PALI LEHOHLA | Something is wrong with the lever if it took those seven deaths to move the earth

In a blog, Dr Róisín Read of the Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute at The University of Manchester wrote: “The universality of both human rights and humanitarianism demands that we see all humans as having equal worth. However, in practice, we are not valued equally. It is an uncomfortable thought, but the hierarchy of human life is starkly evident in the humanitarian area.” This reminds us of the genocide that has happened for months and counting in Palestine.

The dark side of technology shows the extensive possibilities human beings can get to, to other the other and to cause unfettered harm to the othered. Germany under Adolf Hitler applied rudimentary laws of identification to persecute the Jews and cause harm in Germany’s genocidal acts against the Jews. Apartheid South Africa applied the comb test to see whether marginal cases that were not clearly white from the texture of their hair, to define who is white or who is non-white. Pol Pot of Cambodia used education measurement to set the clock at time zero as he persecuted and mass killed almost six-million Cambodians. Harry Truman, the wartime president of the US, would target specifically cultural places of Japan to impugn harm with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki well beyond the dying days of World War 2, just to show the world what the US was capable of. It took scientist Niels Bohr to implore the world at the UN never to use atomic and nuclear devices in war. This has remained the strategy that mitigates the arms race to date. In this month 30 years ago, Rwanda went through a painful period, whereby the Rwandese deployed the Belgian and French technology of defining who the Tutsi and the Hutu were in the genocidal acts that landed in Rwanda.

The world is reminded again of the barbaric acts of othering. The world 70 years on of Israel persecuting the Palestinians is increasingly aware and responding to the genocidal acts impugned against Palestine. Thirty-five thousand Palestinians have been murdered and counting. More sophisticated equipment and artificial intelligence is being deployed by Israel for targeting the Palestinians. In 2002, Palestinian chief statistician Abdul Libdeh lodged a complaint at the UN statistics commission against Israel for annexing the census records of Palestine and using those to target Palestinians in their war of occupation.

South Africa in the case that it took to The Hague against Israel is beginning to prove the Archimedes principle. While South Africa does not have a monopoly on victimisation and victimhood, it shared a history that showed that the 79-year-old United Nations has teeth. It is the only centre that can adjudicate global conflicts, set the path towards development and make the world a better place. Archimedes said: “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the whole earth with a lever.” The Greek philosopher and mathematician noticed that if a lever was balanced in the correct place, on the correct fulcrum, it could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied. South Africa used this principle and acted on a South African product called apartheid to raise to the global stage the plight of the Palestinians. The bold step South Africa took was met with vitriol from the US and the UK and cold neglect from most of Europe with the exception of Ireland and the Scandinavians.

The hypocrisy of the US and the UK has been exposed after Israel killed seven citizens from these two countries. Within 24 hours of the seven being killed, President Biden expressed that he was “outraged and heartbroken” at the deaths of seven. For the first time we saw action being possible and taken after 32,000 “human animals” were decimated mercilessly. Only when seven real human beings were taken by the same force of Israel Biden dropped real tears.

The hypocrisy is seen in economics too. The advocates of free trade and market fundamentalism cry foul at China. Recently our diminutive lady Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary of the US whose wicked sense of humour is extensive, usually uses a platform to stand on so she can rise above the parapet. She now wants this same bench she stands on to be extended to the US to match China’s elegant use of Archimedes’ principle.

Yellen like Biden cried real economic tears as she warned “that China is too large to try to export its way to rapid growth and would benefit by reducing excess industrial capacity that is pressuring other economies”. We are back therefore to the UN. As Dr Naledi Pandor bows out of political life, she led gallantly and presented to the world the South Africa of our dreams. One that sees human lives as having equal worth.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa