Sindisiwe Chikunga, the minister for women, youth and persons with disabilities in South Africa, stood before an audience on Feb. 6, a Friday night, at the Maslow Hotel in Pretoria and addressed the 47th commemoration of the Islamic Revolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Let that sink in.
This is a woman whose constitutional mandate is to protect and advance the rights of women in a country with some of the highest rates of femicide, rape and gender-based violence in the world, publicly aligning herself with a violent theocratic regime internationally condemned for its treatment of women, dissenters, minorities and journalists. This has nothing to do with diplomacy. It is South Africa discarding its professed values when they become politically inconvenient.
The optics of a minister charged with defending women addressing an event celebrating the Islamic Revolution are not merely baffling; they are grotesquely inconsistent with South Africa’s own constitutional commitments to dignity, equality and freedom.
For years, the ruling African National Congress has tried to position itself as a principled defender of human rights. But that veneer cracks instantly when it comes to foreign policy—from carefully calibrated abstentions at the United Nations to this latest public embrace of Tehran.
Just last month, South Africa found itself in international headlines when Iranian warships were invited to participate in naval exercises off its coast. The move sparked intense domestic and diplomatic pushback, including from President Cyril Ramaphosa himself.
The confusion and backtracking that followed was symptomatic of an ANC foreign policy increasingly guided by ideological camaraderie rather than principle.
At the same time, Western democracies have moved in the opposite direction. The European Parliament has repeatedly called for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be designated as a terrorist organization. The United States already classifies it as such, underscoring how far Pretoria’s diplomatic posture is drifting from many of its traditional international partners.
And now, a cabinet minister stands and celebrates a regime whose own citizens are risking (and, in many cases, losing) their lives to oppose it.
For readers unfamiliar with life on the ground in South Africa, this is not a rhetorical crisis. It is a human catastrophe. Gender-based violence in South Africa has reached staggering proportions. Women are killed, assaulted and violated at rates that place the country among the most dangerous places in the world to be female. Civil society organizations, police officials and even government leaders have repeatedly sounded the alarm, with Ramaphosa himself declaring it a national emergency in November.
Meanwhile, services for survivors remain under-resourced. Prosecution rates are abysmally low. Shelters are overcrowded. Trust in the system meant to protect women is fraying.
As all of this unfolds in South African townships and suburbs, we now have a minister who, in the name of diplomatic courtesy, takes the stage to laud a government accused of similarly brutal suppression of women’s rights.
There were signs that this event would be controversial even before it began. A local Iranian South African—speaking on condition of anonymity due to threats and harassment they and their community have faced—told me that some 300 Iranians in South Africa attempted to email and call the Maslow Hotel to register their concerns ahead of the commemoration. According to this source, not a single email was acknowledged, and phone calls were ended abruptly by front-desk staff.
Whether through bureaucratic dismissal or deliberate avoidance, the result was the same: The voices of people who fled repression were left unheard, ignored and unwelcome in a country that once proudly presented itself as a sanctuary for the persecuted.
And yet, a South African government official stood publicly celebrating the very revolutionary movement under whose authority countless Iranians, particularly women, students, religious minorities, journalists and activists, have faced repression so severe that even health-care workers have reportedly been jailed or killed simply for treating wounded protesters.
Moments like this expose a foreign policy increasingly shaped by ideology rather than principle—one that is steadily eroding the moral authority South Africa once commanded on the global stage.
There was a time when South Africa’s foreign policy was grounded in human rights, not opportunism. South Africa once stood on the world stage with a legitimacy born of its own struggle against apartheid. It became a moral authority earned through sacrifice and resilience. Today, that authority is being squandered in diplomatic routines that align the country with regimes accused of the very abuses its Constitution rejects.
International audiences reading about last week’s event will not see routine diplomatic engagement. They will see a senior cabinet minister publicly celebrating a regime widely criticized for its violations of women’s rights. They will see a country struggling to protect its own women while appearing willing to legitimize regimes that suppress them abroad. They will see a foreign policy that sacrifices principle on the altar of ideological affinity.
And they will ask a question South Africans themselves are increasingly forced to confront: What does South Africa stand for anymore? For many women who live there and for millions watching from outside the country, the answer is becoming deeply uncomfortable.
And that should alarm every one of us.
