President Cyril Ramaphosa’s criticism of the Taliban during South Africa’s National Women’s Day commemorations has raised wider questions about the assumptions underpinning dominant international narratives on Afghanistan, women’s rights and what constitutes a “successful” society.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, who attended the commemoration during her visit to South Africa, has repeatedly called for the Taliban’s treatment of women and girls to be recognised internationally as “gender apartheid”.
Yousafzai is one of the world’s most prominent advocates for girls’ education. But she is Pakistani, not Afghan, and does not speak on behalf of Afghan women as a whole — an important distinction when considering whose voices are elevated in international discussions about Afghanistan.
Speaking at the National Women’s Day commemoration at the Union Buildings on Sunday, Ramaphosa condemned the Taliban’s restrictions on Afghan women and girls and argued that no culture, religion, government or ideology could justify treating women as lesser human beings.
He also expressed solidarity with Afghan women and girls affected by restrictions on education, employment and participation in public life.
Yet the intervention raises a broader question: whose voices, values and conception of social progress are being prioritised when Afghanistan is discussed?
Whose voices are being heard?
Much international coverage of Afghan women understandably focuses on those who oppose Taliban rule and benefited from educational, professional and social opportunities that expanded during the US-led occupation between 2001 and 2021.
Their experiences are important and deserve to be heard. But they should not automatically be treated as representative of Afghan women as a whole.
Afghanistan is a deeply conservative Muslim society shaped by its own religious, cultural, tribal and social traditions. The aspirations of urban Afghans educated within institutions heavily influenced by the post-2001 order cannot necessarily be assumed to reflect those of every Afghan woman, particularly in rural and more traditional communities.
That does not prove that Taliban policies enjoy universal support. Nor does it invalidate Afghan women who vehemently oppose them.
It does, however, raise an important question about whether international discourse adequately reflects Afghanistan’s social diversity — and whether Afghans are permitted to define progress according to values other than those dominant in Western liberal societies.
What constitutes cruelty?
The debate ultimately involves competing definitions of liberation, dignity and social wellbeing.
Western liberal discourse generally treats unrestricted access to mixed educational, professional and social environments as fundamental to women’s emancipation.
Islamic conceptions of society approach relations between men and women differently, placing greater emphasis on modesty, sexual ethics, family structures and boundaries governing interaction between the sexes.
The disagreement is therefore not merely over whether women should be educated. It also concerns what education should look like, the environment in which it takes place and the moral framework governing society more broadly.
Critics of the Western model point out that societies regularly presented as benchmarks of social progress simultaneously contend with serious problems involving pornography, prostitution, drug dependency, sexual exploitation and family instability.
This does not mean Western societies can be reduced to those problems, nor does it negate legitimate concerns raised by Afghan women who oppose Taliban policies.
But it does challenge the assumption that one social order possesses an uncontested moral authority over another.
If “cruelty” is being defined partly through restrictions imposed in the name of religion and social morality, then advocates of alternative systems can reasonably ask whether the social consequences produced by liberal societies should also form part of that comparison.
Give Afghanistan space to develop its own system
Another central question is whether Afghanistan should be permitted to develop institutions according to its own religious and social circumstances.
The Taliban maintains that Afghanistan is an Islamic country and that its education system, laws and social policies should reflect Islamic principles rather than replicate Western models.
From this perspective, Afghanistan should be given space to develop an educational system rooted in its Islamic identity, cultural circumstances and social priorities rather than being permanently judged against institutions established or promoted during two decades of foreign occupation.
That argument does not require agreement with every Taliban policy.
Indeed, the continued exclusion of girls from secondary and university education remains one of the most contentious aspects of Taliban governance and has generated criticism from Muslims as well as non-Muslims internationally.
The broader issue, however, remains: who ultimately determines the framework within which another society must organise itself?
If Afghanistan develops separate educational environments for men and women, or structures public life differently from liberal Western societies, does difference automatically amount to oppression?
Or should the debate distinguish between the principle of women receiving education and disagreement over the form, environment and values governing that education?
The contradiction in the Western narrative
There is also a geopolitical contradiction that cannot be ignored.
Western governments frequently invoke women’s rights and human rights when condemning Afghanistan while maintaining close political, military and economic relationships with states accused of grave abuses elsewhere.
Governments that supply weapons used in devastating conflicts, shield allies from international accountability or tolerate large-scale civilian suffering inevitably weaken their moral authority when presenting themselves as neutral arbiters of cruelty and human dignity.
The argument is not that concerns about Afghan women should be dismissed because other governments have committed or facilitated abuses.
It is that human rights principles lose credibility when applied selectively.
A government cannot convincingly insist that human dignity is universal while treating civilian suffering as intolerable in one political context and strategically acceptable in another.
For critics, the problem is therefore not simply Western criticism of the Taliban, but the selective moral framework through which such criticism is often delivered.
Different definitions of a successful society
Supporters of the Taliban also point to the government’s willingness to use state authority against practices it regards as socially destructive or prohibited under Islamic law.
Perhaps the most significant example has been its crackdown on narcotics production, particularly opium poppy cultivation, alongside broader restrictions on alcohol, gambling and forms of entertainment regarded as contrary to Islamic morality.
To Taliban supporters, these policies illustrate what can happen when a government is prepared to enforce an explicit moral framework rather than leave social behaviour primarily to individual choice.
Western societies, meanwhile, continue to struggle with drug addiction, pornography, prostitution, sexual exploitation, family breakdown and other deep-rooted social problems.
The comparison raises a fundamental question about how a successful society should be measured.
Should success be defined predominantly through individual autonomy and personal choice?
Or should it also be judged through family stability, addiction rates, social cohesion, public morality, community safety and the protection of society from behaviours considered harmful?
Different civilisations will inevitably answer those questions differently.
The bigger question
The debate over Afghanistan should therefore not be reduced simply to whether girls should attend school.
Education is unquestionably important.
The deeper debate concerns what kind of education, within what social environment, according to which values and based on whose understanding of human flourishing.
Afghan women should have a meaningful voice in determining their country’s future, just as Afghan society collectively should have a meaningful say over the institutions governing it.
But that principle should include women whose religious and social outlook does not conform to Western liberal expectations, not only those whose aspirations mirror them.
The broader question is therefore whether societies facing profound social crises of their own — and governments with deeply contested records on war, civilian protection and human rights — should automatically be considered the ultimate authority on how another civilisation ought to organise itself.
Ramaphosa’s remarks have returned Afghanistan to the spotlight.
But beyond the immediate controversy surrounding the Taliban lies a much more fundamental debate: must there be one universal model of social progress, or should societies be permitted to pursue their own path according to their history, religion, culture and values?
