⁣Last summer my wife, daughter and 3 of our Grandkids while
in Columbia visited San Basilio de Palenque, the first free settlement of
formerly enslaved Afrikans in the Americas who fled a life of enslavement.
Contrary to most history books, Ayati’s (Haiti) independence in 1804, occurred
more than 100 years after Palenque. Palenque is a unique place, famous for its Kmtyw
culture, language (unique blends of Portuguese, English, Twi, Gullah Geechee,
etc.) gastronomy and, of course, its HISTORY. They highly embrace education and
a very low crime rate. Uniquely all children must learn how to box, eliminating
‘beefs’ and other frictions, they are settled at the boxing facility.

They use the equivalent to the Mbongi, it’s called a Ma
kuagro. A communal meeting space that’s both a physical place and a social
institution, where the community gathers to deliberate, educate, provide aid,
resolve conflicts, decision‑making and maintain cultural
continuity.

In this talk, Shahid Bolsen breaks down what is actually behind the manufactured anti-immigrant wave sweeping South Africa — who built it, how it works, and why it is happening right now in this specific moment in history.
He treats it as what it is: not a sociological phenomenon, but a forensic case. An arson. And he names the arsonists.
Starting with the basic fact that South Africa is the only country in the BRICS+ world where the colonial management class never actually left — they lost political power in 1994 but kept the land, the mines, the banks, the media, and the financial system — Shahid maps the full chain of actors producing the xenophobia campaign: from the Oppenheimer family's think tank and AfriForum's Washington lobbying operations, through the Democratic Alliance and the Patriotic Alliance inside the Government of National Unity, all the way down to Leon Schreiber's Home Affairs ministry deporting 51,000 Africans a year under a program literally called "Operation New Broom."
He places all of this within the global transition from unipolarity to multipolarity — arguing that the anational owners of global financialized capital are not trying to stop the transition. They accepted it. They are managing it. The question they are asking is whether they can arrive at the post-transition multipolar world still holding the keys to its most critical continent.
Africa is the last open contest. Every other major region has been claimed. And within Africa, three countries have the mass to anchor continental spheres of influence: Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa. Egypt is effectively untakeable. Nigeria is under coordinated pressure. South Africa is already under management — and the campaign to keep it that way is running at full speed.
The xenophobia campaign serves three simultaneous objectives: it redirects Black working-class anger away from the colonial structure that produced their poverty; it severs South Africa's solidarity relationships with the African countries it needs as partners in any genuinely independent future; and it justifies a state enforcement apparatus — in DA hands — that is doing the actual work of African removal on the ground.
And it is the same playbook being run in America. Keep the poor fighting the poor, while the people who own the structure watch from behind their walls.
This talk connects it all — the street marches, the parliamentary coalitions, the Trump executive order, the PEPFAR cuts, the ambassador expulsion, the continental power contest — into one coherent picture.