'Make peace through dialogue'

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.

- Hasina Kathrada

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 Cooperation”, 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.”