When power is uneven, silence always flows upward. It benefits the strong, never the weak. Journalism that retreats into detachment under these conditions does not neutralise imbalance; it entrenches it.
One of the riskiest decisions I made this year was agreeing to moderate the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg, delivered by UN Special Rapporteur and human rights lawyer,Francesca Albanese, in October 2025. Risky not because it was unlawful. No law prevented me from contracting with the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Risky because we are living through vicious times – times in which power openly breaks international law and basic norms of decency, while punishing those who insist on naming it. Albanese is sanctioned by the United States for doing precisely what she was mandated to do: document violations and speak the truth about Palestine. In addition, Albanese has just recently been removed from Georgetown University’s list of affiliated scholars for her work on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
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This essential work has been reframed as provocation. Truth itself has become sanctionable. Many people I love advised me not to do it.
They feared that as a resident of the United States, I would not be permitted back into the US if I travelled to South Africa for the task. Albanese herself worried about my safety. She threw her hands in the air when she heard I lived in the US, and said: “I wish you had told me.
I am happy you are here but they will come after you. You may not be allowed back.” I listened. And I was anxious.
But there comes a moment when caution mutates into acquiescence and acquiescence into complicity. Injustice does not advance only through spectacular violence. It advances quietly, efficiently, through silence.
Through people who know better but retreat into the language of “balance”, “detachment” or “complexity” when clarity is required. Through institutions that mistake neutrality for virtue. Journalism, especially, cannot afford this luxury of detachment.
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