When there's nothing left to lose, it's time to take a stand

The thing about being free is that you only really appreciate it once you have been unfree. We South Africans know this - especially young South Africans; under MAGA, the Americans are learning it

- Marianne Thamm

The thing about freedom is that those born to it take it for granted.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson sang in Me and Bobby McGee, a song about liberation from constraints and limitations.

Those once unfree, like the vast population of South Africans who grew up before 1994, know what it feels like to be free. Anyone who has survived an authoritarian government understands the feeling.

To be able to speak your mind, love who you love, think for yourself, make a meaningful life, call out the corrupt while living in peace with others is the aim of a constitutional democracy.

The freedom of religion, the freedom not to believe, the freedom to start a political party, the freedom to talk back to the president.

In South Africa, we are all free but we are not all equal. Technically, our Constitution offers all the tools needed to address and redress centuries of imbalance and inequality.

South Africans are, for once, not at the political knife-edge where we have had to live for hundreds of years. We are free. We should cherish this

Hobbled freedom

However, these are freedoms that are hobbled for those who have been excluded and deprived of some of those fundamental rights, including personal dignity, affordable or public housing, public education and public health.