Polemics about Gaza often reflect Israel’s complex relationship to African anti-colonial struggles and Africans’ own dynamic relationship to Zionism and the Jewish people. Gaza, however, also highlights the enduring richness of Africa’s anti-colonial past in defining the terms of Palestinian struggle.

The transformation from the OAU to the AU meant accepting that the challenges Africa faced had changed from those faced during the decolonization era. Among the new challenges, the most perverse were internal wars. The AU attempted to invest heavily in mechanisms that would ‘silence the guns’ on the continent. In Sudan and Somalia, it seems that silencing the guns has remained an elusive dream.

Beyond being excessive, Seychelles’ recent ban on Nigerian passports highlights the weaknesses in Nigeria’s foreign diplomacy and the inconsistencies in Africa’s supposed vision of continent-wide integration.

Over the last few weeks, France has seen unrest at the death of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old boy of Moroccan and Algerian origin shot and killed by police officers in a Paris suburb. The events dawn on the 98th birthday of Frantz Fanon, the Martinican psychiatrist who, educated in Paris, spent a critical part of his life in Algeria supporting its nationalist liberation movement against France, seeing the revolution as a ‘bridgehead’ of a pan-African vision.