Former minister Naledi Pandor’s comments on “Zionists” and “powerful forces” reveal how antisemitic tropes are being laundered through political language in South Africa.
In a rambling interview with Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, former minister of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Naledi Pandor lets the mask slip. She is careful to speak only of “Zionists” and some shadowy “powerful forces”, but the meaning is clear enough. What she describes is a familiar antisemitic trope: a powerful, largely unseen group with enormous financial influence, capable of punishing institutions and individuals who challenge its interests.
Pandor says: “…they withdraw the minute you mention Palestine. … UCT passed a resolution on Gaza supporting that Zionists were acting in an apartheid fashion and intent on genocide. They lost over 250 million rands in donor funding in a very short space of time. So you’re dealing with very powerful forces, and we shouldn’t neglect the danger that confronts us.”
Pandor’s words are antisemitic because “Zionist” is being used to carry an old antisemitic trope about Jewish power. She describes a largely unseen collective with enormous financial influence, capable of withdrawing R250 million and punishing an institution for taking a political position. The word “Zionist” changes the label, not the substance of the trope.
The Zionist euphemism, which has become an increasingly common shorthand for “Jew” in South African anti-Israel and anti-Jewish circles, gives Pandor room to make the accusation without actually naming Jews. She speaks instead of “Zionists” and “powerful forces”, attaching to those terms the familiar ideas of money, influence, collective power and control over institutions. The language gives her a degree of deniability while preserving the accusation itself.
And that is the thing: antisemitism has repeatedly adapted its language to the political environment in which it operates. Old accusations about Jewish power have been expressed in religious, racial, economic and political terms at different points in history. In contemporary political discourse, “Zionist” can provide a convenient way of expressing ideas about Jews without actually saying the word “Jew”. That does not make every use of the word antisemitic. It means that “Zionist” cannot become a shield when an old anti-Jewish trope is being expressed through it.
The language also gives Pandor room to retreat. If someone calls it antisemitic, she can accuse the critic of conflating Jews with Zionists, defending Israel or attempting to silence criticism of Israel. In July 2022, she herself acknowledged that her emphasis on a two-state solution was partly intended to avoid being accused of antisemitism. She therefore understood the accusation and its political significance. The irony is that the claim that Jews or Israel’s supporters manipulate accusations of antisemitism to silence their critics is itself a familiar feature of contemporary antisemitism. David Hirsh has described this manoeuvre as the “Livingstone Formulation”, in which the person making the accusation of antisemitism is recast as the real aggressor.
None of this is out of character for Pandor. After the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, she chose to phone Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and offer her support. At a fundraising gala at the Langa Masjid in Cape Town, she told the audience that Muslims “are permitted to engage in jihad when necessary”. And in May 2024, delivering the Second Annual Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Lecture at the University of Johannesburg, while violent and openly antisemitic encampments were sweeping US campuses, including Columbia, she said: “We hope that this unprecedented activism by students in the US will also spur greater activism amongst student movements here in South Africa, and spur more vocal support from our university administrators, some of whom have remained silent.”
There is another problem with the interview, and it concerns Ndlozi himself. Ndlozi has a PhD in Political Studies, but he is a political figure first. His academic qualification does not make his political commitments disappear, nor does it turn his political discussions into academic seminars. Yet he presents his podcast as a space for political and intellectual discussion, and that creates an expectation that terms will at least retain their meaning.
Instead, Ndlozi participates in the same language he should be interrogating. He does not ask Pandor what she means by “powerful forces”, which donors she is referring to, what evidence exists for the alleged withdrawal of funding, or why “Zionist” is being used to describe the people supposedly responsible. He does not distinguish apartheid from genocide when the two are placed in the same sentence. He simply allows the terms to accumulate their political weight.
Ndlozi does much the same himself when he says: “…The biggest identity, when you say you’re from South Africa, that comes immediately is Madiba. So genocide is not apartheid anymore.” It is difficult to determine what the sentence is supposed to mean. Yet “genocide” and “apartheid” have been introduced into the discussion and are left standing next to one another, carrying all the moral and political force attached to those words without anyone having to explain the relationship between them.
This is not merely a matter of Ndlozi speaking unclearly. Throughout the discussion, terms with distinct meanings are allowed to become interchangeable. Zionism becomes colonialism, colonialism becomes imperialism, imperialism becomes apartheid and apartheid becomes genocide. The argument does not have to establish each proposition because the terms themselves are doing the work.
Ndlozi has the academic training to know that these are not interchangeable concepts. He also has the political experience to understand what the language is doing. Yet rather than challenge it, he participates in it. His PhD gives the discussion an intellectual veneer, while the substance remains political rhetoric.
The effect is to give political claims the appearance of intellectual analysis. A listener hears “Zionism”, “colonialism”, “imperialism”, “apartheid” and “genocide” and is invited to treat them as parts of one coherent argument, even though each term carries a different meaning and requires a different argument. Once they have been collapsed into one vocabulary, calling someone a “Zionist” begins to carry all of the accusations attached to the other words.
The same thing happens with the word “Zionist” in what Pandor says. It begins as a political description and ends up carrying the old allegations about Jewish financial power, hidden influence and collective control. The word has become a container for accusations that cannot safely be made using the word “Jew”.
That is the laundering of political language. An antisemitic trope is given a political vocabulary. A claim about Jewish power becomes a claim about “Zionists” and “powerful forces”. Legal and political terms are made interchangeable until their distinctions disappear. The resulting language sounds sophisticated enough to discourage scrutiny, while the underlying trope remains remarkably old.
What Pandor has said is antisemitic. She has taken an old antisemitic trope about Jewish financial power and hidden influence and attached it to the word “Zionist”, giving the accusation a political vocabulary without changing its substance.
It also sits within a broader pattern in which the language surrounding Israel is used to collapse distinct political and legal concepts into one another, while accusations of antisemitism are themselves recast as attempts to silence criticism.
Pandor knows the political utility of the language she uses. Ndlozi is not some detached academic observer either. He is a political actor with a PhD in Political Studies, and he brings that political perspective into the discussion rather than interrogating it. He does not simply fail to challenge Pandor’s language; he participates in it, helping to give it the appearance of a serious political discussion, or worse, serious political analysis.
The words have meaning. Zionism is not colonialism. Colonialism is not imperialism. Imperialism is not apartheid. Apartheid is not genocide. And “Zionist” is not a magic word that allows an old antisemitic trope about Jewish power to be repeated without anyone noticing.
The mask is off.
