Taliban repression of Afghan women is form of apartheid, says Nelson Mandela widow Graça Machel

Taliban repression of Afghan women is a form of apartheid and the world must fight it with the same resolve it showed white rule in South Africa, the widow of Nelson Mandela has said.

Graça Machel, one of the world’s foremost women’s rights campaigners, said the Taliban should be “squeezed” to show that the international community finds their discrimination unacceptable.

The world has so far been too soft with the insurgents-turned-rulers who have imposed severe restrictions on women, she told The Telegraph.

The Taliban have increasingly removed women and girls from public life since they overthrew Afghanistan's internationally-backed government in August 2021.

Girls are not allowed in secondary school or university and women have been removed from government departments and banned from work in most sectors. They have been ordered to cover their faces in public and told they cannot travel long distances without a chaperone.

Ms Machel said: “It is a kind of apartheid, which is gender apartheid. I agree with that kind of definition.

“But more than the definition, it is for me to say the same vigour and the same persistence which was applied to fight apartheid should be applied in the case of Afghanistan.”

Her comments come as the international community debates whether to engage with the Kabul regime, or to isolate it, and what limited leverage it might have.

Ms Machel is a leading Mozambican politician and figure in the Elders group of statesmen and women offering their expertise to address global problems.

She was married to former President of Mozambique Samora Machel and then later to Mr Mandela from 1998 to 2013. The Queen made her an honorary dame in 2007 because of her humanitarian work.

She declined to suggest specific measures the international community might deploy against the Taliban, but said world leaders needed to “apply their minds with creativity and innovation”.

She said: “The international community cannot leave it to the Taliban alone to decide about the future of 50 per cent of their population. We need to find a creative way of engaging them and to challenge the Taliban to say this is humanly unacceptable and it’s unacceptable to discriminate simply because they are women.”

During the apartheid era in South Africa, the world spent decades enforcing measures against Pretoria, including sporting boycotts and economic sanctions.

Ms Machel said: “It took some decades, but it managed to change. The South African government of the time was forced to change with the application of different methods, there were very many methods used, to squeeze the government to a point where it had to accept that they needed to change.”

She said likewise the Taliban now had to realise the world found their repression unacceptable.

She said: “I think so far, what is being applied against them is too soft. Because it's too soft, they survive. They should be squeezed to understand the human family is not going to allow them to continue the way they are behaving. There have to be ways.”

Recent Taliban edicts decreed that female Afghan staff employed by aid charities and the country's United Nations mission can no longer report for work. The decree has led aid agencies to debate whether they can continue work in the country.

Andrew Mitchell, international development minister, said pulling UK aid because of Taliban restrictions would only lead to starvation.

He told the Telegraph: “If you were to say that we will not deliver aid, you won’t have any impact at all on the elites in Kabul and on the Taliban.

“But you will have a devastating effect on vulnerable women and girls and people who are starving.

“In the end, you cannot cut it off, you have to find a way of delivering that support.”

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