‘Acts of barbarity can happen fast and on a large scale… when enough people become numb. When we are indifferent, disconnected, atomised. Too busy with our own lives to care about others. Uninterested in and unmoved by someone else’s pain. That is the most dangerous emotion – the lack of emotio.
‘What I have most wanted to do is to make political writing into an art… my starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice.’ George Orwell, ‘Why I write’, 1946.
Ten million South Africans have not received their R350 relief grant in two months. They had hoped that once the grant was eventually paid, they would have at least R700 in their accounts to buy groceries. But they are still waiting – and hungry.