Pan-Africanist Kwame Ture’s remarks featured in this edition of Wednesday Wisdom remind us that women’s empowerment is not an alien concept to African people. Long before Europeans touched the shores of Africa to bring us what they called 'civilisation,' our people revered African women rulers whom their enemies feared.

For instance, historians widely consider Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt during the 18th dynasty close to 1500 BC, to be one of the greatest pharaohs, man or woman. Egyptologist James Henry Breasted said she is the ‘first great woman in history of whom we are informed.' Under her leadership, Egypt’s wealth grew exponentially. Hatshepsut 'sponsored one of Egypt’s most successful trading expeditions, bringing back gold, ebony and incense,’ as noted by National Geographic.

What other African women leaders can you think of? Let us know in the comments.

Continued……Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5KekUaSmGY

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-herkimer-westerncivilization/chapter/hatshepsut

https://www.iamhistory.co.uk/home/2024/2/26/10-african-queens-in-history#google_vignette

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/hatshepsut

IBRAHIM TRAORÉ’S FULL-SWING CLAP BACK AT MACRON

In his powerful clapback to French President Emmanuel Macron's 6 January disparaging comments about Africans, Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traoré left no stone unturned on 13 January.

Traore (@capitaineib226 on X) pointed out that if anyone is an ingrate, it is Macron, as leader of a country that has profited off Africans, our ancestors and our resources. If God provides, then Africans have been gods to France for decades. Need we say more?

Video credit: Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (YouTube) (@rtburkina on X)

Continued….. Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8ycDPBWfB8

https://www.youtube.com/live/wAgSoGXSYec?t=4503s

https://www.euronews.com/2025/01/07/macron-calls-west-african-leaders-ungrateful-for-not-recognising-fight-against-islamist-te

https://www.crossbordertalks.eu/2024/05/08/france-africa/

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/739771.shtml

https://en.insamer.com/france-should-be-a-third-world-country.html

https://jacobin.com/2021/03/africa-colonies-france-cfa-franc-currency

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86w62z14q0o

NASSER: U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL IS THE PROBLEM

Over a century ago, on 15 January 1918, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was born.

Nasser was an ambitious Pan-African and Pan-Arab who sought to return all of Palestine to the Palestinians. However, that dream was dealt a heavy blow when Israel’s pre-emptive 1967 attack seized Egyptian-controlled Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. During that war, Tel Aviv also took control of the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.

In this 1967 interview, he dished out advice that would serve US foreign policymakers well today if they were not hamstrung by the pro-Israel lobby. 

Continued……The US arming, funding and providing diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council continues to thwart the dream of millions of Palestinians to return to their land. Israel has k*lled over 46,000 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Authority. However, the death toll may be as high as 186,000, according to medical journal The Lancet. Further, a 2025 Lancet report suggests authorities may have undercounted deaths by a staggering 41 per cent in the first 9 months of the Israeli onslaught.

As for Nasser, a heart attack took his life at the age of 52 in 1970. He left behind a legacy of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism that many Africans continue to aspire to.

Credit: @HistoryofOccupation (YouTube)

Sources:

Nasser opposition to occupaton of Palestine
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2008/6/20/arab-unity-nassers-revolution

1967 war
https://www.palestineportal.org/learn-teach/israelpalestine-the-basics/maps/maps-1967-to-present/

Gaza death stats
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-palestinians-statistics-40000-7ebec13101f6d08fe10cedbf5e172dde

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/10/deaths-from-israeli-attacks-in-gaza-undercounted-by-41-percent-study-finds

Lancet report
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/8/gaza-toll-could-exceed-186000-lancet-study-says

US financial support for Israel
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/politics/us-releases-billions-israel-weapons-military-equipment/index.html

US diplomatic support for Israel
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/middleeast/us-vetoes-ceasefire-resolution.html

https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts

Julia Sebutinde, the only African judge who serves on the International Court of Justice, made headlines in January 2024 for voting in favour of Israel regarding South Africa’s g*nocide case. Now, she is set to assume the presidency of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), though her start date is unclear.

Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam vacated the seat on 13 January after being appointed Lebanon’s prime minister-designate.

Continued……In January 2024, Sebutinde voted against all six provisional measures proposed by the ICJ aimed at safeguarding Palestinians from Israeli military operations in Gaza. As of mid-January 2025, the Lancet medical journal reports a 41 per cent undercounting of the Gaza death toll, which it estimated in early July to have topped 186,000, predominantly women and children. 

Sebutinde faced criticism mainly from Africans, including the Ugandan government, which clarified that her views did not reflect its official stance.

A May 2024 investigation by the UK-based The Guardian, Palestinian-run +972 Magazine and Israel-based Local Call revealed that Mossad threatened Fatou Bensouda, another African woman who had served as prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, over her 2021 announcement about investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes. 

Might Judge Julia Sebutinde be facing similar pressures?

Sources:

https://x.com/CIJ_ICJ/status/1879229776705245273

https://www.jns.org/with-vacancy-atop-un-high-court-pro-israel-activists-laud-bodys-vice-president/

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1152296

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/uganda-says-judges-dissent-world-court-ruling-israel-does-not-reflect-its-2024-01-28/

https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/europe/2025/01/14/pro-israel-judge-set-to-replace-lebanons-nawaf-salam-at-helm-of-icj/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/26/icj-rules-israel-must-prevent-acts-of-genocide-in-gaza-key-takeaways

https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204092

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/26/who-is-julia-sebutinde-the-judge-against-all-icj-rulings-in-israels-case

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/01/26/Who-are-the-judges-who-voted-against-most-ICJ-measures-in-Israel-s-genocide-case-

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-icc-prosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry

RUTO THREATENS COFFINS AFTER AI IMAGES OF HIM DEAD

The grim reaper is sweeping Kenyan social media - where a ‘funeral cortège’ of AI-generated images of a dead President William Ruto has gone viral. Some show him in a coffin, others in a hearse, and others still, burning in hell. It’s provoked a chilling reaction from the leader, who warned that “any youth placing someone inside a coffin will be the first to get into it” - which, while it got a laugh from the crowd he was addressing, is far from being a gag: it’s been widely taken as a threat in the context of the deadly crackdown his security forces have unleashed on Gen Z activists, especially since the mass anti-IMF protests that swept the country last year. They’ve been accused of abductions, torture and extra-judicial killings.

Continued….. Sources:

https://citizen.digital/news/50-people-dead-413-injured-in-anti-finance-bill-protests-kenyan-rights-commission-reports-n345993

https://x.com/kakarezz/status/1877748260489551899/photo/2

https://x.com/i/status/1878872149173166543

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/28/africa/kenya-president-halt-abductions-critics-intl-latam/index.html

https://mmsadvocates.co.ke/arrests-and-the-rights-of-arrested-persons-in-kenya/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/7/killing-of-pakistani-journalist-arshad-sharif-kenya-planned-assasination

https://nation.africa/kenya/news/mystery-abducted-turkish-nationals-pressure-kenya-release-4798220

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/20/ugandan-opposition-politician-kidnapped-in-kenya-taken-to-military-jail

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7dxz48e01o

‘HATS OFF’ TO COLONIALISTS FOR PAUSING WWI?

15 January is John Chilembwe Day in Malawi. It honours the anti-colonial hero of that name who led an uprising against the British in early 1915.

Chilembwe's exact year of birth is unknown, but is believed to lie between the late 1860s and early 1870s. In his youth, he had cordial relations with White British missionaries, who were pathfinders of Western colonialism in Africa. He worked closely with one of them, Joseph Booth, who facilitated his attendance at a theological college in the US in the late 1890s.

Upon his return to his homeland, Chilembwe's eyes were opened to the scale of brutality that the colonial settlers were inflicting upon the African masses, especially on the settler-owned plantations.

Continued….. The White missionaries' indifference to these spurred him to set up independent African churches. Soon, his churches were targeted by plantation owners opposed to his anti-colonial theology. They burned down some of them, but that did not deter him from continuing his work.

At the onset of WWI in 1914, Chilembwe campaigned against the recruitment of Africans into the colonial army to fight in a war that had nothing to do with them. This opposition eventually led him and hundreds of his followers to launch an armed uprising on 23 January 1915. Their first target was a plantation run by William Jervis Livingstone, a settler infamous for his brutality towards African workers.

After days of skirmishes with the British colonial forces, Chilembwe was shot dead on 3 February, and many of his supporters were arrested. 36 of them were later executed, mostly via public hangings, as a warning to other would-be anti-colonial fighters. However, this act of brutality had the opposite effect: it made the masses more determined to unyoke themselves from British settler colonialism.

The African uprisings led by Chilembwe were seen as such a threat by the imperial powers - who were also facing off in Malawi (then known as Nyasaland) in WWI - that Germany and Britain agreed to pause the fighting to quash the rebellion. This video tells that story.

Filmed By: @contentovereverything

Sources:

https://museumofbritishcolonialism.org/2023-1-14-the-chilembwe-uprising-of-1915/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Chilembwe

PROXY PROOF: MORE UAE-SENT WEAPONS SEIZED IN SUDAN

Evidence that the United Arab Emirates has a blood-stained hand in the war in Sudan is mounting. The Sudanese army has seized another batch of weapons labelled with UAE addresses after retaking a key city from the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. So far, Abu Dhabi has faced no consequences for its increasingly hard-to-deny role in prolonging the killing in Sudan.

BRAVE PROTESTER TO BLINKEN: ‘YOU ARE A MONSTER’

On 14 January, outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s speech on the ‘Middle East,’ or what we call West Asia, was interrupted several times by pro-Palestine protesters. They called him complicit for his work providing US arms, funds and diplomatic cover to Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza.

The protester in this clip called him a ‘monster,’ while another during the same speech called him the ‘secretary of g*nocide.’

Since 7 October 2023, Israel had k*lled more than 186,000 Palestinians as of early July, according to a Lancet medical journal estimate. This month, the journal reported Gaza authorities may have undercounted deaths by 41 per cent.

Continued……. The protester mentioned that a group has been camped outside his home to appeal to his conscience for over a year, yet they had not received a response. In July 2024, authorities forced a six-month-long protest encampment off the road across from Blinken’s home in the US state of Virginia, just outside Washington. Protesters returned despite the police and the Virginia Department of Transportation referring to the protest as ‘illegal’ and ‘unsafe.’

Video credit: @skynews

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjS77L-KzAU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcoQVPrG1n8

https://truthout.org/articles/secretary-of-genocide-blinken-speech-interrupted-by-pro-palestine-protesters/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/7/us-spends-more-than-20bn-in-aid-to-israel-middle-east-conflicts-report

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/10/deaths-from-israeli-attacks-in-gaza-undercounted-by-41-percent-study-finds

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext

https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/protesters-seek-return-near-blinkens-home-as-police-cost-tops-340k/3726822

https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2024/02/06/tony-blinken-house-protest-camp-gaza-ceasefire

REACTING TO 'TWO KITES': LOVE, LOSS, & THE IMPACT OF WAR

War is hell. While most of us are fortunate enough to witness it on social media, radio or television, it is far from abstract for millions of people worldwide. 

In Lowkey’s ‘Two Kites,’ part of his 2024 album ‘Soundtrack To The Struggle 3,’ he skillfully brings to the fore what love and grief can feel like in the midst of war. He tells of a man who loses his beloved, the one person who anchored him and brought him peace. Her death, caused by the chaos around them, leaves him broken and aimless, living in the shadows of their shared memories as ‘two kites in the sky.’

The song’s emphasis on love and human connection shows that relationships can be both a source of strength and a profound reminder of what is lost in the face of unimaginable suffering.

Watch the whole reaction video on X. You can find our work on Bluesky, Patreon, Rumble and Telegram.

TRAORÉ SCHOOLS RUTO ON DEMOCRACY

What should democracy mean in the African context?

We’ve juxtaposed two visions - the first, that of Kenya’s William Ruto, delivering a noscripted condemnation of last July’s military coup against Niger’s Western-backed president; the second, that of Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, speaking candidly from the heart on International Youth Day in August 2024.

Traoré rejects an imperialist version of democracy - crafted to serve a privileged few while leaving the majority in the lurch. Under this form, despite elections, policies are still forced on unwilling citizens. He insists that clinging on to this kind of democracy is tantamount, at best, to incompetence.

Continued……. Traoré could well have been describing Ruto, who has faced accusations of ruthlessly suppressing demonstrations against IMF-backed tax increases and poor governance. Yet, Kenya is often hailed as a beacon of democracy in a tumultuous region. Ruto was the first African president since 2008 to be invited on a state visit to the US.

Many would argue that these ‘accolades’ haven’t translated into a better life for Kenyans. Meanwhile, Traoré, often labelled a putschist by Western mainstream media, is leading a revolutionary anti-imperialist movement in Burkina Faso that’s transforming the lives of the country’s citizens.

So, with their contrasting records, who truly grasps the essence of democracy and freedom?

Video credits:
RTB (Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina)
Citizen TV Kenya

Sources:

https://www.thedailyscrumnews.com/how-captain-traore-is-turning-burkina-faso-into-a-model-of-african-independence/

https://www.sidwaya.info/journee-internationale-de-la-jeunesse-le-capitaine-ibrahim-traore-appelle-la-jeunesse-africaine-a-lunion/

https://khrc.or.ke/press-release/ruto-must-take-responsibility-for-protests-gross-human-rights-violations/

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/how-kenya-police-cover-up-killings-anti-government-protesters-2025-01-06/

https://allafrica.com/stories/202501130299.html

NYT CALLS FOR VENEZUELA INVASION

Here is New York Times columnist Bret Stephens agitating for an invasion of Venezuela on ‘moral and national security’ grounds. 

Perhaps this columnist has amnesia or a reactionary agenda, but history shows geopolitical and economic interests—not humanitarian concerns—drive US interventions. 

For example, the US focuses on Venezuela’s alliances with US adversaries like Iran and leans on issues like drug trafficking and migration to demonise the South American country. Yet, the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated Western economic sanctions killed about 40,000 Venezuelans between 2017 and 2018.