TOM EATON | We all wonder what Naledi Pandor means, now we know it’s ‘open to interpretation’

As someone who has been an ANC cabinet minister for 19 years, Naledi Pandor is a master of obscuring all sorts of inconvenient truths. In fact the only time she’s made herself abundantly clear in recent years was when she hastily swallowed her condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But this week she offered new and startling insights into our recent past, specifically the 2021 riots. 

The revelations came during her meeting on Tuesday with German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, a tricky engagement for Pandor, who had to walk a fine line between remaining suspicious of the weapons Germany is pouring into Ukraine while remaining enthusiastic about the money Germany is pouring into South Africa.

Baerbock, too, seemed to be struggling to orientate herself, telling Pandor that “when the country of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu speaks out against injustices, the world listens”, thereby revealing an apparent belief that it is about 1998. Presumably once she’s done in Pretoria she’ll plug the phone line into her modem and send an MMS to Robert Mugabe congratulating him for leading Africa’s breadbasket so wisely and well. 

It was also more than a little presumptuous to imply that Mandela might have echoed Germany’s condemnations of Russia. Mandela was famously loyal to his revolutionary friends, and while it’s possible he might have acted as a towering figure for peace, I’m not sure anyone can assume he would have been as harsh on the Kremlin as Baerbock wants Pandor to be. 

All of that, however, was fairly predictable. Both Germany and SA have made their positions clear. Germany is staunchly opposed to Russian aggression and even more staunchly opposed to anyone noticing that its two largest arms manufacturers, Rheinmetall and Hensoldt, have seen their share prices rise 210% and 145% respectively since the start of the invasion. South Africa is adamant that the war must stop, and even more adamant that nobody should tell Russia to stop first.

South Africa is adamant that the war must stop, and even more adamant that nobody should tell Russia to stop first.

But what nobody could predict was that Pandor would explain exactly why we still don’t know if the July 2021 riots were political theatre orchestrated by Jacob Zuma’s faction, an organic surge of looting triggered by widespread poverty and a fraying social fabric, a carefully planned attempt to incite insurrection and possibly carry out regime change, or all of them.

Her revelations came shortly after she explained to the international media that the march by Wagner mercenaries towards Moscow, and the shooting down of several Russian aircraft, had not been a mutiny but rather an “attempted mutiny”. 

Furthermore, she told Baerbock, the belief that South Africa is supportive of Russia is nothing more than “your interpretation”, before adding: “Even the use of the word ‘mutiny’ is an interpretation.” 

It was an odd detail to add just seconds after she had clearly and categorically stated that the weekend’s events were an “attempted mutiny”. Perhaps those seconds were all it took for an aide to scream into her earpiece that even talking about attempted mutinies cast doubt on the authority of Vladimir Putin, and it was time for her once again to throw herself on the grenade of bullshit and back-pedal as she had done in February last year.

But it also finally gave us a crystal clear picture what it must have been like in the cabinet during those desperate hours back in July 2021.

Was it an insurrection? Well, the likes of Pandor would have replied, “insurrection” is just one interpretation, so perhaps it’s not an insurrection so much as a particularly robust interpretation?

I mean, is it arson or just a high-energy reinterpretation of architecture, from, say, its fixed form to a more deconstructed, ashy form? Are the police turning a blind eye or simply offering an interpretation of a reinterpreted sort of law enforcement?

After all, if nothing means anything, and nobody is really responsible for the things that don’t mean anything, and didn’t happen in any case, what can one truly know, or do, or say? 

And that, dear reader, is how you stay a cabinet minister for 19 years.