"A World in Crisis, World in Revolt: Solidarity with the Peoples of Palestine and Sudan."
A Presentation to the International Socialist Organisation
(ISO) Zimbabwe Marxism 2025 Conference.
Venue: Briggs Zano Working Peoples College Campus, Waterfalls, Harare.
Date: Saturday, 06
December 2025
By Takura Zhangazha*
Dear Cdes,
Thank you for inviting me to this important annual Marxism conference. I am happy to say I know that you hold it annually with various presenters and themes.
So it is a personal recognition pleasure to be here and be part of an organic ideological debate.
I am a Marxist myself and I have a deep appreciation of Marxism in its variations.
An issue I will return to later in this presentation.
Though it is sad to say, it is now a rare occurrence to have these honest discussions within the context
of not only Zimbabwean politics but also global developments and identity debates.
Hence I am sure the leaders of ISO-Zimbabwe chose the topic under serious consideration.
That of how to look at a ‘world in crisis, a world in revolt” With a particular emphasis on Sudan and
Palestine.
And this is understandable for many cdes who are like us based in what is referred to as the Global South. We have witnessed the genocide in Palestine and Sudan in some sort of reality and also via mainstream and social media.
We are also witnessing the war in Ukraine and its neo-imperialist import based on the historical global cold war in which the world was ideologically divided between socialism and capitalism.
With capitalism claiming victory and now
trying to prove this historical point of it being the sum total of an ‘end of
history’ as had been previously prophesied by western academic acolytes and
apparatchiks.
As is now well known and discussed we have not reached any
form of any ideological end- game where neoliberal capitalism as linked to
neo-liberal politics prevails. Or ends 'history'.
Instead we now know, in 2025, that we probably have a new realignment of global ideological traits.
These new ideological battles center around almost complete ‘free market’ neo-liberal capitalism (via Trump) and its increasingly more visible alternative of direct ‘state capitalism’. The latter as defined by China, Russia and the oil oligarchies of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.
All of this in a new battle for control of
mineral resources that are now commonly referred to as ‘rare-earth minerals’ in
an age of tremendous technological advancement via Artificial and other
intelligences we are yet to find out about.
So what we have, cdes, is a mixture of history repeating
itself (i.e the vestiges of the global cold war/colonialism), technology as a new
key global competitive ‘rush to arms’ and the nascent cultural wars that we are
now confronted with about dealing with individual and collective societal realities
/possibilities. The latter being mainly via the rising importance of social
media in cultural consciousness.
So when we talk about Palestine or Sudan we have to
understand our ideological and time- based contextual placement. Even as Africans
We are now in a period where being African and a people with struggle history is being belittled. Even though we were assisted and also assisted the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in our collective anti- colonial freedom struggles.
Or where with Sudan we had to recall the fact of its
liberatory civilization, its civil wars and where it evidently requires Africa’s solidarity
today.
Even though this is the subject matter of today as advised by ISO, we have to contend with a newer global reality.
This being the globally funded attempt at
wiping out our own historical reality and our own national/ African continental
consciousness.
And I may sound like I am on repeat.
If you are a progressive African, you are of
the left.
No matter your
version of what you consider the same said ‘left’ to be. Be it Leninist, Maoist, Trotskyite, Nkrumaist,
Nyerereist or Machelist ideological narratives. Or whether you are Trumpian by persuasion.
But that being on that left means a search for an historical
economic and social justice.
Now what I know is that we cannot re-invent the past. As organic as it was and is.
Where as Nkrumah said, we neither look east, north, west or
south, we still have to look forward!
We now have to understand that our revolutionary imperative
is to look to the future and our role in it.
Both by way of biological and generational epoch age. But more significantly
by way of ideological clarity for posterity.
Cdes, we are at a global crossroads where our choices are increasingly
limited. We can choose to go left or
right. But we can also choose to combine
both and go forward.
Where we say the world is on fire we must know what the fire
is about. Beyond Palestine and Sudan. As
painful as that may be to consider.
The world is on fire because of its hunger for new
progressive ideas. And these are beyond privatized
financialised capital.
These are ideas of equality with the people and for the
people. A rallying point that we cannot run away from.
So as you claim a new car, urban residential property proximity to political power, remember where you are coming from and why?
As you do when you go to you own rural home. There are no narratives of arrival only. But there are also narratives of false consciousness.
These matters are beyond the immediately
material. They are also about what you think about the future of not only your person but more importantly your country and your continent.
The cdes in Palestine, Sudan and beyond in countries such as
Venezuela, South Sudan, Western Saharawi, DRC still require your socialist solidarity.
One in which they, like the rest of us, require
a life of peace, equitable prosperity and belief in a progressive future.
As we used to say in our anti-colonial struggles- “Aluta
Continua” “The struggle” continues comrades”
Warts and all.
We must remain optimistic that a better world for all can become a reality.
Ndatenda. Siyabonga. Twalumba.
*Takura Zhangazha spoke here in his personal capacity
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