2024: The year of World Revolution

It has already started. You may not be aware of the shifting global alliances, yet these are definitely going to reshape the world as you’ve known it for the longest time! Interestingly, these shifts will impact you since your country is a member of the global community. You cannot ignore the developments currently unfolding in the so-called Middle East – an area the US has used to wield global dominance via its lackey, Israel, for time immemorial! Now, the chickens are definitely coming home to roost! This reminds me of the pernicious fate that befell Al Haj Malik Shabbaz (Malcolm X) courtesy of the Leader of the Black Muslims, Elijah Muhammad, following a comment he had made to the Press in response to the assassination of then President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK). Malcom X had innocuously observed that being an ‘old farm boy myself ’, chickens coming home to roost ‘never did bother me’ – in-fact, ‘they’ve always made me happy’! It seems this was a cardinal sin that Malcolm committed, it earned him a 90-days suspension from all activities of the Black Muslims – a period he used wisely to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca and tour some African countries to open up his narrow world-view of Islam to new horizons! In the aftermath of that 90-day suspension, Malcolm started two new organisations – the Black Muslims Incorporated (BMI) and its political wing, the Organisation of Afro American Unity (OAAU), styled after the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which he had had an opportunity to address during his African sojourn! Malcolm X’s contribution to the liberation, not just of African Afro Americans but also the world’s oppressed, is today a matter of common knowledge. He is quoted wherever and whenever issues of racial injustice, discrimination or racial inequality are discussed. I make mention of this fact, because we have just witnessed one of history’s major shake-ups with the recent move by South Africa to drag Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on a charge of genocide. South Africa’s bold contention that Israel’s continued bombardment of The Gaza Strip was an act calculated at annihilating the peoples of Palestine, was vigorously argued and ventilated before a panel of 15 ICJ judges in The Hague, The Netherlands on January 11th with

Israel’s counter-arguments heard the next day. The world awaits with bated breath the judgment of the International Court of Justice! It is significant to note that this brave step (dragging Israel to ICJ) has never been attempted by any country or organisation against the State of Israel, which owes its being in 1948 to the designs of Theodor Herzl’s political Zionism.

Herzl’s aim was aided explicitly by the US, and implicitly abetted by Great Britain through the 1917 Balfour Declaration when it pledged to establish a ‘national home for the Jewish people in Palestine’ and culminated with its running of Palestine in 1920 as a British Mandate until May 1948. Ever since the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine, the Arabs and Jews have never known peace – there’s been an ongoing Nakba (mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians). This has continued unabated largely thanks to US’ backing of Israel. All the peace talks and other overtures between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel initiated by the US and mediated by the United Nations through its various General Assembly Resolutions, have amounted to nought – that is, dismally failed to end the Nakba. Thanks to modern technology, the world cannot feign ignorance about what’s happening in Palestine. Since the 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, which means Islamic Resistance Movement, when some 1200 Israelis, mostly civilians were killed and others taken hostage - Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warplanes have pounded Gaza with air strikes killing children, women and the elderly, as well as decimating civilian infrastructure leading to a massive humanitarian crisis. Thanks to modern technology we have witnessed in real time, missile bombardments of The Gaza Strip, and seen the herding of Palestinians to the edge of the Sinai desert. By Tuesday this week, the death toll in Gaza had surpassed the 24, 000 mark! Surely these acts, these killings, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly declared as Israel’s “clear goal of destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities” show not just an avowed intention to “protect” itself against Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, but constitutes a clear genocidal intent in the context of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Now that South Africa has done the unthinkable, we can be sure that it has inspired freedom lovers across the world, as evidenced by the series of solidarity marches and protests calling for an end to Gaza siege, across the world.

This act will no doubt help to resuscitate the lost voice of the Arab League, which all things equal, should have been the natural contender to protest Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians by any means necessary. One hopes to see an active role in this conflict by the African Union, which constitutes the largest single voting bloc at the discredited United Nations, as well as active support in word and deed by African countries, a majority of which have enjoyed the support of the PLO during their liberation struggles.

South Africa has definitely made Africa, and all peace-loving peoples of the world proud. She has held firm to her principled commitment to the struggle against apartheid, racism, Zionism and colonial occupation wherever it happens.As for the United States and The United Kingdom including their western allies – Germany, France etal, the writing is on the wall that their empire is crumbling. It can no longer hold. Very soon, the too, especially the US and UK, will be enjoined in this case for their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.The emergence of BRICS – a bloc advocating for a multipolar world order, heralds the onset of a new world that promises security, justice and equality for all the peoples of the world. Let’s bate our breath as we await the March presidential elections in Russia and the November elections in America! Aluta continua!