice. When we invoke him today, we must ask whether we honour that spirit or merely quote it.”
She knows the risk of speaking plainly. “Few people grasp the cost of it,” she says. “People are afraid. The Jewish Board of Deputies is powerful; business interests are cautious. But silence doesn’t absolve anyone. It corrodes public trust.”
Fraser-Moleketi believes South Africa’s leadership must match its rhetoric with material choices.
“If we truly stand for justice, we must ask where we invest, who we trade with, whose suffering we profit from,” she says. “Solidarity must follow the money.”
Her voice softens. “People are tired,” she admits. “But that doesn’t mean we stop showing up.”
She glances at the worn Freedom Charter beside her. “That document was written by people who believed they could build something better,” she says. “It still asks the same of us.”