Students are insisting that the social value of education must come before its commercial value. Just as land should not be bought and sold, so also education is not something that should be bought and sold.

The head of the African Union is a woman. The Prime Minister of Jamaica is female. Brazil and Chile have female presidents. The Vice-President of Zambia is female. Female ministers and powerful officials abound everywhere. Women are rising in power.

Due to a lack of faith in the state’s justice system, an angry mob set four innocent-until-proven-guilty young men on fire three years ago. That same judicial system is living up to the mob’s reasoning by its inability to secure speedy justice for the victims.

History has time and again shown that violence does not take place in a vacuum and until the ongoing issue of an illegal and brutal occupation is addressed, there is unlikely to be peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims in Israel/Palestine.

The WTO is located firmly in an old ethical order which puts profit over people; where those in power make the rules to suppress the powerless; and where this iniquitous and unjust world “order” (disorder) is legitimised by the ideology of neoliberalism. Progressive people must defy this iniquitous system and overturn it; it is not reformable.