The Year That Was

Ghazala Wahab

In a year marked by horrifying violence, cruelty, religious divisiveness and oppression, two instances of resistance stood out. Perhaps, it was no coincidence that both were angry outbursts of the formerly colonised against their erstwhile colonial overlords.

In March 2024, Guyanese President Mohammad Irfaan Ali whose forefathers were trafficked as indentured labour by the British (either from eastern Uttar Pradesh or Bihar) appeared on BBC’s HARDtalk. Faced with his host’s persistent questioning on environmental damage Guyana’s prospecting of offshore oil and gas reserves would cause, he lashed out, “(What) …give you the right to lecture us on climate change. I am going to lecture you on climate change…” he told his interviewer in a tone, which was both authoritative and aggressive.

He ended his outburst with a question that everyone in the developing world would want to ask. “When is the developed world going to pay for it…?” When indeed.

Six months later, in October, a member of the New Zealand Parliament and ethnic Maori, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke tore up the bill proposed by the government seeking to reinterpret race relations in the country. However, tearing up the bill in the Parliament was not enough. Maipi-Clarke walked into the well of the House performing the protest Haka dance. She was joined by other Maori MPs and the people sitting in the visitor’s gallery. The protest was triggered by what the Maoris believe was the whitewashing of colonial history and the atrocities suffered by the ethnic people.

Heartening while these acts of resistance by the formerly oppressed were, they were merely two ephemeral drops in the ocean of tyranny that 2024 was--perhaps, the worst year in a long time for the weak and powerless. Not only that, there has