SA confronting testing national and geopolitical stresses: Pandor

ANC veteran Naledi Pandor delivers the Gertrude Shope Memorial Lecture at Akasia Community Hall in Pretoria on August 24, 2025.

African National Congress (ANC) veteran and former cabinet minister Dr. Naledi Pandor say South Africa is confronting its most testing national and geopolitical stresses.

Pandor delivered former ANC stalwart Gertrude Shope’s Memorial Lecture at the Akasia Community Hall in Pretoria on Sunday.

Shope, who would have turned 100 years old this month, passed away in May. She is a former Member of Parliament and president of the ANC’s Women’s League.

Pandor says, “South Africa is confronting its most testing national and geopolitical stresses, the constraints posed by a changed government and attitude in the United States of America by a diminishing militarism, by a rather weakened and directionless Europe, by a China that has to look inward to gain strength and by an Africa still searching for its essential being. All of these place South Africa in a situation which keen intellect and bold resolve should be preeminent.”

She says Shope was a leader who was destined to constantly live with turbulence.

Pandor adds, “This reality was her fate not withstanding her incredible dignified presence, stature, calm demeanor. She had a look, which stressed ‘I can come with whatever that is sent my way’. That is the kind of strength that is urgently necessary today.”