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In front of the thick stone walls of the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town’s city center, Lucy Campbell, a native of South Africa, stands animatedly with her long, grey dreadlocks, her small frame being made more impressive by their towering height.

The 65-year-old activist-turned-historian has a message for the 10 American students who have come to hear her version of the city’s history. Campbell is well-spoken but wears a black hoodie and blue jeans, which often expresses her disdain for those who are to blame for Cape Town’s colonial past.

“This castle speaks to the first economic explosion in Cape Town”, she says at the beginning of her five-stop tour of the city. It’s a “structural crime scene,” the author claims.

Campbell refuses to enter the 17th-century castle, which she sees as a symbol of the violence and dispossession that the colonial era brought to South Africa’s second biggest city.

She says, “That’s where people used to hang people,” pointing to one of the castle’s five bastions. It was built by the settlers of the Dutch East India Company, commonly known by its Dutch acronym, VOC. In an effort to establish a drinking port between the Netherlands and other East Asian trading centers, the VOC constructed the fortress. The castle is now run by the South African military.

Since 17 years ago, Campbell, an accredited tour guide, has been conducting scathing critiques of the city’s monuments and museums for dozens of visitors annually. He has started at the castle and has been conducting private tours like this.

She says most official tributes, such as the Slave Memorial erected in 2008 in Church Square, fail to do justice to the enslaved people who contributed to the construction of Cape Town and often neglect to acknowledge the Indigenous population that lived here for hundreds of years before the Dutch arrived in 1652, displacing them and introducing slavery to the Cape.

Campbell can still discern the “genocide” and disappearance of the Khoi people, the indigenous herders who had resided on this land for a long time. She remembers her mother’s stories about how this history personally affected her family, who are descendants of the famously wealthy Hessequa, a subset of the Khoi. The Dutch seized control of the Hessequa’s land and livestock.

Known as “the people of the trees”, the Hessequa lived for centuries in the farming area now known as Swellendam, about 220km (137 miles) east of Cape Town. They were converted from landowners and cattle owners to peasant workers employed by white people with the arrival of European settlers, a trend that still exists today in many places.

Land ownership in Cape Town and South Africa as a whole remains overwhelmingly in the hands of the white minority. Additionally, rights organizations have accused white farmers of occasionally abusing and evicting predominantly mixed-race agricultural workers on a whim, a practice that has been practiced since the colonial era.

“Many of them have worked there for generations, and they are just being evicted”, Campbell says. There is no pension, it is. There’s nothing. The past’s ailments continue therefore.

The museum’s coloniality

With a resume that includes posts ranging from trade union administrator and mechanic’s assistant to historian, Campbell started her tours after working at the Groot Constantia estate of the VOC colonial Governor Simon van der Stel, now a museum. She first experienced history here.

When she started working on the estate as an information officer in 1998, she found that the history of enslaved and Indigenous people was largely erased on the property, including the “tot” system, the use of wine as payments to workers that dates back centuries and was still in use on some Cape Town farms years after the fall of apartheid in 1994.

Campbell left the estate and began a history degree, alarmed by this erasure of her ancestors. Armed with a postgraduate degree specialising in the history of slavery in the Cape, &nbsp, Campbell established Transcending History Tours in 2008.

Her academic research revealed that museums are inherently colonial in their own right. She discovered that human remains were held in museums, universities and in private ownership, especially in Europe. Human remains from the South African Museum, which were established in 1825, were used in studies to support racist ideologies, such as those that sought to demonstrate that non-Europeans were less than white. Even though these studies have been halted, the remains continued to be housed by these institutions.

Campbell and the majority of the Khoi and enslaved people who live in the Cape Flats, a largely nonwhite working-class neighborhood, would prefer that the museums she visits be decentralized and relocate there. She argues this would make the museums more accessible to these communities, bringing them closer to their personal histories and demonstrating that their current difficult living conditions and marginalisation are not natural or inevitable, but rather the result of a cruel past.

On a sunny morning in September as the tour leaves the castle, she says, “This place is filled with homeless people at night.”

A few steps away, past two lions perched on pillars at the castle’s entrance and a moat filled with fish and pondweed, a barefoot man is asleep on the sidewalk while a woman in a bra and camouflage pants scrounges for food in the shrubs. They are people of color, just like the majority of the unhoused on the wealthy city’s streets.

The tour passes the Grand Parade, the city’s public square and oldest urban open space, where the mud and wood predecessor to the existing castle stood. Before turning into a marketplace, surrounded by striking structures like the Edwardian City Hall, it served as the colonial garrison’s training facility for many years.

The parade’s most famous moment in modern South African history was as the setting of Nelson Mandela’s first public speech after his release from prison in 1990. Today, traders still trade everything from colorful dashikis (traditional clothing) to kitchen electronics in this area.

A “blazer” in the field

A few blocks away, the group stops to look at a plaque in St George’s Mall dedicated to one of Campbell’s heroes, Krotoa, a Khoi woman known as the progenitor of Cape Town’s mixed-race population after her marriage to a Danish surgeon.

Campbell claims that the plaque honoring her in this busy modern commercial area is superficial and disrespectful. It also denies acknowledging the woman’s historical significance. Campbell also dislikes the commonly used image of Krotoa on the plaque, which she says is fabricated.

She is a trailblazer, according to Krotoa, as I am aware. She’s an interpreter. She bargains, Campbell claims.

The niece of the Khoi chief Autshumato, Krotoa joined the household of the first Dutch governor in the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck, at about the age of 12. She played a significant role in the cattle trade, which was crucial to the survival of the settlers at the Cape, as one of the first indigenous interpreters. She also negotiated in the conflict that arose between locals and the settlers.

Krotoa eventually became the first indigenous person to receive the Christian name Eva and be baptized in van Riebeeck’s government as a result of her influence. She married a Danish soldier, who was later appointed as the VOC surgeon, Pieter van Meerhof, in 1664, and the couple became the Cape’s first recorded interracial marriage.

Krotoa was ultimately a contentious figure: Khoi leaders criticized her for exhibiting colonial behavior, and Dutch officials and she were accused of spying on the other side.

“She went right into the kitchens of the Dutch”, Campbell says. She once said, “I know you. I know who you are. You are unable to support yourself. Slaves have to do everything for you. ‘”

Campbell claims Krotoa played a key role in the first Khoi-Dutch conflict, which spanned 1659 to 1660 and was the result of a campaign led by local Khoi leader Nommoa, or Doman, to reclaim the Cape Peninsula. The Dutch were victorious against the two Khoi groups, the Gorinhaiqua and the Gorachouqua, and expelled them from the peninsula to mountain outposts about 70km (44 miles) away.

When asked what she thought would make a good Krotoa memorial, Campbell replies, “Monuments are hierarchical and Eurocentric. Where her memorial should be, I am not sure. I am aware that her story and memory should be a common one in classrooms and other tertiary learning. She and her Danish husband van Meerhof were sent to Robben Island. She also spent a lot of time at the first castle, which is now the Golden Acre [shopping mall] and her so-called plaque in Castle Street is a humiliation of the contributions she made to the struggle for her people against colonialism.

profits over people

Around the corner from Krotoa’s memorial in Castle Street, Campbell stops at another VOC landmark – the cobbled walkway featuring the VOC’s bronze emblem framed by an outline of the castle’s five ramparts.

She says, “I want you to see how the VOC is deeply rooted in the fabric of the city,” pointing to the street’s insignia.

Then she directs her tour’s attention to nearby skyscrapers, which she views as symbols of wealth rooted in VOC exploitation.

Workers taking lunch breaks as she speaks pass by stalls along the mall selling beaded jewelry, paintings, leather handbags, and other items. Most of these workers live in overcrowded townships far outside the city, which is famed for its French Riviera-like lifestyle and has often been voted one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

In order to explain the roots of capitalism in the area, Campbell says, “It’s important to speak of that company, the first company that came here.”

“It comes from there – profits before people. It dates back to the past. … The VOC is alive and kicking in the city”.

restoring memory

The most haunting stop on the tour comes next: the Slave Lodge. It is directly opposite the parliament building and the gardens that the VOC established to serve ships moving between the East and the Netherlands.

Thousands of enslaved people from as far away as Angola, Benin, Indonesia, India and Madagascar were housed here from 1679 to 1811. It was converted into a museum, and it now houses a plinth with the names of the enslaved people, including slave owners’ names when they arrived at the Cape, along with shackles and the reconstructed hull of a slave ship.

Campbell criticizes the clean exhibits, saying they stand in stark contrast to the building’s dark history of suffering and violence. One of the most horrific aspects of life there was the sexual violence inflicted by soldiers on women, including rape and coercion into sex work, often with payments made to the VOC.

According to Campbell, this violent culture has had a long-lasting impact, contributing to the Cape Flats’ current high rates of domestic violence and sexual crimes.

“The Slave Lodge does not get the reflection that it should get”, Campbell tells her tour. It has been thoroughly veneered and aesthetically pleasing. It doesn’t bring the voices of the women in”.

The tour ends in the Slave Lodge, where Campbell accompanies the tourists with a bizarre sight that they might otherwise miss. On a traffic island in the middle of Spin Street is the spot where the city’s slave auctions were once held. In 1916, a tree that had marked the location was cut down. In its place, a slab of stone was installed in 1953, inscribed with a fading and barely legible message about its historical significance.

The Afrikaner leader Jan Smuts statue, who is ostensibly positioned in front of the Slave Lodge, where the plaque containing his name has been restored to a brilliant gleam, is strikingly different from what Campbell describes as “it looks like a drain.”

In 2008, the city tried to rectify this oversight at the auction site, unveiling a commemorative art installation designed by prominent artists Gavin Younge and Wilma Cruise across the street. 11 granite blocks, all about knee-high, have names assigned to enslaved people and words that evoke their tortured past: “Suicide, infanticide, abscond, escape, flee”

Activists have criticised the installation for being too cold and failing to convey the deep wounds left by nearly 200 years of slavery.

According to Campbell, “Birds s*** on it, people sit on it, but they don’t know what it is.” “They have the names of the slaves that were held at the Slave Lodge, but there’s no story. In the end, it’s a monument that only serves the master because it doesn’t bring out the suffering of the people.

” I would have loved to see a high rise to bring out the memory of the people, … something more visible. “

In response to regional turbulence, Chinese President Xi Jinping has invited South Korean President Lee Jae Myung to a state visit to Beijing.

Wi Sung-lac, South Korea’s national security adviser, announced to reporters on Friday that Lee would meet with Xi in Beijing on Monday before visiting Shanghai, home to the country’s historic site during Japan’s 35-year colonial rule.

According to Yonhap News Agency, Wi stated that the leaders are expected to discuss “practical cooperation” in areas like supply-chain investment, tourism, and transnational crime.

Lee is anticipated to persuade China to play a “constructive” role in achieving “a breakthrough in resolving issues on the Korean Peninsula,” Wi continued.

In what analysts have described as an unusually brief period of time between Xi and Lee, which shows Beijing’s desire to strengthen ties before the leaders of South Korea and Japan meet again in what analysts have described as an unusually short time.

After Sanae Takaichi, the country’s prime minister, suggested in November that a fabled Chinese attack on Taiwan might prompt Tokyo to launch a military response, relations between China and Japan are still fragile.

Wi reiterated South Korea’s position on Taiwan on Friday, saying that it “respects the one China policy and acts in accordance with that position.” Taiwan’s status as a sovereign island is acknowledged by Beijing, which also allows for ad hoc relations with the self-governing island.

China wants to put a little more emphasis on South Korea’s importance than it has before, according to Professor Kang Jun-young of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

According to Yang, “China appears to have strategically decided it would be better to have Lee] visit China before a summit with Japan again.”

The Lee administration, for its part, has emphasized its desire to “restore” ties with China, which continues to be South Korea’s largest trading partner. It also asserts that Lee’s “practical diplomacy” aims to maintain strong ties with Japan and the United States, South Korea’s most important allies.

Seoul’s relationship to Washington and Tokyo was bolstered by Yoon Suk Yeol’s predecessor, Lee, and by criticism of China’s position on Taiwan.

Lee, in contrast, has stated that he will not support China and Japan in the Taiwan Strait’s conflict, which he maintains as China’s military exercises near Taiwan have recently increased.

regional strategy, and security alliances

According to Shin Beom-chul, a former South Korean vice-defence minister and senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute, the two leaders may also address contentious issues like efforts to modernize the South Korea-US alliance, which some believe will counterbalance China’s standing in the Asia Pacific region.

To deter threats from North Korea, roughly 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea right now. In response to other regional challenges, such as Taiwan and China’s expanding military presence, US officials have indicated plans to expand their capabilities.

At a forum on December 29th, US Forces Korea commander General Xavier Brunson stated that “Korea is not simply responding to threats on the peninsula.” The balance of power in Northeast Asia is shaped by broader regional dynamics that are at the crossroads.

Experts anticipate Lee to approach Beijing to encourage dialogue with Pyongyang because China continues to be North Korea’s primary ally and economic lifeline.

Lee’s outreach was called a “hypocrite” and “confrontational maniac” by North Korea last year.

Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, and Xi, the leader of North Korea, have both shown up in a significant military parade in September, which has fueled further co-operation between China and North Korea.

Culture and trade

According to his office, Lee’s visit is expected to concentrate on cooperating in crucial minerals, supply chains, and green industries.

The majority of South Korea’s rare earth minerals, which are essential for semiconductor production, are produced in China. The largest market for Seoul’s annual chip exports, which is a third of that country’s.

Officials from both nations came together last month to work toward stable rare earth supplies. Additionally, the visit might look into AI and advanced technology partnerships.

According to Balian Wang, the CEO of Huawei’s South Korea, at a press conference last month, the company plans to launch its Ascend 950 AI chips in South Korea in the following year. This will provide a competitor to US-based Nvidia for Korean businesses.

Following the deployment of the US’s THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, Beijing’s effective ban on K-pop content dates back to 2017.

India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar did what the country’s men, women, and under-19 cricket teams had reportedly refused to do on December 31, the final day of the 2025 campaign.

He shook hands with a Pakistani representative in public.

Jaishankar and Ayaz Sadiq, the speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly, were among a gathering of regional leaders that had descended in Dhaka earlier this week to attend former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s funeral ceremony.

In front of diplomats from several South Asian nations, Sadiq walked over and shook his hand in front of the Bangladeshi parliament waiting room in Dhaka.

He introduced himself and greeted me as he walked up to me and said hello, which I did as I sat up. He then greeted me and shook his hand in a happy expression. As I was about to introduce myself, he said, ‘ Excellency, I recognise who you are and no need to introduce yourself'”, Sadiq, a veteran politician from Pakistan’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), recounted the interaction to a private news channel on Wednesday night.

The Indian minister first met Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives delegations before approaching him once Jaishankar entered the room, according to Sadiq.

He was aware of his actions. He realised the presence of other people in the room, but he had a smile on his face, and he was well aware”, the Pakistani politician added.

The office of Sadiq shared images of the handshake, as well as those that were posted on Muhammad Yunus’ X account, Bangladesh’s interim government’s chief adviser.

This was in stark contrast to what happened in September when Suryakumar Yadav and his players, who were playing in an Asia Cup match against Pakistan, refused to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts. The tournament, played in the United Arab Emirates and won by India after beating Pakistan in a thrilling final, underscored how deeply resentful relations between the two neighbours had become.

The most recent and most serious chapter in an antagonism that dates back to their violent separation from British rule in 1947 was a furious four-day aerial conflict in May, in which both nuclear-armed nations declared themselves winners.

Before Wednesday’s handshake, Jaishankar’s handshake on Wednesday reinforced how political tensions had permeated almost every public interaction between these two countries.

While some Indian commentators viewed the interaction negatively, voices in Pakistan saw it as a possible signal of a modest thaw in an otherwise icy relationship.

According to Mustafa Hyder Sayed, a foreign policy analyst based in Islamabad, “I think the interaction between Jaishankar and Ayaz Sadiq is a welcome development for the new year.”

He said, “I believe the bare minimum that was absent after the war between India and Pakistan is basic normalcy of relations where respect is accorded to officials and hands are shaken.”

Rivalry hardens

After an attack in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, where 26 civilians were killed by gunmen, relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have deteriorated for years, and they have deteriorated even further.

India withdrew from the six-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), which regulates the use of the six rivers that the neighbours share in the Indus basin, and placed Pakistan at the center.

Pakistan denied responsibility, but in early May, the two countries fought an intense four-day air war, targeting each other’s military bases with missiles and drones in their most serious confrontation in nearly three decades.

After American intervention, which Pakistan nominated US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, the fighting came to an end.

In line with its long-standing opposition to third-party mediation, India insisted the ceasefire was reached through direct communication between the two countries.

Since then, ties have remained tense, with fears of renewed conflict never far from the surface.

Leaders from both parties exchange sharp words. Both nations have conducted military exercises and ballistic missile tests.

Against that backdrop, some analysts say the handshake in Dhaka could be significant.

Former Pakistani ambassador to the US, Sardar Masood Khan, described the handshake as a pleasant diplomatic gesture.

According to Khan, “One can’t imagine that the Indian foreign minister would spontaneously greet Pakistan’s speaker without the Indian prime minister’s and senior Bharatiya Janata Party officials’ consent,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to India’s Hindu-majoritarian ruling party.

Khan, who has also served as Pakistan’s envoy to the United Nations and China, referred to how the US – while announcing the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad in May – had “nudged” the two sides towards talks in a neutral country.

At the time, India had rejected those calls, saying that talking with Pakistan would be in vain until it stopped cross-border fighters from entering India to launch attacks. India has long accused Pakistan of funding “terrorism” on its soil, but recently Pakistan has refuted those accusations, accusing New Delhi of supporting separatists against Islamabad.

Each side rejects the other’s accusations, though Pakistan has, at times, accepted that the perpetrators of some of the biggest attacks on Indian soil in recent years – such as in Mumbai in 2008 – did come from Pakistan.

Bangladesh was once a part of Pakistan as its eastern wing before, with the aid of India, it gained independence in 1971 after Pakistani troops surrendered and thousands of its soldiers were taken as prisoners of war.

The handshake is beneficial for the region, Khan said, but there are many ifs and buts ahead.

Rezaul Hasan Laskar, foreign affairs editor at India’s Hindustan Times newspaper, played down the significance of the interaction.

When they find themselves in such a situation, the two “took their turn” while they were in the same room. They exchanged pleasantries and shaken hands, Laskar told Al Jazeera.

He said it was “significant” that all photographs of the encounter emerged from Bangladeshi and Pakistani official social media accounts – rather than from India.

Since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when gunmen affiliated with Pakistan have killed 166 people, Laskar noted, there hasn’t been any meaningful official dialogue between India and Pakistan.

Given the growing trust gap, he said, “It’s difficult to see the two sides coming together in any way.”

Hydro politics

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) was decided by India, in my opinion, to be the most important outcome of the May conflict.

The Indus, Chenab, and Jhelum rivers, which all flow from India or Indian-administered Kashmir, are crucial to Pakistan’s population, which it claims is a grave threat to its population.

Khan, the former diplomat, said that if India were to rethink its position and return to the IWT, it would “be a big confidence-building measure and a harbinger for a semblance of rapprochement”.

Laskar, however, had mixed feelings.

The IWT’s suspension shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone following recent tensions between India and Pakistan, he said.

“This has the potential for becoming a new permanent hurdle between the two sides, especially since there are virtually no official contacts between them”.

Uncertain thaw

Pakistan’s position in the world’s political arena has increased recently, according to analysts, marking the first time the nation has been viewed as a major international player in a decade.

In South Asia, following the ouster of Indian ally Sheikh Hasina, the former Bangladesh prime minister, it has revived its ties with Bangladesh as well, with several high-profile visits between the two countries.

Islamabad has also forged more ties with Middle Eastern, US, and China. Trump has actually praised Pakistan’s leadership on numerous occasions in public and most recently called Asim Munir, the army’s top commander, “favorite field marshal.”

Pakistan is expected to be part of a controversial US-led international stabilisation force proposed to oversee security in Gaza, and it also signed a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia in September.

Meanwhile, Washington has been putting pressure on India diplomatically. Trump has repeatedly mentioned the May conflict and appeared to support Pakistan’s claims that several Indian fighter jets had been shot down.

The US president has also imposed tariffs of nearly 50 percent on India, while Pakistan received a lower rate of 19 percent.

Could New Delhi and Islamabad experience a detente in 2026 given Pakistan’s apparent diplomatic expansion?

Both nations should maintain at least minimal engagement, according to Sayed, the analyst for foreign policy.

“They can have a very basic, minimal agenda, in which they should define the rules, red lines and set guardrails. They can then engage in a basic level of dialogue that is reached with both’s consent, he said.

Given the sourness of the May conflict, Khan was skeptical.

Laskar said India has steadily escalated its responses to attacks since 2019 and that the May 2025 conflict showed how far both sides were prepared to go.

In response, he claimed, it was crucial to restart back-channel communications between Pakistani intelligence officials and India’s national security adviser because the system had previously worked.

Field Marshal Asim Munir’s consolidation of power, his ability to establish a personal relationship with US President Donald Trump, and the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia mutual defense agreement are all factors that will be taken into account when New Delhi decides to proceed, according to Laskar.

Sayed agreed, saying a “pre-determined and mutually agreed mechanism” to handle incidents of violence, rather than immediate blame, would be a significant step forward.

He said, “I think India has also understood that it cannot get away with pretending or acknowledging that Pakistan exists.”