Among my Kenyan friends we pronounce it “unga.” Unga as in maize meal used to make the staple starch in East and Southern Africa. Depending on the country, that staple is known as ugali/ntshima/sadza/pap/isitshwala. Among my friends we call it unga because that’s when African Presidents travel to New York annually on our taxes with large delegations and stand on podium talking of rights and democracy denied them by the West and which they don’t give their own citizens. Because like the weasels they are, they always seek validation from Empire. United Nations General Assembly has been in full swing this week. This year, Palestine has been centre, front and back. This has been particularly interesting for me to watch because in June 2023, I truly believed that the world had forgotten Palestine. So when I wrote the long form essay, Vignettes of a People in an Apartheid State, I published it with the Palestinian flag faded in the background.I believed that apart from the Palestinians themselves and a few of us who knew and had known, the dream of a Free Palestine was just that. A dream.
Then 7 October, 2023 happened. Much still remains to be revealed and much, we may never know but we know now a lot of what mainstream media told us about that day was not true and got debunked sometimes by Israel’s own media while the media of Empire we had grown up believing were “free” and “objective” turned out to be propaganda tools for Zionism and made no attempts to hide it. But back to UNGA, as it was happening, a Zionist African President who had “created jobs” by sending his people to Israel to work in the fields on near slave conditions lost an election.
At UNGA, “our man in Africa”
Another Zionist African President who was the first and if I recall only one to “stand with Israel” when Iran retaliated after the Israeli bombings – under whose watch many of his citizens were massacred, disappeared and imprisoned for saying no to a Finance Bill that didn’t have the people at heart –, he who was touted as “Our Man in Africa” by Genocide Joe and Chatham House, gave a fiery speech... where he asked for a seat at the UN Security Council table instead of, as Biko would have advised, dismantling the table. I strongly suspect he hoped he would be the Chosen One to represent the 54 countries of Africa. An ’anti-Zionist’ African President condemned the genocide strongly and talked of the need for a “two-state solution”. Reader, this President’s own anti apartheid movement did not take Bantustans seriously during apartheid; his country is still sending coal to light up a genocide; he hasn’t cut off diplomatic relations with Israel despite his own Parliament voting for Israeli Embassy closure as far back as November 2023; his National Prosecuting Authority hasn’t sent to court a single citizen or permanent resident for serving in the Israeli Occupying Force and his brother-in-law who heads Confederation of African Football has said not a word about the need for FIFA to cut out Israel from international football, indeed during a #KickoutIsrael campaign, he was silent when pro-Palestinian protestors were arrested at a match for posters and chants. Lest we forget, the week of UNGA is also the week where we’ve had 14 drone attacks on a peaceful flotilla of civilians making its way to open a humanitarian corridor to get food, medication and baby formula to Gaza.
These African countries notwithstanding, we know now that the spirit of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti did not die. Colombia’s Gustavo Petro reminded us of past UNGAs with fiery speeches that aimed to conscientise the world. We were reminded of that son of Cuba but great internationalist whose soldiers, in solidarity with the people of Angola and Namibia, gave hell to the South African apartheid regime. We recalled Hugo Chavez of Venezuela speaking a day after a “diablo” had been on podium, he who Castro called Shrub in the Ignacio Ramonet Fidel Castro : My Life, A Spoken Autobiography(Scribner, 2009).
The world appeared to not be ready for either Castro or Chavez but one knows the world is ready now as support from across the globe for Gaza and Palestine has shown and one hopes self-serving politicians can listen to their people and to Gustavo Petro and vote to Unite4Peace before we fall off the precipice of capitalism and anti-humanity. While there’s probably little to applaud when a rightwing European government says its sending two naval boats to rescue their citizens in the event of an attack by IOF (I am not naive enough to assume an ally of Israel will stop Israel from attacking us), and another European government, Greece, says it will protect us in its waters where I write this from as we gather stocks, get more boats joining and get ready for the final leg of the journey. I am keen to see what the fine print on Spain’s naval offer looks like. Does it entail escorting the flotilla all the way to Gaza and what happens in the event of an Israeli interception? Their position on Palestine as a country has been pretty decent but I always tamper possible political hope with caution because politicians will disappoint one.
“Dying of thirst while your feet are in the water”
On a more serious note, yesterday we had information that Zionists, like the dying horse they are, plan a deadly attack on the flotilla. We are likely to see what happens and what protection from the two European countries that are Italy and Spain mean once we leave the Greek waters tomorrow. Tomorrow, there are solidarity protests across the world. A show, if any were needed, that the world is united against genocide and demands a free Palestine and awaiting world governments to do the same.
Last night during nightwatch, we spotted only three drones. A friend from home asked whether I was enjoying looking at the sky because they’ve heard that the stars over the Mediterranean are romantic. I responded, “Man, nobody is trying to look at that. You may think it’s a falling star when its a drone coming for you.”
And that’s the thing about Zionists. They ruin everything they come into contact with. They kill humans. They kill nature. They kill their own ability to feel for anyone other than themselves. They kill art by calling Gal Gadot an actress (shout out to my favourite Gal Gadot satirist Matt Ketai). And they even kill the beauty of the night skies. This must be what the sticker my Palestinian friend Dana gave me when I was 10 meant. Zionism kills.
