These powerful words were found in a blood-stained book in George Jackson’s prison cell after the author and Black Panther was shot dead from a surveillance tower in 1971. The text was posthumously credited to him for 40 years but they in fact written by Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim.

There is a natural and deep fellowship between those united in a common and righteous cause, and the bonds of horizontal solidarity wrap around each other like roots girdling a tree. This is my love letter to all those caught in the struggle in Palestine and anyone struggling against a plurality of race-based alienations.

It was one of the architects of white minority-rule apartheid in South Africa, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, who drew this parallel in 1961: “Israel like South Africa is an apartheid state.” Since then, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have drawn the same conclusion. In a report earlier this year, Amnesty documented how “massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system which amounts to apartheid under international law.”

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu recalled: “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land. It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.” Throughout his life, he was steadfast in his assertion that the Palestinians were suffering under apartheid and he was a strong supporter of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), the Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality.

Solidarity can have a severe price when the stakes are this high. Some have paid with their livelihoods – in 2018, CNN fired the African-American academic Marc Lamont Hill after his speech calling for Palestinian freedom at the UN, to give just one example – while many others, including George Jackson, have paid with their lives.

In Britain, it cannot be forgotten that while the agents of apartheid were planting bombs at ANC offices in London in the 1980s, the British police were spying on anti-apartheid groups rather than investigating these operations, and Nelson Mandela was also targeted by government spies. In 1984, when The Specials released the hit ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ – the unofficial anthem of the anti-apartheid movement – it was illegal to display his picture publicly in South Africa. Today, there is a statue of the great man on London’s Parliament Square and the system of white minority rule in South Africa has been categorically discredited.

Recently, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States personally told me that the organisation had its funding cut when they travelled to Palestine and spoke out in support of her people. And I, like Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed el-Kurd, have been targeted with a long-running campaign to de-platform me due to my anti-apartheid position. I consider it a badge of honour and echo El-Kurd's prescient words at the United Nations: "All empires fall."

The subjugation of the Palestinians cannot last forever. They tell us that resistance is futile but history tells us that resistance is fertile, and we will continue to plant seeds for trees we may not live to sit in the shade of. Never think that you're broken or think that you’re no one. Remember, a rope is strong because of strings interwoven. And we shall overcome!

This story was originally published in Nataal issue 3 in summer 2022.