There is a child
There is a child
standing on a broken road
in Gaza.
Not a soldier.
Not a strategist.
Not a maker of war.
A child.
Holding containers of water
heavier than their years,
as if the world
has already placed its burden
into their small hands.
And somewhere,
men speak of power.
Of deterrence.
Of victory.
What foolishness.
What profound
and tragic foolishness
that we have learned to justify war
while children learn to survive it.
I sit with my grandchildren
the same age.
They laugh.
They play.
They dream without fear.
And I ask myself
what have we become
that we can hold these two realities
in the same world
and not fall to our knees?
Nelson Mandela once reminded us:
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul
than the way in which it treats its children.”
And if we do not protect them
then we have not understood
what it means
to be human.
An Elder Speaks
I have seen this before.
I have seen children
rise in the freedom struggle.
I have seen their courage
become the conscience of a nation.
And I have seen children
slaughtered
by the apartheid security forces
in 1976.
I never thought
I would witness this again
in my lifetime.
And yet here we are.
The same pattern.
The same arrogance of power.
The same justification of violence.
The same silence of those
who should know better.
The cycle of human horror
repeating itself.
Why?
Is it because we have not learned?
Or because we refuse to remember?
This child on the road
This child on the road
is not someone else’s child.
This child
is ours.
And the road they walk
is the road we have built
through our silence,
our fear,
our willingness to look away.
So I speak now
So I speak now
not as a politician
not as an analyst
but as an elder
to those in power
and to all of us
Enough.
Protect the children.
End the wars.
Choose life over domination.
Choose humanity over power.
Because if we cannot do this
then everything we claim to be
everything we have fought for
everything we teach our children
is a lie.
The future is already here
The future is already here
standing barefoot in the dust
asking us one question:
Will you protect me
or will you fail me
again?
