To the youth left with debris

South Africans’ history taught us the cost of inhumanity and that it was defeated by resistance, so we must not be indifferent to those building inequality in the world

- Armand Bam

The world is not on fire. That would be too generous. Fire transforms; it clears the way for rebirth. What we're living through is slower, more insidious, a kind of moral rot, where creation happens without care and power thrives without responsibility.

Around us, a new world is being assembled piece by piece, stitched together by technology, economic systems, weapons and algorithms. But, like all creations built in haste and hubris, this one carries a haunting cost. The powerful build, but they do not stay to tend to the consequences. They walk away from the wreckage they cause, cloaked in titles and protocols, while others, often the young and the marginalised, inherit the debris.

We were promised progress. Instead, we got surveillance packaged as convenience. We were promised global cooperation. Instead, we got war livestreamed with hashtags. We were told we live in the most connected moment in human history. But when genocide unfolds in real time, when an entire people is reduced to rubble and mourning we are asked to see “both sides,” to perform neutrality, to scroll on.