Looking at the latest events across the world one can not fail but come to the conclusion that today we face overwhelming odds, the devil is launching his final assault.
He is wreaking havoc everywhere. We are hearing of wars and rumours of wars.
We are seeing wickedness in high places. We are seeing families broken up. We are seeing violence, lust and sinfulness everywhere. Evil seems to be triumphing.
Yes the devil is triumphing because how else do you explain the recent shooting in cold blood of an African American by two white policemen who were supposedly on the beat or highway patrol to protect life and property?
How else do you explain the actions of a man who deliberately ploughs a speeding truck into a crowd of holiday-makers celebrating the France National Day in Nice, killing hundreds and seriously injuring many others, some of them children?  What about the horrific shooting to death of three white police officers by a supposedly ‘aggrieved’ African American sniper?
Then look at the mayhem in Iraqi, Syria, South Sudan, Northern Nigeria, the Kenya-Somalia border area, the Gaza Strip, the Kashmir conflict zone and now the turmoil in Turkey where thousands of soldiers involved in a failed coup have been arrested and will soon face trial.
Why is there so much hatred for other people?
The world must unite against forces of terrorism – and it will profit no one if instead of condemning people choose to remain indifferent – turn the other way simply because the perpetrator is their kinsman, white, black, brown or yellow.
I entirely agreed with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls when he warned citizens that they have moved into a different age because ‘terrorism is now part of our daily lives for a long period of time’.
At least 84 people were killed and around 300 more injured when that ‘fanatic’ drove his truck into the crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the southern city of Nice last week Thursday.
“I have always told the truth about terrorism: we are facing a war, there will be further attacks. It is hard to say but more lives will be lost. It will take a long time,” Valls stressed.
Who will speak out? Where have all men and women of goodwill and peace gone?
It is in moments like this that one remembers great men and women, such as former United States president Abraham Lincoln and civil rights leader  Martin Luther King (Junior) who paid with their own lives for the sake of promoting civil liberties and racial harmony.
Another US President in John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) was, also, gunned down in down town Dallas in 1963 partly because he had extended the vote to the previously disenfranchised Negro whose descendants had been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa as slaves.
Nearer home, African National Congress (ANC) maestro Nelson Mandela was brutalised and banished on Robben Island for over a quarter of a century – not that he had pinned down to the ground and shot at point blank range a white South African ‘land grabber’ (as president Robert Mugabe would put it) or sadist baas, but because he desired to create a free and democratic country in which everyone, whether black, coloured, Indian or white, would happily live together.
One of Mandela’s top lieutenants and probably a future successor, Chris Hani, was shot down outside his Johannesburg home a year before the historic 1994 all-race elections by a Polish immigrant. Reason? He had been regarded as a ‘terrorist’ by the enemies of justice, love and peaceful co-existence.
And at the dawn of independence in the then Belgian Congo, now Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peace advocate and liberation hero Patrice Lumumba was murdered in 1960 by Katangese rebels, believed to have been bankrolled by some external forces opposed to his socialist ideologies.
Former Egyptian president Mohammed Anwar Sadat, who had succeeded Abdul Nasser in 1970, was assassinated as he took the salute at a military parade in Cairo in 1981. Why? Because he had first defied the odds and travelled to Israel before co-signing the Camp David Peace Accord with his Israeli counterpart Menachem Begin.
The US-brokered accord was seen as a first major step toward finding lasting peace in the conflict-ridden Middle East.
The great Mahatma Gandhi who had been at the forefront of India’s struggle for independence from Britain in 1947 was similarly assassinated by enemies of peace in the country, the second most populous nation in Asia after China.
What must be done to end the madness?
Gun laws must be tightened while the death penalty, stoutly opposed in countries like South Africa and even in America where nearly everyone has a gun, must be reintroduced and strictly imposed. It is no absolute solution but it is certainly a deterrent.
The following are brief dossiers on some of the world’s top peace-makers:
Gandhi, Mahandas Karamchand – 1869-1948: Indian patriot, social reformer and moral teacher. From 1893 to 1914 he lived in South Africa opposing discrimination against Indians. In the movement for Indian independence after 1914 he dominated Congress, instituted civil disobedience and advocated non-violence, and he sought to free India  from caste. After independence he strove to promote the cooperation of all Indians but was assassinated on his way to a prayer meeting. His teaching of non-violence has had great influence on many including Zambia’s first president Kenneth David Kaunda, Botswana’s Sir Seretse Khama, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Cuba’s Fidel Castro and many other nationalist leaders across the globe.
Kennedy John Fitzgerald – 1917-1963: The youngest and the first Roman Catholic to be elected president of the United States of America (US). Son of a financier, Joseph, who later became US ambassador to the United Kingdom (UK), JFK had a worldwide pre-eminence and gave the American people a sense of purpose to meet the challenges of a scientific age.
He opposed racial discrimination and initiated a new era of East-West relations, but his foreign policy sowed (unintentionally) the seeds of the Vietnam War. He and his younger brother Robert were both perished at the hands of assassins, the latter having been killed while campaigning as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 1968.
Robert (Bob) Kennedy (1925-1968) was between 1961 and 1964 the US Attorney-General and promoted the Civil Rights Act. Most people believe he was killed for supporting the work of civil rights leaders like Malcolm X, who was similarly shot to death.
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