At the end of 2024, the youth won a major legal battle against the South African government. The case known as the #CancelCoal case was the first of its kind. Never before in South Africa had a climate-related case been led by youth activists who demanded that the government abandon its plans to build new coal-powered power plants for the generation of electricity.

Stilfontein will and must be remembered as one of the worst tragedies we have witnessed in the thirty years we have had democracy in South Africa. It seems that who we consider human, how we understand criminality, and who gets the right to a fair trial – and who does not – is deeply tied to the systems that allow for the government’s complicity in extractive violence and disregard for human rights of those it deems disposable.

Access to safe and clean water is a basic human right and critical for individual survival and societies. Yet, in Africa, more than  25% of the population spends about six hours walking in order to get enough water for a day — sometimes unclean water — which causes serious health problems and reinforces cycles of poverty.