“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer 29:7)

We now know that we have not just lost an election.  Those declared victorious are intent on desecrating and destroying the best values of a nation ruled by and for its people. They have dedicated themselves to creating a state ruled by and for its wealthiest citizens and crippling if not eliminating programs to further the equal opportunity of the most disadvantaged.  We have not just lost an election; the victors aim to  reverse all advances we have made towards becoming a multi-racial democracy.  They trample on this vision.  They hurl abuse on it with their decrees are intended to silence us and seize the country from us.  They would exile us with their reign of lies, intimidation and fear.   

But we will continue to find ways “to seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile”.  Jeremiah’s words for the people of Israel forced into exile in Babylon include words of encouragement and hope for all rendered disconsolate in our contemporary exile from the land we have known and loved.  They are stregthening words and they have called forth the words spoken in the past by the prophetic voices of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and King.

The election measured for us the distance between our prophets’ vision and a nation yet gripped by degrading lies, xenophobia, racism, and rampant militarism.  We have been cast back to an age of empire when most of the globe is seen as supplying the resources for the economic development of select countries.  Aid for new or long impoverished nations to enhance the well being of their people was one of the first targets of the multi billionaire charged with enhancing government efficiency.

I have personal experience of some of the benefit a small U.S. AID grant can have on lives in poor nations.  I administered the $10,000 grant the Disciples’ Church in Congo received in 1970 for construction of a dormitory at its farmer training center.  Youth from many villages were housed there while training in animal husbandry and growing vegetables in dense rain forest.  Pigs raised at the Ikengo Farm were prized in the provincial capital with the Governor visiting often to purchase a pig or two.  In a visit forty years after the dorm was completed the majority of the trainees were young men of “pygmy” Batswa ethnicity formerly ostracized by Ikengo’s Bantu villagers.

Entitled solely by  personal fiat, Elon Musk intends to curtail, or at least, severely cripple U.S. AID programs. Created by the Kennedy Administration to support the economic development of the new nations freed from colonial rule, the agency soon became the lead agency in U.S. contributions to fighting hunger, disease and poverty in the world. Musk and the new President’s attempt to eliminate U.S. AID’s programs carries out an aim to reverse history and return the world to a colonial era of white European domination in South Africa and the world.

Another Musk-inspired decree withdraws all forms of U.S. aid for black majority ruled South Africa. The focus on South Africa reveals the influence of Musk’s upbringing to age 18 as the heir of a white nationalist grandfather and father in the time of apartheid.  These facts make difficult an escape from interpreting this important U.S. foreign policy decision as anything but an act of resentment and vengeance for South African legislation returning land seized by whites to black farmers. Withdrawal of U.S. support for the further growth of the largest economy in Africa also seeks to punish South Africa’s firm opposition to Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Presenting the case in the International Court of Justice that Israel is bent on genocide of Palestinians confirms 21^st Century South Africa’s independence from its colonial masters. The new nation was one of the original members of the BRICS alliance of countries balancing U.S. and European dominance in world politics. The strength of that new alliance can be seen in South African leaders’ resolute position on the Israeli War.

 We exiles need not remain discouraged by policies inspired by white nationalist ideologies of empire.  We are joined in opposition by the vast majority of the world’s people who have thrown off the yoke of imperial rule and become independent nations in this ever evolving world. As British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, a Tory, noted shortly before numerous African nations declared their independence in the early 1960’s, “the winds of change” are blowing across the continent – and the world he might have added.  Those winds can never be reversed.

Formation of the new BRICS alliance of nations now encourages new and the long oppressed nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa to be steadfast in their independent political and economic positions. They are our allies in our acts of resistance and opposition to policies and ideologies aiming to turn back the “winds of change” continuing to blow across our world.

Jeremiah in the 7^th Century BCE foresaw the rise of other empires to challenge that of Babylonia.  After 70 years of their exile in Babylon, the Jews were freed by the Kingdom of Persia from their captivity and exile.  The prophet had paid attention to the “winds of change” in the world of that time and saw that in their return to Judah and Israel God would offer a new covenant to the exiles and would “write it on their hearts”.   Gaining their freedom confirmed they would now know their God to be a God of justice. Jeremiah’s words were echoed by Martin Luther King when he proclaimed “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”.  An abolitionist minister first spoke those words in the 1850’s.