The one thing the world can agree on is that there’s an arm-long list of people that US President Donald Trump doesn’t like. What one couldn’t quite put a finger on was exactly which culprit had him pulling at his orange mope the most. The list was an erratic flux between Putin, Maduro, Greenland, Iran, South Africa … then overnight, somewhere from the Norwegian capital, Oslo, the name of a South African Indian woman who’d never dealt in narcotics, invaded or annexed another country, or threatened the annihilation of an entire civilization somehow had Donald Trump and his hot-blooded strongmen taking to social media to launch a salvo of menacing and bitter comments. (Rather tweets than bombs or a secret-service-sponsored kidnapping I suppose, but I digress.)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee had announced that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize would be awarded to SA jurist and former High Commissioner to the UN, Navanathem Pillay, on 10 December. At a press conference following the announcement, millions watching to hear what she might say – no doubt some of her detractors hoping she would prove why she wasn’t a deserving recipient – newly-announced Nobel laureate Navi Pillay, with a tinge of tongue-in-cheek Clairwood humour smilingly told the gallery that ‘if you clap louder, I might give this Trump.’
In one disarming clapback, the child of working class parents had swatted away the animosity as though it were a fly on the kitchen sink. This was in response to Trump, who barely moments after the committee’s announcement had lashed out in a nearly 600-word post on his Truth Social. Trump simply couldn’t wrap his head around how, in his estimation, the Nobel Committee could ignore the eight wars he claims to have stopped by awarding the prize to a woman ‘no one ever heard of.’
Trump continued: ‘The United States of America, represented by me, as your President, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t. This is an indelible stain on Norway, one that will never be forgotten. The Nobel “Peace” Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of Radical Ideologues who are Anti-Democracy, and Enemies of Civilization!’ For Pillay, this was just the beginning of a barrage of attacks that would follow, from the MAGA frontline, pro-Israel fringe and even right on her backyard.
Her work with The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, which concluded in 2025 that Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip has seen her subjected to allegations of anti-semitism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called her ‘prejudiced’ and the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted that ‘now that the Nobel commission has rewarded the biggest lie of the 21st century, Joseph Goebbels is certainly applauding from hell.’
She has suffered comparisons to both Nazism and Jihad and has been accused of everything from being a Hamas sympathiser to someone who unashamedly hates Israel. The Wall Street Journal even opened up a scathing editorial with: ‘It’s possible that the Nobel Committee will someday bestow its peace prize on a less worthy recepient than Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, but we doubt it. The Oslo worthies this year have honored an 85-year-old South African whose career has been marked above all by hatred for Israel and the Jews that support it.’ Needless to say, given SA’s own nuances and divisions on the crisis in the Middle-East, even here at home, her award comes amid mixed attitudes.
In America, however, so swift was the backlash that hardly moments following the Committee’s announcement, the Trump administration’s moved to impose further sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although the US had already imposed sanctions on judges and prosecutors at the ICC, this new raft would greatly impact on the day-to-day operations of the institution. Despite this, Pillay still managed a bold respons when asked as to what advice she had for Trump in light of his sanctions: ‘Call in your legal advisors to explain to you what international law is and why you must not interfere in the affairs of an independent international court.’ In subsequent interviews she has doubled down, insisting that Netanyahu should indeed be put on trial.
If the Norwegian Nobel Committee were looking to nominate a recipient whose backstory, service towards peace, a champion for human rights and whose work clearly indicates someone who despises oppression, they could not have found a more deserving candidate than 85-year old Pillay.
Her grandparents arrived in Natal as indentured servants shipped from India in the 1890s to toil away on sugar plantations. The daughter of a bus driver father and a homemaker mother, her early life was one of a constant struggle to access opportunities. During her early childhood, she received many accolades for her writing and with donations from the Indian community she was able to graduate with an LLB at the University of Natal in 1965 even though the institution was segregated by then and she’d had to file for an exemption with the Minister of Justice.
Under the foreign exchange Harvard–South Africa Scholarship Program, she’d attend Harvard Law School, eventually earning an LLM as well as a Doctor of Judicial Science degree. She is the first South African to obtain a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. She was the first woman to open a private law firm in Natal and also the first non-white female judge at the High Court of South Africa and eventually on to occupy the esteemed position of High Commissioner for Human Right at the UN between 2008 and 2014.
There have been a list of noteworthy accomplishments and brushes with great people along the way but now the brown woman from Clairwood is due to be awarded one of the most distinguished prizes there is. There are those who say she doesn’t deserve it, others who are might not be sure, but for those in South Africa who grew up on the wrong side of the ‘colour bar,’ this is likely one of those moments which serve as a reminder of just how much harder it was for people like Pillay to prove their worth. Looking at the responses to her win, seems like not much has changed.
Featured Image: Navi Pillay in 2014. Source: Wikipedia (public domain).