Freedom knocks for Palestine, Cuba, Western Sahara!

In a rapidly shifting world, the balance of scales cannot stay constant – like a pendulum, they sway with every ticking of the second!

And who would have thought we would today be talking about the genocide that is taking place in Gaza, perpetrated by the apartheid State of Israel and aided and abetted by Israel’s cheerleaders in the Collective West?

It was a far-fetched thought considering the Russia/Ukraine conflict that has dominated the world’s media headlines for over a year now! But it was the audacious strikes of Hamas non Israel, which not only dealt the world a shock therapy, but invited the meanest retaliation ever!

When carnage of the scale we are witnessing in Gaza happens without a blink or a prick of conscience from the United Nations – the world’s supposed guarantor of peace and security – then we must be afraid, we must be very afraid!

Israel has nuclear capability, it has one of the best intelligence (Mossad) and security systems in the world. Israel – through its Jewish community who rank as the wealthiest people in the world – controls the world’s superpower, United States of America.

This relationship has assured successive Israeli governments that the US has their back to the extent that in this present conflagration, US president Joe Biden has given Netanyahu carteblanche to reduce Gaza to rubble!

And indeed, world leaders of the West with the exception of the voice of reason from China and Russia, have urged and propped up Israel to exterminate Gazans.

People of conscience across the world must speak with one voice to condemn Israel! We can all agree that Hamas’ attack was unprovoked, but a clear assessment of history and the humiliation that Israel has since 1948 when it was created through the Balfour Declaration, subjected the Palestinians to, could help us to analyse the situation rationally.

When an invader comes into your house and rapes your woman and kills your children surely you have a right to defend your household? But somehow, we have seen throughout history, oppressive regimes running roughshod over what they perceived to be a meek and gullible people!

When eventually the oppressed people stand up to resist the oppression by any means they possibly can muster, they are labelled and condemned by the same oppressor and his cohorts as ‘terrorists’!

When the African National Congress and other liberation movements resisted against the National Party’s apartheid – basically an institutionalised racism – their leaders including the famed Nelson Mandela were blacklisted by the United States and its allies, as ‘terrorists’.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe also suffered the same fate, only he was not openly condemned as a terrorist, but intrigues were set in motion to engineer ‘regime change’ – a clear indication that the West wanted and still wants to install a puppet government that they can remotely control in

Zimbabwe!

When Fidel Castro banished the pro-US government of Fulgencio Batista into oblivion and installed a Socialist Revolution that has withstood the test of time to create the world’s best healthcare system, he was roundly condemned as a terrorist.

And for over 60 years Cuba has toiled under a severe economic and financial blockade, which successive Resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly have failed to bring to an end!

So, what recourse do the people of these oppressed nations have if they are to live in peace? What about the citizens of the oppressor nations – should they tag along with their governments to inflict an injustice on fellow human beings, and do they see this as just?

The Nakba has remained etched in the living memory of every Palestinian just as the horror of the Holocaust has haunted the Jews and will continue as long as there are people called Jews.

In the same breath, slavery and its adjunct – colonialism- have destroyed the people of Africa and it will remain so, for as long as there are people called Africans.

And worst so, the thought of slavery will haunt us every time we visit or see those points of no return where our brothers and sisters were bundled into ships – some of them know as Jesus and others as the Mayweather – in that tragic trans-Atlantic slave trade, which has produced the glitter that is the Western world!

We must never forget these horrendous events, we can forgive, but we cannot forget. I had occasion early this year to ask Members of German Parliament – the Bundestag in Berlin- about the attitude of the German Press to the demands for reparation by the Namas and Hereros of Namibia for the 1904 genocide that Germany carried out.

I also asked them about the restitution of African arts and crafts and many other paraphernalia that the West, including Germany continues to hoard in their Museums and Art Galleries!

Certainly, the world’s oppressed people have had enough! They can no longer sit by and watch as they are denigrated and made to feel like sub-humans – the time has come to meet fire with fire.

Indeed, the odds are in Israel’s favour – they can obliterate Gaza and reduce it to rubble as they have threatened, but let us keep this at the back of our minds – you can kill the body but you can’t kill the spirit!

You can wipe out an entire generation, but the idea that gave rise to the resistance shall never die until it comes to fruition.

And that is the case of the Palestinian cause! Indeed, it is the Cuban cause, much as it is the cause of the people of Western Sahara, who also have endured the illegal occupation by the Kingdom of Morocco!

But then again, we take comfort in the knowledge that there is an Omnipresent Power that will not forsake the poor, the marginalised, the oppressed and the encumbered!

By His sleight of hand, He will in an instant cause the first to be last, and will humble the might of the arrogant. And this, surely is happening – if you are discerning you’d have seen it.

Just imagine the change in fortunes in Burkina Faso – that country has this week signed an agreement with Russia to build a nuclear power station to secure its power/electricity needs!

In reaching our home country, my dear wife launched a divorce and custody battle for our three kids whom she left in my care. Unfortunately for me, this has resulted with my wife outing me not just to my family but friends and my home country’s regime which I have criticized and despised for far too long.

Having realised the risks involved in dealing directly with the home country’s Consulate, I opted to let the matter rest and my wife finally came to take the kids back to our home country through the support of the home country’s government, with them promising my kids funds for their studies. As a present father that loves his children it saddens my heart to be separated from my children and I find myself worried about them as my greatest fear is them falling victim to the illegal organ trade that is thriving in the home country. Vulnerable kids are put into institutional homes with promised opportunities for education. Here, they are well-fed and cared for while they look for compatible recipients. Once the kids have reached a full growth size, they are injected with immunosuppressive drugs and their organs are then harvested from them leaving the children to die.

The biggest question however is why would the government of my home country play hero to the kids of a person who hates the regime when so many children back home are unable to access such opportunities they are offering my children?

The only logical explanation would be to lure me back to home so that they can finally get their hands on me while these illegal cartels operated by members of the ruling family and their proxies enrich themselves from the illegal organ trade. The government of my home country is currently launching a strong campaign to have me extradited back home under the guise of obtaining a paternity test before the children can be admitted in intuitions back home.

This year when Uganda criminalized same sex relationships, it resulted in not just the rates of HIV spiking but many LGBTIQ+ identifying persons fled the country, while some are locked up in jail cells or buried six feet underground. My fellow brothers and sisters are currently asylum seekers in African countries such as Botswana and South Africa. The question is: for how long will we live on the run when we have a home and a people we belong to? Who will fight for us when our own government fails to protect, promote and defend us? Is our choice of sexuality a crime that deserves a sentence such as death?

I am making a passionate plea to the government of Botswana and the international community to reject any moves by the repressive regime to take me back there and to make every effort possible to reunite me with my children here in Botswana or any other country where our rights and safety can be guaranteed.