If it were to be put to vote, millions of lists would be sure to come up, reflecting each list maker’s soul of person. Democracy can be chaotic in such matters. Mercifully, there is no such competition and this is only an Intervention flight of fancy. Here, a list of FIVE persons considered to have seized global imagination most in 2022 is offered. It is a completely subjective exercise with no pretensions to objectivity but it is open to critique and, possibly, adjustment.
It is our contention in Intervention that each and every of the FIVE, in his or her own way, point at the direction and height the rest of us should be eyeing as opposed to chicanery and street wisdom in relating to other human beings.
Prof Claudine Gay
Prof Claudine Gay: It is possible that Prof Claudine Gay, the Haitian academic who is assuming the office of the President of Harvard University has a worldview and life practices in which ‘we’ do not even count, the system and what she represents in it will continue to attract attention to her emergence, well beyond herself. It is a record achievement – the first time someone of color and only second woman to hold the position.
King Pele: Pele’s achievement is being ‘voted’ the timeless king of soccer by global acclamation. The world didn’t need any actual election to decide that he is the unsurpassable rarity in the world of soccer. That is the second time the world would ‘elect’ a global king by acclamation. It did that to Michael Jackson, the king of pop. They, individually and collectively, give racism such an unreasoning, bloody eye by setting the standards so high through what Chinua Achebe would call ‘solid personal achievement’ contrary to the foundation of racism. No one envies their successors because, black or white, such successors have work to do to attain the degree of dexterity or footwork that both Pele and Jackson brought to soccer and music, respectively.
Ms Fulani
Ms Ngozi Fulani: She is the latest and strongest empirical proof of the claim that power is relational rather than the property of people on top. She brought down one of the most powerful women in the entire United Kingdom from her job last November when the woman, Lady Susan Hussey, turned her, (Ngozi) presence at a function in Buckingham Palace into a racial interrogation session. Generally regarded as the closest confidante of the late Queen Elizabeth 11, Lady Hussey was the selected godmother of Prince Williams and, by implication, close to King Charles 111. Yet, she had to resign from her 60 or so years job for conduct prejudicial to racial harmony after Ngozi Fulani narrated her ordeal on her twitter handle immediately she got out of the reception. She told the story of how Lady Hussey who was coordinating the Queen Consort’s event called to mobilise women against domestic violence walked up to her, pulled her braid to cross check her name tag and to ask repeatedly where she came from. Unsatisfied with the name of the part of London she came from, she asked her repeatedly where her people came from. Ngozi Fulani and other women with African or Afro-Caribbean roots who were witnessing the encounter interpreted the questions to mean that Lady Hussey was indirectly suggesting that their types – skin color, class, etc – might have been in the room but did not belong. The Palace promptly declared that racism had no place in the polity. The dust over Ms Ngozi Fulani, the Executive Director of the NGO, Sistas Space, has since settled.
Now, late Queen Elizabeth 11
Queen Elizabeth 11: The late Queen is one figure whose admirers and critics came together to mourn her. It was a reckoning with historical smoothness and style in exercise of power that even her critics could not but admire. Of course, her longevity in power meant that the world did not appear to have prepared for her departure even as quite advanced in age at her passage.
Putin: The Russian is at war, a war with implications for the foundation of the next global power configuration and, therefore, a war to keep looking at from different angles beyond right and wrong mentality.
