As Kenyans got so caught up in the impeachment of their Deputy President that they missed some surprisingly good news last week on an improving macro economy, the world is unravelling in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.
Starting with the closest home, the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, a proxy war between the wealthy United Arab Emirates and the oil-rich Saudi Kingdom, continues unabated.
Daily, innocent civilians are being massacred but the world is too focused on itself, the Middle East and Ukraine to bother about Africans killing each other for no rational reason. An estimated 10 million Sudanese are displaced. The regional group IGADD and Big Brother African Union appear hapless and helpless reduced to calling “on belligerents to cease fighting”.
Who will shed a tear for the Sudanese who are in the midst of a monumental humanitarian crisis, dying from hunger and other avoidable hardships? Away from the continent, everyone’s ears are tuned to the goings on in the Middle East wondering whether this is the start of the war to end humanity.
The October 7 attack on Israel appears to have given the Jewish State justification for its own final solution to the Palestinian problem. One can understand Israel’s actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which, to Israel’s credit have been targeted even though there has been some collateral damage affecting innocent civilians. But this justifiable war is obscured by the unjustified massacre of civilians in Gaza. Nothing can justify the level of brutality occurring in Gaza.
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Granted, Hamas integrated its command centres within populations and therefore left Israel with limited options for avoiding civilian casualties. But Hamas is a terrorist organisation and not much else is expected of it. Israel on the other hand is a liberal democracy, a respected member of the family of Nations. With all the intelligence we now see it has, can anyone convince the world that they couldn’t have executed a more targeted war in Gaza?
Maybe it would have taken longer. Maybe they wouldn’t have eradicated all of Hamas terrorists, but surely all those civilian lives, especially of the young children were not worth that? As for Ukraine, who would have imagined that in the 21st century a vicious war would be going on in Europe pitting Russia against not just Ukraine but indirectly against America and Western Europe?
If we move away from war and look at global politics, one can get even more dismayed. Trump is about to enter the White House a second time. This is a man with little respect for the law and the Constitution or even basic decency; all those things we looked up to America for. Not that the Democrats are an inspiring lot, not with the way they’ve bungled the Middle East.
In Europe, politics have turned right, democracy is suspect, and the world is turning inwards and “othering” everyone else. At least 6 members of the EU have hard-right parties in government while 2 have coalitions only possible because they incorporated their right-wing parties.
The signs are there for others like France. The biggest issue? Immigration. The UK is the outlier having voted in Labour overwhelmingly. But the new party is struggling and the Conservative Party while waiting in the wings, just nominated two right-wing candidates including Nigerian-born Kemi Badenoch to stand for party leader, rejecting centrist James Cleverly.
This is the world our children are growing into. There is however a silver lining to all this for Africa. Everyone is so busy looking out for themselves we will be left alone. We can then either decide to vanquish each other, through war, abuse of rights or just by our political elite milking our economies so dry the people die of hopelessness and hunger. Or we can decide that we will rise and be the shining light for a world in turmoil.
Because I am an eternal optimist, I believe that enough will exist for us to go the latter way. Otherwise, we are doomed, those who held back our hands to stop us from self-harm are focused on themselves and on wars raging on their shores. God be with us.
The writer is an advocate of the High Court of Kenya