International Politics

This Dossier unpacks how the language of genocide, victimhood, and humanitarian rescue is being weaponised to protect privilege and to reverse or retard struggles for equality and justice. It examines how whiteness is presented as vulnerability, how demands for equality are recast as threat and historical accountability as discrimination, and how this is happening at the expense of the many who are excluded from protection, recognition, and redress. The Dossier seeks to make these dynamics visible and expose the dangers they pose. In doing so, it hopes to contribute to political analysis, public engagement, and activism for human rights and social justice in South Africa and beyond. 

We are living at a political turning point whose consequences reach far beyond any single country. The last elections in the United States, and the popular endorsement of an agenda rooted in right-wing religious conservatism, marked more than a routine change in leadership. It signalled a deeper rupture in how power, belonging, and vulnerability are understood. A political vision once considered fringe has moved decisively into the centre of global influence. What is unfolding is not merely a US domestic shift, but a global one that is reshaping norms, institutions, and the language through which injustice is and isn’t recognised and named. This moment matters because it consolidates trends that have been steadily gaining ground: the return of authoritarian and colonial power logics, the erosion of the liberal world order, the selective application of international law, and the growing contestation of democratic norms. When powerful states model selective legality, disdain for multilateralism, and contempt for equality, they signal that an erosion or denial of democracy carries few consequences.