JAMIL F. KHAN | 2026 and the reckoning we delayed: Colonial power, global injustice and the myth of neutrality

We might be tempted to conclude that we stepped into a completely different world, in 2026 to the one we left in 2025.

Coming back to reality after our highly anticipated, yearly December break, we see that global diplomacy and its related effects have escalated into greater hostility from increasingly fascist European and American systems of governance.

Perhaps a hope in the ability of these systems and the people who run them to course-correct tempered the urgency this moment requires, while the rhetoric that “we all have our own problems” has served as blinkers that let us ignore the inhumanity around us.

The inhumanity in question, for those who might still be wondering, includes ongoing genocides in Palestine, Congo and Sudan, all with the significant executive powers of the USA, the UAE and Israel, and the multiple powerful western political and social figures being actively involved in, or knowingly adjacent to a global child sex trafficking ring.

A trafficking ring funded and cashed in on by royalty, politicians, celebrities, finance moguls, media, and people we will never know about.

In all of this, the blame has been shifted to immigrants fleeing their homes being bombed and stripped of resources, already-exploited social minorities and youth.

What we think we are witnessing is a sudden rupture in social relations, when it is, in fact, the natural conclusion of a world order built on the preservation of prejudice and power – a world order we have been threatened into accepting.

In South Africa, where the “problems” of African immigration have largely been pinned on Zimbabwean nationals, we have often heard that our social and political decline owing to corruption will lead us to “end up like Zimbabwe”, or in Gen Z speak “it’s giving Zimbabwe”.

Though this treatment of a very serious statement is often humorous, it is worth remembering, as one example, that what contributed largely to the economic demise of Zimbabwe is Western, specifically British imperialism and colonial backlash imposing sanctions on a nation that took back its wealth without asking for permission.

With this, I am not suggesting that Zimbabwe’s leaders do not have anything to answer for, since we have seen the suffering their brutality has caused the people, but that is its own conversation. It is simply to say that this is one, close, example of a nation being punished for demanding its sovereignty.

This demand was of course scoffed at by a Western world, which is now not only threatening to reinvigorate old-school colonisation of the resource-rich Global Majority, but also threatening to destabilise its own agreements to unite in terrorising the world.

It is easy to dismiss this threat when it is directed at a disobedient, “poor” African country, but when Western power starts to turn on itself and its allies we see the emergence of an unthinking greed that has many times before, seen the collapse of those civilisations. What does this have to do with us, when “we have our own problems”? Exactly the fact that “our own problems” are not simply our own.

South Africa, at the dawn of our democracy, was hailed as a shining example of a diplomatic coupe de grâce that did not reject the West nor retaliate, except perhaps in discourse and rhetoric, against its oppressors, but accepted a place in a global community of western-led cooperation.

Had we not taken this approach, and favoured a more aggressively retributive path, we most likely could have “ended up like Zimbabwe” who was punished for its courage.

The economics of justice and courage in a colonial world are plain to see, in a strange time where more of us seem to be standing up in opposition to it, while many are also being propagandised into supporting yet another wave of colonial terror that never truly went away.

In this lies a few points: firstly, none of what we are experiencing now is new, secondly, what we consider to be our own problems are shared with many across the world, and lastly, the source(s) of our shared problems as colonised nations lie in the colonial West either through direct, unprovoked aggression or collaboration with our weak leaders.

What we see today is the consequence of playing along with an unjust system that was always meant to kneecap us into submission for paltry comforts that benefit a minority, which we have been promised participation in if we obey the rules rigged against us.

As of now, South Africa is even deeper into a judicial and ideological standoff with Israel, and its allies, based on principles our freedom fighters died for. We are standing up to the world’s most powerful nations, greatly risking our safety in the name of a justice we know we have been unable to achieve alone.

The world is agitating for accountability, but also more loudly for solidarity and collaboration between those who know the terror of Western imperialism.

A generation that led us to sovereignty, but has failed to secure independence, sees its work turned over to a new generation that seeks true retributive justice through solidarity and an insistence on keeping our eyes on the real problem.

Our problems are shared, and we need each other to solve them. The potential for the world’s power to change hands has revealed itself in this moment, and even those oppressed within the core of empire are starting to look outside again.

While we may have to bicker about the many indoctrinated prejudices that divide us, we must agree that preparation for handling a different network of power that is truly shared by the people is a priority.

People across the world, enabled by the tools of technology have a chance to reach across artificial national borders and strategise a collective front against the terror of the elite.

We need to know and understand more about how our experiences are shared to understand how we resist our common terrorists. We will one day have to look back on this time and answer the question: “What did you do when all of this was happening?” If we stand together in this moment, we might end up with an answer we can be proud of.

Dr Jamil F. Khan is an award-winning author, doctoral critical diversity scholar, and research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.