“It’s so important for the international community to not only step up to protect access to education for girls but also ensure that it is quality education, it is not indoctrination,” Malala said.

Johannesburg (Reuters) – Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday likened restrictions the Taliban has placed on women in Afghanistan to the treatment of Black people under apartheid in a lecture in South Africa organised by Nelson Mandela’s foundation.

Yousafzai survived being shot in the head when she was 15 in her native Pakistan by a gunman after campaigning against the Pakistani Taliban’s moves to deny girls education.

Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, Yousafzai, now 26, has become a global symbol of the resilience of women in the face of repression.

“If you are a girl in Afghanistan, the Taliban has decided your future for you. You cannot attend a secondary school or university. You cannot find an open library where you can read. You see your mothers and your older sisters confined and constrained,” Yousafzai said during the 21st Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg.

Yousafzai said the Taliban’s actions should be considered “gender apartheid” and that it had “in effect … made girlhood illegal”.

She said international actors should not normalise relations with the Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021 as U.S.-led forces withdrew after 20 years of war.

A Taliban spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Yousafzai’s remarks.

Since returning to power, the Taliban has also stopped most Afghan female staff from working at aid agencies, closed beauty salons, barred women from parks and curtailed travel for women in the absence of a male guardian.

The Taliban say they respect women’s rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law and Afghan custom and that officials are working on plans to open girls’ high schools, but after over 18 months they have not provided a timeframe.

In an interview after her lecture, Yousafzai said she was concerned the Taliban would take away sciences and critical thinking even from boys.

“It’s so important for the international community to not only step up to protect access to education for girls but also ensure that it is quality education, it is not indoctrination,” she said.

Referring to the war in Gaza, she said she wanted to see an immediate ceasefire and for children to be able return to school and their normal lives.

She added: “We look at wars, … especially the bombardment that has happened in Gaza, … that has just taken that normal life away from children.”

It was a gesture as controversial then as South Africa’s support for the Palestinian cause is today, but Mandela brushed off criticism.

Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation had been an unwavering supporter of Mandela’s struggle against white minority rule and many South Africans saw parallels between it and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.

“We were fortunate that with their support, we were able to achieve our freedom … My grandfather … said our freedom is incomplete without the Palestinian struggle,” his grandson Mandla Mandela recalled in an interview ahead of the 10th commemoration of Mandela’s death.

From Dec. 3 to 5 Mandla Mandela, who is also an ANC lawmaker, hosted a solidarity conference in Johannesburg for the Palestinians.

It was attended by members of Hamas, an organisation Israel has vowed to annihilate in retaliation for its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw around 240 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Israeli bombing of Gaza since then has killed more than 15,500 people, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run government, and displaced more than three-quarters of the Strip’s 2.3 million population.

Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, is labelled a terrorist organisation by Australia, Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan and the United States.

Last month, the ruling ANC backed a motion in South Africa’s parliament to suspend diplomatic ties with Israel until it agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Land Annexed’

“Palestinians still do not enjoy fully their freedom on their land. And instead their land has been annexed more and more, something that we also faced in South Africa,” said the ANC’s deputy chair of international relations, Obed Bapela.

Israel has disputed the comparison with apartheid as a lie motivated by antisemitism, but many South Africans follow Mandela’s lead.

“That’s something that he (Mandela) never compromised on and nor should we,” poet and author Lebogang Mashile told Reuters.

Some in South Africa’s Jewish community criticise the ANC’s stance, pointing out that Mandela himself eventually tried to build bridges with Israel.

Historian and author of “Jewish Memories of Mandela”, David Saks, noted that Mandela was the only South African president to have visited Israel since 1994 – albeit only after he left office – and that “he received a rapturous welcome from the Israeli public,” addressing then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then-President Ezer Weisman as “my friends”.

“He pointed the way which things should have gone (diplomatically with Israel), but (they) didn’t go that way,” Saks said.