What Africa owes Palestine

What does Africa owe Palestine? The answer is not money. Nor is it diplomatic theatre, slogans or the recycling of historical grievances.

Africa owes Palestine something more demanding: the consistency of principle that Africans once demanded for themselves.

Africa’s relationship with Palestine is rooted in the continent’s own history of colonialism, racial domination, dispossession and struggles for self-determination.

The Palestinian question became intertwined with the African liberation struggle because Africans understood that colonial domination could not be condemned as an injustice in Africa while being tolerated elsewhere.

The question today is therefore not whether Africa sympathises with Palestinians—almost every African government says that it does. The harder question is whether Africa is prepared to act consistently with the principles it has proclaimed for generations.

That question has acquired new urgency as Uganda prepares to participate in a proposed Gaza International Stabilisation Force while South Africa continues to pursue Israel’s conduct through the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

A Pan-African Commitment with Deep Roots

African solidarity with Palestine did not begin with the present Gaza war; it developed alongside independent Africa’s rejection of colonialism, racial domination and foreign occupation.

The history is not entirely linear. Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana initially maintained close relations with Israel after independence in 1957, including cooperation in agriculture and development.

But the trajectory changed as Nkrumah’s Pan-African and anti-imperialist outlook deepened and Israel’s occupation of Arab territories after the 1967 war increasingly conflicted with the image of Israel as another young post-colonial state.

Nkrumah’s importance, therefore, is not that he can simply be portrayed as a lifelong opponent of Israel. It is that his Pan-African philosophy located African independence within a wider struggle against colonial domination and imperialism.

That conception of liberation helped shape the political culture of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in which the Palestinian struggle increasingly came to be understood within the wider struggle against colonialism, occupation and foreign domination.

The African Union (AU) inherited that position. Palestine thus became part of Africa’s political memory: a reminder that liberation cannot be selectively applied.

Mandela Gave the Principle a Human Face

Nelson Mandela articulated that connection with exceptional clarity.

In 1997, marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Mandela declared: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

Nelson Mandela sculpture

The significance of those words lies in their universality. Mandela did not reduce Palestine to a humanitarian cause deserving sympathy; he connected Palestinian freedom to the meaning of South African freedom itself.

That did not require him to endorse every method used in a liberation struggle. South Africa’s own history was complicated and violent. The deeper principle was that the legitimacy of a people’s aspiration to freedom cannot be extinguished simply by condemning particular methods of resistance.

That distinction remains essential in Palestine. Attacks on civilians must be condemned, whoever commits them. But condemning particular acts does not require denying the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.

The principle is also reflected in Africa’s own human-rights framework. Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights recognises the right of all peoples to existence and self-determination and affirms the right of colonised or oppressed peoples to free themselves from domination.

The African Union’s contemporary position remains consistent with that tradition. In June 2026, the AU, Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation reaffirmed the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and an independent state and condemned policies of annexation, displacement, siege and settlement.

Africa’s official position is therefore clear. It recognises Palestinian self-determination, rejects occupation and annexation, supports Palestinian statehood and invokes international law.

The problem is the distance between those declarations and what individual African states are prepared to do.

South Africa Has Chosen Law Over Rhetoric

South Africa offers the clearest contemporary example of solidarity translated into institutional action.

On 29 December 2023, Pretoria instituted proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice under the Genocide Convention. The merits of the case remain pending, and the final legal outcome is awaited.

But South Africa’s significance lies in its decision to place the issue before an international judicial institution rather than confining solidarity to political statements.

The ICJ subsequently issued provisional measures concerning the protection of Palestinians in Gaza. The Court has stated that its provisional-measures orders have binding effect and create international legal obligations for the parties to which they are addressed.

Now comes a striking contemporary development.

On 25 August 2026, South Africa submitted a substantial dossier of information to the ICJ concerning Israel’s alleged non-compliance with the Court’s provisional-measures orders. Pretoria said the dossier was intended to assist the committee of judges monitoring implementation of the measures and to provide information relevant to possible action by the Court. South Africa reiterated that the orders are binding and said it would continue pursuing available avenues to secure compliance.

Whatever one’s view of South Africa’s broader foreign policy, this is an important distinction: Pretoria is not merely saying that Palestinians deserve justice. It is using an international legal institution to insist that international law be applied.

It has chosen to test its principles through law.

That creates a standard against which other African states should be willing to measure themselves.

And Then There Is Uganda

Uganda presents a very different contemporary dilemma.

On 6 August 2026, Parliament approved the government’s proposal to deploy a UPDF contingent to Gaza as part of an International Stabilisation Force. Defence Minister Kiryowa Kiwanuka told Parliament that the deployment was intended to support efforts to restore peace and facilitate humanitarian assistance.

Reuters reported that the proposed deployment could involve approximately 1,200 Ugandan troops and followed a request from US President Donald Trump to President Museveni. The proposed force forms part of a US-backed plan involving stabilisation, a Palestinian technocratic administration, Hamas disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal.

Uganda’s peacekeeping credentials are substantial. Its forces have extensive experience in Somalia and other theatres. Uganda can therefore reasonably argue that it possesses the capacity to contribute to international peace-support operations.

But Gaza is not simply another peacekeeping theatre.

The central questions are political and legal as much as military: What precisely is the mandate? Who commands the force? What are its rules of engagement? What is its relationship with Israel and Palestinian authorities? Under whose international legal authority will it operate? What happens if Israeli withdrawal is incomplete? And, above all, what political settlement is the force actually intended to protect?

These questions matter because a security arrangement can either facilitate liberation or inadvertently institutionalise the consequences of occupation.

A stabilisation force should not become a mechanism for stabilising an unjust status quo.

The South Africa–Uganda Contrast

This is where the South African and Ugandan positions intersect.

At the very moment South Africa is submitting fresh evidence to the ICJ concerning alleged Israeli non-compliance with binding provisional measures, Uganda is preparing to place its own soldiers in Gaza under a proposed security architecture spearheaded by the United States.

That does not automatically mean Uganda supports Israeli policies or has become Israel’s ally. But it creates a legitimate question about neutrality, legitimacy and consistency.

The question becomes more pertinent following the recent visit by Ugandan and Burundian military officials to Israel to discuss possible participation in the Gaza force. The visit to one party to the conflict politically raises questions about how an African force will maintain the appearance—and reality—of impartiality in a conflict in which Israel’s conduct remains the subject of international legal proceedings.

If Ugandan troops enter Gaza, their mandate should place the protection of Palestinian civilians, humanitarian access and Palestinian political agency at its centre. They should not become an instrument for policing Palestinians while the fundamental questions of occupation, territorial integrity and self-determination are postponed.

Uganda has frequently advocated African solutions to African problems.

The principle should not disappear when the problem is outside Africa.

Do Not Reduce Palestine to Terrorism

There is another danger in the contemporary debate: reducing Palestine primarily to the vocabulary of terrorism. The killing of civilians is indefensible, whoever commits it. But Africa’s history should make us cautious about allowing the label “terrorism” to erase the political history of a liberation struggle.

Colonial governments routinely described African liberation movements as terrorists, criminals and enemies of public order. That did not invalidate the underlying right of African peoples to self-determination.

The same distinction should be preserved in Palestine.

Africa can condemn attacks on civilians, whether by Israel, Hamas or any other armed group, without suggesting that Palestinians have forfeited their right to self-determination.

It can recognise Israeli security concerns without accepting permanent Palestinian subjugation. It can demand accountability by Palestinian actors without allowing that demand to justify collective punishment.

The protection of civilians must apply universally, but condemnation of violence must not be weaponised to justify collective punishment or erase the political history of a liberation struggle.

Principles Must Survive Strategic Relationships

A number of African states maintain economic, technological, agricultural, military and diplomatic relationships with Israel. They also maintain important relationships with the United States and other powerful Western states.

Those relationships are legitimate. But they should not determine whether Africa applies international law consistently. Africa’s independence movements succeeded because Africans insisted that principles were more important than the convenience of powerful partners.

If international law applies only when the accused is weak, it ceases to be a meaningful universal principle. If occupation is condemned in one context but tolerated when practised by a strategic partner, Africa’s anti-colonial legacy becomes diplomatic vocabulary rather than political conviction.

The issue is not whether Africa should have relations with Israel or the United States.

The issue is whether those relationships should determine the limits of African solidarity with an occupied people.

What Africa Owes Palestine

The African Union must move beyond declaratory solidarity. Any international force in Gaza involving African states should operate under a transparent, internationally recognised mandate, with Palestinian participation, sovereignty and political agency at its centre.

African troops should not administer occupation or substitute for Palestinian sovereignty. Humanitarian protection and access should be explicit obligations, and African governments should continue supporting international accountability mechanisms rather than invoking international law selectively.

Above all, Africa should insist that security cannot permanently substitute for self-determination.

Africa owes Palestine more than sympathy. It owes Palestine the memory of its own history: the principle that occupation cannot become legitimate merely because it lasts long enough, and that territorial acquisition by force cannot be normalised through diplomatic fatigue.

It owes Palestine the moral clarity of Mandela and the Pan-African insight that political liberation is indivisible.

Mandela understood that the freedom of one oppressed people could not be morally complete while another remained unfree. Africa should remember that lesson now.

South Africa’s continuing engagement with the ICJ demonstrates one contemporary meaning of solidarity: using international institutions to demand compliance with international law.

Uganda’s proposed participation in Gaza presents another possibility. Uganda can become another contributor of African manpower to an externally designed security arrangement.

Or it can use its participation, if it proceeds, to insist that security serves justice rather than substitutes for it.

It can make clear that Ugandan troops will protect Palestinians, not police their political aspirations; facilitate humanitarian relief, not become associated with its restriction; and contribute to a transition towards genuine Palestinian self-government rather than an indefinite external security regime.

That distinction will determine whether Uganda’s role enhances or diminishes Africa’s historic credibility on Palestine.

The real question is therefore not whether Africa supports Palestine. Almost every African government says that it does.

The real question is whether Africa is prepared to act and demonstrate that its principles mean something.

That is what Africa owes Palestine. And ultimately, that is what Africa owes itself.

The author is a senior advocate of the High Court of Uganda, former Member of Parliament and former State Minister for Foreign Affairs (Regional Cooperation).

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