Sello Hatang reflects about the state of the world, believing
that if we don’t act, it’ll be the same script. Just a different cast.
This morning, I woke up with Debra Cox and Whitney Houston’s haunting voices playing in my head. “This is a retake of my life…” echoed over and over as I went about the rituals of waking up. I played the song on repeat, letting each line soak into my consciousness like the first rain on dry soil. Like a soul yearning for peace. At first, it was just another jam about mjolo gone wrong, as ama2000 would say—mjolo is a scam—you know, that thing that turns even the strongest of us into crying emojis. But halfway through my ginger tea with extra lemon, it hit me: this isn’t just about heartbreak. It’s a global anthem. A manifesto. A cautionary tale for geopolitics. I found myself pouring these thoughts into the Open Politics platform—a WhatsApp group of sharp, influential minds. What began as a rant slowly unravelled into something deeper. Eventually, I realised I needed to write this piece—not just to vent, but to reflect. Let’s reflect together.
It’s a call to listen.
“Just remember you’ve been warned. Enjoy it now, ‘cause it won’t last…”
Same script. Different cast.
Let’s pause there. Because while some might say, “It’s just a song about a man and two women,” I argue that it’s a much deeper metaphor for how nations—especially Western ones—recycle their roles in history’s theatre. One day they are liberators. Next, they’re architects of chaos. Cue the lights, cue the lies. Lights, camera—now you’re on.
When America invaded Iraq in 2003, the world was sold a love story: a tale of rescue, liberation, and democracy. Gen. Colin Powell went on tour—not on Spotify, but CNN—convincing the world of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Except… there were none. Nada. Zilch. But don’t worry, folks, the show must go on.
We watched as Baghdad was bombed into democracy. Fast-forward two decades later: Iraq is still in turmoil, thousands dead, millions displaced, and guess what? No one went to jail. Powell died peacefully. Tony Blair became a globetrotting expert on good governance. George W. Bush paints dogs and gets invited to art exhibitions. If irony had a cousin, it would be this.
As South Africans, we remember how deeply our own Madiba felt about the war. I recall the story of how journalists were asked not to doorstop Nelson Mandela at a public event, knowing he was boiling with anger about the Iraq invasion. But Mme Sophie Mokoena, in her brilliant instinct, caught him before he got into his car. That moment gave us one of Madiba’s most iconic anti-war quotes: “One power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”
Let that sink in. And let’s be clear: I’m not talking about George Bush. Focus. I’m still talking about a song.
“Uncover your ears, girl. I’m not listening…”
Isn’t that what the world keeps doing? Covering its ears when truth whispers warnings? Pretending not to hear the cries from Yemen, Libya, Palestine, Sudan?
Pretending not to see when the same powers that claim to bring peace, bring drone strikes instead? One would think regime change comes with a refund policy. But alas—no returns, no exchanges. Let’s talk Libya. Another leading lady in a now-familiar storyline. Muammar Gaddafi—yes, a complicated character, not exactly a poster boy for democracy—but under his regime, Libya had free education, healthcare, and was relatively stable. Cue NATO, cue bombing, cue chaos. Gaddafi was “smoked out” like a pest, humiliated, killed. Again, Madiba was furious. “Did they have to kill him,” he asked Zelda when she delivered his papers with Gaddafi’s picture on the front page.
Fast-forward to 2025. Libya is a fragmented shadow of itself, a haven for slave markets and armed militia. Same script, different cast. And still, no Western official has stood before any international court to explain their part in this.
When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died last year in a helicopter crash, one of the headlines I saw online casually suggested that perhaps the “easiest” way to bring peace in the region was to kill the leader. And again, I shuddered when I saw two global leaders speak with chilling ease about how Iran’s aggression could be swiftly dealt with by eliminating its current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. How can the deliberate taking of a life be entertained as a viable path to peace—let alone discussed openly in the global media? Just like that. With the click of a mouse and the flick of a tongue. As if the future of a nation, a people, a region, can be resolved through a single death. These leaders seem to have forgotten—or worse, ignored—that the killing of other strongmen in the past did not bring peace, only prolonged instability and suffering. We’ve normalised such pathology, cloaking it in the language of diplomacy and strategic national interests.
And yet—when an African or Russian leader is even accused of wrongdoing, international arrest warrants are drawn faster than you can say “Hague”. Imagine if an African president had launched an illegal war. Imagine if a Russian head of state had been behind the bombing of a hospital. Imagine the sanctions, the summits, the statements! But George W. Bush? Tony Blair? They’re keynote speakers. Respected statesmen!
“He told me I was beautiful…”
“How did you know?”
“Because I played that scene before.”
This brings me to Mo Ibrahim. Recently, during the Ibrahim Governance Weekend, the philanthropist and businessman gave a speech pleading for a more equal world order. He reminded us that when people die in Africa, the world shrugs. But when tragedy strikes in Paris or London, hashtags are born. Buildings light up in colours. Leaders gather in unity. His message was simple: “All lives must matter equally. Peace must be peace for all, not just the West.”
And here’s the kicker: we Africans are always being told to solve our own problems. “African solutions for African problems.” True. But how can we solve problems created or worsened by those who later blame us for failing?
Remember Syria? Afghanistan? Mali? Somalia? In each case, there was foreign interference, military occupation, or support for questionable factions. Yet, the headlines say “failed African states,” not “failed foreign policy.”
And through it all, one nation has never changed its costume. The ultimate protagonist, antagonist, and narrator of the play. A country that invades and then invites others to “help defeat the bad guys who carry imaginary atomic bombs”—never mind that the “bad guys” were sometimes trained and armed by the same invader. It’s like someone poking a beehive with a stick, getting stung, and then calling in a flamethrower to burn down the forest. And we call that justice?
The same country whose sitting president was part of these wars continues to present himself as a champion of democracy. Is the world listening?
“Uncover your ears, girl… I’m not listening…”
But maybe, just maybe, it’s time we did listen. To each other. To the voices of the global South. To the victims. To the ones who have “played that scene before.”
Maybe if we truly heard one another, not just in war rooms or press briefings, but in the quiet desperation of displaced mothers and bombed-out children, we would finally rewrite the script.
We are allowed to hope. Just as love can be imperfect yet persistent, so can global leadership. We can imagine a world where peace is not a PR campaign. Where lives aren’t weighed by their passport colour. Where democracy isn’t dropped from the sky with missiles.
“This is a retake of my life…”
Yes, Debra and Whitney. And this time, let us change the plot. Let’s choose peace. Let’s choose humanity. Let’s listen. Even if just for one song. One moment.
“Lights, camera, now you’re on. Just remember you’ve been warned…”
Because if we don’t… it’ll be the same script. Just a different cast.
Sello Hatang is the Executive Director of Re Hata Mmoho.
