2023 > 2024: Tornado of change in the making
The coming months might challenge lots of our certitudes and our sense of security. Luckily, knowledge is power.
2023… Never a boring day…
The hottest year of our recorded history also brought a record-high level of new conflicts and coups, supporting lots of chaos and displacement, in Sudan, Niger, and of course in Gaza in the last three months of the year.
Nothing shows that 2024 should be smoother, sadly.
Just in term of test for democracy: Russia, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Mexico, the European Parliament, the UK, the USA… and also a third of Africa will head to the polls in the next twelve months, with at major issues on the line in at least 18 countries gearing up for an election year.
More than two billion people across 50 countries are expected to go the polls in 2024.
These include coup-hit Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso – if the junta leaders in those countries stay true to their word, and much as Senegal and Ghana.
As most of you may have all eyes on America and Britain, I can help with a few other parts of the world…
From Algeria to South Africa, I looked at the main polls to watch, for RFI English:
DEMOCRACY IN AFRICA
Year of elections has Africa poised for political shake-up in 2024
A third of Africa will head to the polls in 2024, with at major issues on the line in at least 18 countries gearing up for an election year. These include coup-hit Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso – if the junta leaders in those countries stay true to their word. From Algeria to South Africa, RFI looks at the main polls to watch.
Issued on: 03/01/2024
To read from here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20240103-year-of-elections-has-africa-poised-for-political-shake-up-in-2024
My first highlight: Senegal
In Senegal in particular, the stakes are high.
In his New Year address, Senegalese president Macky Sall, elected for the first time in 2012, called for peaceful elections after a year marked by violence.
Last year saw staunch opposition protests and a complicated legal battle for Ziguinchor mayor Ousmane Sonko, who ended up in jail in July, and almost lost his right to run.
Despite authorities banned a ceremony declaring his candidacy, Sonko and most opposition parties supporting him managed to hold an online event Facebook on 31 December.
International observers and African political analysts say Senegal is travelling down a dangerous path for a democracy that has long been considered a beacon of stability in West Africa.
After placing third in Senegal's 2019 presidential election, Sonko was seen as a strong potential challenger in the race to succeed President Macky Sall, who is stepping down after two terms.
But since 2021 Sonko has been battling various court cases that have hampered his plans to vie for the presidency.
His legal woes have also fuelled unrest that has damaged Senegal's reputation as one of West Africa's most stable democracies.
Sonko submitted his election candidacy from custody last month after a court in Ziguinchor ordered that he be reinstated to the electoral register.
Sonko denies any wrongdoing and says all charges against him are politically motivated.
The government rejects this, accusing Sonko of stoking violence. It dissolved his Pastef party in July, and since has found many ways to deny his right to take part in the presidential poll.
The latest:
Court dashes election hopes for Senegalese opposition leader Sonko
Senegal's Supreme Court on Friday upheld opposition politician Ousmane Sonko's defamation conviction – dealing yet another blow to his hopes of contesting next month's presidential elections.
Issued on: 05/01/2024
After deliberations extended into the early hours of Friday (5 January 2024), the court in Dakar rejected Sonko's appeal against his libel conviction in May that saw him receive a six-month suspended sentence.
The hearing opened on Thursday without Sonko, 49, who has been jailed over a separate case.
"We have just recorded a great victory. The sentence is upheld, so Ousmane Sonko will not be able to participate in the election," the plaintiff's lawyer, El Hadji Diouf, said on the radio.
But Sonko's legal team says the setback does not mark an end to the political ambitions of the Mayor of Ziguinchor, in the country's south.
"The fight will continue," his lawyer, Cire Cledor Ly, told reporters outside the court.
Meanwhile El Malick Ndiaye, the spokesman of Sonko's Pastef party, said in a radio interview: "No one doubts the political aspect of this affair which aims to eliminate the leader of the opposition.
"Sonko still remains in the race."
» Read the whole story here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20240105-court-dashes-election-hopes-for-senegalese-opposition-leader-sonko
More to come, of course.
And I’ll be in Senegal the last week of February to cover the elections.
Beyond elections, diplomacy and North-South relations are also deeply disturbed.
Before I focus on the Middle East, more on Africa, and the former colonial power of France:
FRANCE - AFRICA RELATIONS
Diplomatic dip for France as African nations seek out stronger partners
French diplomacy in Africa weakened considerably in 2023 as former allies steered their foreign policies elsewhere in the wake of military coups and general political upheaval. A new law making it harder for foreigners to immigrate to France has compounded matters.
Issued on: 06/01/2024
France is seeing a watershed moment in its ties with Africa, with relations "probably at their worst since the beginning of colonisation and slavery," Babacar Ndiaye, a senior fellow at the Timbuktu Institute in Senegal told RFI.
Can some of these be a positive, radical departure from lingering neo-colonialism?
Read more from here: https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20240106-diplomatic-dip-for-france-as-african-nations-seek-out-better-partners
And, as the new year unfolds, the atrocities in Gaza continue.
While we protest, western governments remain awkwardly silent in the face of an incredibly high amount of crimes.
See insight into some of the protests, in Bristol, here:
https://melissa-on-the-road.blogspot.com/2024/01/bristol-for-palestine.html
The only serious action came from South Africa - here is my story from late December:
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
South Africa takes Israel to international court for 'genocidal' acts in Gaza
South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice to investigate Israel for what it called "genocidal" acts in Gaza. The Israeli government rejected the case as "baseless".
Issued on: 30/12/2023
South Africa asked the UN court, which judges disputes between states, to examine whether Israel had violated the 1948 Genocide Convention in its latest conflict with the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.
In an application filed on Friday, South Africa alleged that "Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza".
It also claimed that Israel was acting with the specific intent "to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group".
Israel's foreign ministry called on the court to dismiss the claims, which it said had no basis in fact or law.
"Israel rejects with disgust the blood libel spread by South Africa in its application to the International Court of Justice," spokesperson Lior Haiat wrote on social media, insisting that its military offensive in the Gaza Strip was directed only against Hamas and its supporters.
Echoes of Apartheid
South Africa has long been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, likening the plight of Palestinians in occupied territories to the struggles of its own black majority during Apartheid – a comparison that Israel vehemently rejects.
The South African government has been fiercely critical of the war in Gaza, triggered by deadly Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October. South African authorities have said that Israel's military response constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Its parliament last month voted in favour of closing down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspending diplomatic relations.
All South African diplomats have left Israeli, while Israel in turn has recalled its ambassador in South Africa.
And in November, South Africa was one of five countries – alongside Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti – to call on the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank.
Meanwhile, a group of prominent Israelis has also accused the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring “extensive and blatant” incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza by influential public figures: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/03/israeli-public-figures-accuse-judiciary-of-ignoring-incitement-to-genocide-in-gaza
The greatest work on the issue often comes from Israeli journalists themselves, especially from the daily newspaper Haaretz, which as a brilliant international edition in English.
Here is one example:
Opinion |
Good Luck to the ICJ, Israelis Should Hope It Will Decree to Stop the Gaza Operation
Israel did not go to war in order to commit genocide – there is no doubt about that – but it is committing it in practice, even without intending to. Every day that goes by in this war, with its hundreds of deaths, reinforces the suspicion
By Gideon Levy
Jan 7, 2024
Anyone who sees the pointless continuation of the war and the dimensions of the killing and destruction in the Gaza Strip, who wants to put an end to the inhumane suffering of more than two million human beings has to hope, even if only deep in their heart, that the International Court of Justice in The Hague will issue a provisional measure ordering a suspension of Israel's military operations in the Strip.
For daily news, read the great work by The New Arab:
https://www.newarab.com/tag/gaza-war-2023
End of Empires?
Finally, last note for this month, before I head to the South of France for a bit of a break, and a few words on what is to come.
I have been working intensely on the history and legacy of colonial empires in the past few years, and since I went to Bristol in 2015, on the legacy and trauma provoked during the British colonial rule in the Caribbean and in Africa specifically.
I believe we’re on the way to some more positive changes and reckoning on that front.
I’ll be giving a talk on these issues mid-February in London.
In the meantime, you can read some of my work on Bristol itself (see here: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/edward-colston-bristol-statue-hall-black-lives-matter-protests-massive-attack-a9553741.html ), on Kenya (see here and here), and on visual arts, like my pieces about the work of Lubaina Himid and Hew Locke.
I’ll be crossing paths with their work very soon (more on that in the next posts).
For now, to get into the mood, you can also listen to my piece for BBC Radio 4, released in January 2022:
Melissa Chemam - An Installation by Lubaina Himid
Viewfinders: Ways of Seeing at 50
Episode 5 of 5
Released On: 07 Jan 2022
Available for over a year
John Berger was a storyteller, a novelist, a painter, a poet, a critic, a screenwriter, a playwright. He died in 2017, at the age of 90.
First broadcast in 1972 on BBC Two, Ways of Seeing was a collaboration between the writer John Berger and director Mike Dibb. Across a series of four half-hour episodes, Berger talked about how we look at art, and why it matters: "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled ...
In this episode, we follow Bristol-based French writer Melissa Chemam to the island of Zanzibar, to the refugee camps of Calais and into galleries back in the UK: "I discovered Himid’s installation ‘Naming The Money’ almost by chance. I came upon it in 2017, at Spike Island, an art gallery here in Bristol. It was part of an exhibition called “Navigation Charts”, which felt fitting for this port city with its complex past, enriched by transatlantic trades… Sugar, tobacco and enslaved people".
Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio
Thanks for reading as usual.
Let’s collectively hope that 2024 will bring more positive change that turmoil, but if not, it might be because some structures need to fall apart before something new emerges...
Stay strong.
with best wishes,
melissa
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Melissa Chemam
Journalist @ RFI English
Art Writer @ New Arab, ART UK...
Site: https://sites.google.com/view/melissachemam
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