2026 and the Fight for a Just World

Welcome to our first newsletter of 2026!

I hope all our readers had a good end to 2025 and have started 2026 well.

What a contrast the beginning of 2026 has been to how we ended 2025. Shocking events have unfolded in the short few weeks of 2026 that fill many of us with trepidation about where the world is headed. Let me state some obvious ones.

First was the shocking invasion of Venezuela by the United States and the capture of its President, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on 3 January 2026. Second were the threats by the United States to annex Greenland that soon followed.

At the same time, a third occurrence with global ramifications was happening. Protests on the streets of Iran about the escalating cost of living saw protesters being killed in their hundreds, if not thousands. Not long before these protests, we had seen protest and repression in Tanzania take a deadly turn in November and December 2025.

These new crises broke out when there were already many others taking place: wars in Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and Ukraine, and indeed the continuing killing of Palestinians even under a ceasefire. There were also conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia, between India and Pakistan, and between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2025.

While we were looking to multilateral bodies through the United Nations to urgently do something to stop the chaos erupting in almost every corner of the world, there was the surprise announcement of the Board of Peace. Sixty countries appear to have been invited to join this new initiative that seemingly aims to displace the UN and form a new axis of power in the world.

The world is in a dangerous place. The old order that has somewhat managed to hold the world together since World War II is being vandalised. A new, multipolar order is being forged with violence and haphazardness.

As we watch the forging of this new world order from South Africa, our country is also being drawn into the redrawing of the map. While trying to use the instruments of the current order, such as the International Court of Justice, to hold accountable the violators of the rights of other people, South Africa has been subjected to threats and bullying.

Last year we observed more dirty tricks of sending aeroplanes full of Palestinians to South Africa under false pretences by an Israeli non-governmental organisation. Lately, we have seen a king in the Eastern Cape province being used to cause instability.

At this moment it feels like most of the world is in peril. On a global scale, dissatisfaction with failures of democracy to deliver a better life for people, grumbles about immigration and long-standing border tensions between countries are exploding into violent confrontation. From the streets of Minnesota to the plains of Sudan, and from the deserts of Yemen to the forests of Cambodia and Thailand, something very troubling is afoot. Canadian Prime Minister Carney recently called this moment 'a rapture' at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This moment requires us as an organisation to double down on working to build the kind of world Madiba worked all his adult life for. We want a world based on fairness, equality and dignity in which leadership means using position to make everybody's lives better, especially those of the people who are most marginalised.

We will ever more strongly use the shining example of Madiba's values-based leadership to work to make democracies work for people by fighting for equitable sharing of the burdens, resources and triumphs of societies. The world cannot be left to bullies to mess up any further.