Everywhere it’s war
July 27, 2025, News from JAH 9
That until the basic human rights
Are equally guaranteed to all
Without regard to race
Dis a war
Bob Marley, War, Amandla festival, 1979
Soul rebels,
“The world today is hard to look at, let alone think of.”
These words were written 20 years ago in a letter to John Berger. John quoted them in an essay titled Let Us Think About Fear, commenting, “All of us can recognise ourselves in that crie de coeur (cry from the heart) - yet let’s think.”
At a time when independent thinking is being punished and social media discombobulates our capacity for thought, yes, let’s think.
Think of floods, apocalyptic fires, famine, wars present and future, heat domes, rainbombs and real bombs.
Think of the implications of ‘nuclear tripolarity’.
Think of elites watching gentleman’s tennis at Wimbledon, $100 million ‘tourist’ trips into space, deep dives under the sea.
Think of those making money from genocide when we could be spending money on meeting needs and human rights.
Yes, let’s think.
60 years after Karl Polanyi coined the term, the “great transformation,” another one is underway. This is a time of reckoning, The elites are pushing everything to breaking point. And making no bones about their intentions. Think about Gaza. Watch Gaza: doctors under attack, the film the BBC refused to air - even though it commissioned it.
Read: As mass starvation spreads across Gaza, our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away a petition signed by over 100 organisations calling for aid to be ‘allowed’ into Gaza.
Yes, let’s think.
As inequality exploded across the planet, in a lewd birthday message to Jeffrey Epstein, his partner in sex-crimes, Donald Trump wrote “there must be more to life than having everything.” 🤮But whilst Trump and 3,000 billionaires worldwide have everything the World Bank reports that over 800,000,000 (million) people worldwide have literally nothing. 🤔
The case for wealth control has never been stronger.
Yes, let's think.
Everywhere. All the time. People are in revolt. But are we resisting in the best way, are we amassing power, are our protests working, are we changing culture? Or are we like hamsters in a wheel, running faster and faster, over the same ground. Eventually exhausting ourselves, by getting nowhere?
Yes, let’s think.
The opposite of resistance is not apathy. It’s fighting for something. What do we want our activism to achieve? And what would it take to get there?
Activists who are beginning to resist differently are the subjects of this newsletter.
Thumbs Up: You can’t fool the youth
Let’s think about the forces for good.
In civil society in South Africa there is a changing of the guard. Those of us who built social movements and NGOs post-1994 are being succeeded by a younger generation. There has also been a demographic and gender shift in the leadership. Young women to the fore!
Some examples that inspire me with hope are, The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation Youth Clubs and Youth Capital who are reaching out to engage young people; and the Equality Collective, based in Nqileni village in the Eastern Cape, addressing community needs, honing activism and spreading ideas outwards from a community base.
Two weeks ago Equal Education, a movement of school learners set up in 2008, successfully held its fifth Congress and elected a new leadership.
Then there are new organizations embracing the new era’s challenges, like the Campaign on Digital Ethics (CODE), whose latest ‘Grifty Gang’ video is a classic:
Watch it here: The Grifty Gang | Episode 4: The Other Signal Chat
After the fire, green shoots of solidarity are reappearing.
In the last News from JAH I celebrated the work of SERI in standing up against xenophobia.
Little did I know that a few weeks later the sinister organisation, Operation Dudula (who have joined forces with the equally sinister MK Party) would march to SERI’s offices to protest their defence of the human rights of African migrants.
However, what this thug battalion hadn’t planned for was a peaceful solidarity counter-demonstration by Abahlali baseMjondlo (ABM), the 125,000 people strong shackdwellers movement:
Read: Civil society groups stand firm with rights institute against Operation Dudula protest
Evil doesn’t wait for language: We must name xenophobia for what it is
Listen to ABM President, S’bu Zikode here: SABC Lehae | Ukufumaneka kwempilo eMzantsi Afrika
On the international front, South Africa quietly resists intimidation to give up our denunciation of the genocide being perpetrated by Israel. We were one of the convenors of a coalition of brave countries trying to take measures to stop the wanton killing. After their meeting in Columbia they issued a Joint Statement from Bogotá. And, in a victory for climate activists, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued a ground-breaking opinion on states’ duties on climate change.
But, time is against us. To misquote Andrew Marvell's 17th century classic love poem,
“At my back I always hear
the climate crisis hurrying near.”
Collapse is outpacing incremental change. As a new study says “we have only 3 years left … to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.” I said as much myself in this 2022 article, How much time have we really got – five years?
Activists Unusual: “Tales from Southern Africa’s climate tipping points.”
Leo Joubert is a veteran science journalist who knows the clock is ticking. She is doing journalism differently. In the foreword to her passionate book about the climate crisis, Invisible Ink, she says it's time to “get shouty and frank” and to “reclaim agency and action.”
Resplendent winter wonderland: Photo Mark Heywood
So, in October 2024, accompanied by a cat called Mouse, in a vehicle she has converted into a home and office, Leonie set off on a three-year journey to investigate and experience the effects of climate change on the communities that mostly don’t make it into the news – to write what she calls “immersive story-telling.”
Leonie’s been on the road for 10 months now. She calls her website Story Ark “because it draws on the importance of storytelling and how we can use it to create a Noah’s ark for ecological, cultural and social conservation.”
Her tales are about wonder and the degradation; beauty and how we have despoiled it. Her most recent articles offer yet another example of how big corporations externalise the costs their products cause to society, and expect the poorest and weakest to clean up their mess.
My worry is that under a rain bomb of bullshit most people are too “busy” doomscrolling to read great journalism like this. We need a system that allows us to filter the noise.
“Bless the Bold Future”: Kae Tempest and Blindboy Boatman
Kae Tempest and Blindboy are two artists who are living and creating differently.
Kae (then Kate) first came to my attention with her award-winning 2013 poem, Brand New Ancients, a mythical poem of modernity, that finds the ancient heroes in the modern poor and sees in their odyssey through modern life the same tragedy, dignity and heroism that is the stuff of Greek mythology. He’s come a long way since then.
Bless the Bold Future is one of 12 poems in his latest album, Self Titled. In it Kae writes:
This is a time of great change
But the habits are deeply ingrained
And we don’t have the strength to rip up the old fabric
The illusion is heavy
And it takes a maverick
To stand in the crosshairs and say, I won’t have it
Coming from the same country that brought us Kneecap, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, Blindboy is one such maverick.
The reflections of a masked Irishman may not be your thing. But I challenge you to listen to The Mythology of Rain Smell on a hot day and not be moved.
Then wonder at how a narrative can seamlessly segue between petrichor, torrential rain, climate change, dogs’ olfactory sensibilities, Greek mythology, and the murmurations of Starlings and weave it all into one lyrical commentary.
Maybe you’ll find it as thought-provoking and strangely calming as I do.
If you find you like Blindboy and want to listen to more traditional forms of podcasting, there’s always his excellent interview with Jeremy Corbyn, who with Zarah Sultana is now in the process of forming a new pro-poor political party in Britain that he says is recruiting 500 people a minute.
Thank you for reaching this point in my newsletter. It’s written for love. My aim is to inform, inspire, introduce, alert, celebrate and mobilise. I look for the poetry in politics and the politics in poetry. I celebrate the good, and highlight the bad and the f@#*&%$ evil.
The links I provide are as important as the words that I overlay them with and I hope my research is your resource.
In case you missed it I’m leaving you with the brave performance of US comedian Jon Stewart, whose outrage at the cancellation of fellow satirist Stephen Colbert, led him to put his own job on the line. It’s performances like this that will make it impossible for the Trump-enablers and appeasers to ever deny that he was a fascist hiding in plain sight.
Watch: Jon Stewart Reacts to Colbert's Cancellation & Trump's "Bawdy" Epstein Doodles | The Daily Show
Speaking out in a time of genocide and war-induced starvation is when speaking out matters. It’s time we all spoke out.
Love and peace,
Mark
Heywood
If you enjoyed this newsletter please forward it to other soul rebels. They can subscribe by contacting me at markjamesheywood@gmail.com
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