Attempting to Civilise Resistance to Colonialism

Every single colonising project starts off with the same premise: an unreasonable entitlement to someone else’s stuff. And justifying that premise is the ideological standpoint that all human lives don’t matter, or if you’re a liberal coloniser, all lives matter…just not equally.

Of late, I have been shocked to see the amount of people condemning Hamas into the brand category of “terrorist” but not the colonising state (and the other colonial states who support them) that began and sustained a consistently violent colonising of the region for decades.

If all life matters, then why is colonialism and colonialism’s mass violence somehow acceptable?

All the murders, including mass murders, admitted rape, abducting and/or imprisoning of children without charge or in contravention of children’s rights, the “mowing of the lawn” regular fest, the bombardment of civilian properties before 2023 and the sniper fire at unarmed children coming out of school or peaceful marchers, aiming to physically cripple them is all overshadowed by the moment of October 7th 2023.

Suddenly, the very western colonial countries that financed, provided media cover and consistently used their veto power to prevent any reversal of the never-ending colonising project expect the rest of the world (including their own citizens) to believe:

A violent attack on October 2023 overshadows the western colonialism and all the violence used to keep it in place before and after October 2023.

“‘France is fully mobilised to obtain the return of all hostages, the return of a lasting ceasefire and immediate access for humanitarian aid into Gaza,’ [French President] Macron said on X after the phone call.

‘It is essential to set a framework for the day after: disarm and side line Hamas, define credible governance and reform the Palestinian Authority,’ he said.”—Macron urges 'reform' of Palestinian Authority to run Gaza without Hamas, 14 Apr, France24

The same colonial countries that financed, served or protected the colonising project in the region are now demanding that the Palestinian Authority (PA) be the ruling political body over the region (in the midst of a current genocide they are doing nothing to stop), the same PA that is guilty of shooting grenades and tear gas at unarmed protestors in the West Bank who saw their homes violently seized and suffered continued fatal attacks at the hands of colonisers of the colonising project, watching at the same time the mass bombardment and drone strike of the Gaza Strip:

“‘Dozens of unauthorised roads have been paved by settlers and the army around settlements and outposts, helping to connect them while blocking Palestinians’ movement and enabling further seizure of their land,’ the report says…

During the reporting period, a total of 612 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by Israeli security forces and settlers. Twenty-four Israelis were also killed in alleged attacks or clashes with Palestinians. The current climate has further empowered Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians, force them from their homes and seize their land, the report says.

‘The line between settler and State violence [has] blurred to a vanishing point, further enabling an increase in violence and impunity,” it says, pointing to steps taken by Israel to further militarise the settler movement.

This includes the enlistment of thousands of settlers into Israeli security forces operating in the West Bank. The report documents a monthly average of 118 incidents of [colonising] settler violence, up from 108 in 2023 – which was already a record-breaking year.

A total of 1,779 Palestinian structures were demolished in the West Bank for ‘lack of building permits’, which are almost impossible to obtain for Palestinians, resulting in the forcible displacement of 4,527 people. The number of Palestinians forcibly displaced by demolitions rose by nearly 200 per cent on the previous reporting period.”—Israel ramps up settlement and annexation in West Bank with dire human rights consequences, 18 Mar 2025, United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner.

This public effort to “civilise” a pushback against being colonised is a tactic of those who have never been forced to (or easily don’t remember a) fight against the colonialism of their land, homes, minerals and sealine.

At the highest levels of power, it is a tactic of the complicit and collusive.

A move by the power-full to re-write or limit history and dismiss the harm inflicted across that history, especially when the record relates to the western colonial control of someone else’s land and resources.

People forget that the African National Congress (like many political groups of the rightful titleholders to African land in South Africa) were listed as terrorists internationally.

“Mandela remained on U.S. terrorist watch lists until 2008…

[Nelson] Mandela said in one of his interviews from prison, ‘The armed struggle (with the authorities) was forced on us by the [western settler-colonial] government.'”—The U.S. Government Had Nelson Mandela on Terrorist Watch Lists Until 2008. Here’s Why, Olivia B Waxman, 18 Jul 2018, Time.

The Times piece waters down the conscious use of violence to fight against western colonial control of African land at the time, which violence resulted in the killing of civilians:

• In 1983 - Church Street:

  • “The MK Special Operations Unit planted a car bomb outside the building housing the administrative headquarters of the South African Air Force (SAAF). The explosion killed twenty-one people, eleven of whom were employees of the SAAF and two MK operatives and injured 217. The Commission received statements in respect of eight people who were killed and ten who were injured in the blast. The ANC justified this bombing as having being aimed at a security force target There were large numbers of military personnel at the target at the time.”

• In 1985 - Amanzimtoti:

  • “MK cadre Andrew Sibusiso Zondo detonated an explosive in a rubbish bin at the Sanlam Centre. Five people died in the blast and over forty were injured. The Commission received statements in respect of four deaths and six injuries arising from the incident. Zondo was reacting in anger to the December 1985 Maseru Raid by the South African Defence Force (SADF). He was aware that civilians would be killed and deliberately acted against MK policy. In its first submission to the Commission, the ANC said that Zondo's act was not in line with ANC policy, but was understandable as a response to the SADF raid into Lesotho.”

• In 1986 - Magoo’s Bar:

  • “Three people were killed and about sixty-nine injured in a car bomb explosion at Magoo's Bar on the Durban beachfront. The attack was carried out by an MK cell consisting of Mr Robert McBride, Ms Greta Apelgren (now known as Zahrah Narkedien) and Mr Matthew le Cordier. The latter turned state witness at the trial. Apelgren was acquitted and McBride was convicted and sentenced to death three times. McBride was released during the negotiations between political parties in the early 1990s. The ANC noted that this bombing was ‘in line with the ANC's attempts to take the struggle out of the black ghettos and into the white areas. The target of the attack was the 'Why Not' Bar, near the Magoo's Bar because it was (according to surveillance carried out by MK operatives) frequented by off-duty members of the Security Forces.’”

• In the 1980’s - Silverton Bank in Pretoria:

  • “Members of an MK unit, Mr Stephen Mafoko, Mr Humphrey Makhubo and Mr Wilfred Madela were, according to the ANC, confronted by the police while ‘on their way to carry out a mission’. They entered a bank where they held customers hostage. This was followed by a shoot-out with the police in which two civilians and the three MK operatives were killed.”

• In 1987 - The Johannesburg magistrate's court:

  • “A minor explosion that was followed by a second more powerful charge minutes later. Mr André Duvenhage, a police officer at John Vorster Square at the time, was one of the personnel who attended to the first explosion not knowing that it was a decoy. The second charge killed him. According to the ANC, three police officers were killed and four police officers and six civilians injured in the explosion. Other reports claimed there were four deaths and sixteen injuries.”

• In 1977 - Goch Street:

  • “Mr Solomon Mahlangu and Mr Monty Motaung killed two civilians in a shoot-out with the police in a warehouse in Goch Street, Johannesburg. The two MK operatives had taken refuge in the warehouse when the police confronted them. They were captured and later charged.”

Before his colourful shirts, smiling dance routines, Morgan Freeman movies, Nobel Peace prize and decades in prison, Nelson Mandela believed in violent resistance to western colonial control of African land.

And so, the notion that the colonised owe the colonial forces peace or peaceful protest is a gross distortion of the nature of their relationship and the fundamental basis for their discord.

Colonialism always requires violence from the coloniser.

So how exactly is purely non-violent action going to end the colonising of your land, control of your lives and take over of your home that needs violence to accomplish it?

When colonising forces are at a loggerheads such as the descendants of Dutch colonisers and British colonisers fighting over control of African land that was not theirs to begin with, or, the fight between descendants of British and European colonisers and British colonisers over control of Native American land not theirs to begin with and over governing policies such as taxation, then mass violence, including mass murder, concentration camps and starvation by design against civilians is seen as horrific.

And that was horrific.

And human life matters, should matter.

But when it comes to the colonised, they are somehow meant to bear the injustice of colonialism and all the violence used to further it and keep it in place in some sort of stoic, biblically holy way.

And this must be done to prove that they’re human enough to resist the colonisation of their land, homes, minerals and seas. They are human enough to sympathise with…

How is this justifiable?

What should be focussed on is the source of the resistance, whether peaceful or violent.

Dismantling the unreasonable entitlement to someone else’s stuff, hiding behind religious or eugenicist views that all human lives are not equally human is what needs to happen.

Colonialism should not be okay in 2025.

The Gaza Strip are not neighbours with the colonising project living next door. They are the bulk of the colonised.

It is 2025.

Why are we still having to talk about colonialism?

If we are going to debate the morality of tactics of colonialism and resistance, we need to talk about the colonialism that started it all, in this case western colonialism that acts as the primary cause for human suffering on both sides.

End western colonial control of Palestine and resistance to it, even the violent kind, will cease.

Cure the cause and the symptoms will pass.