Social justice
fromBusiness Matters
1 week agoAnisa Joy Leonard: Building Justice From the Ground Up
Anisa Joy Leonard combines social work and law to address systemic gaps affecting individuals.
For the first time in our history, more than 70% of Africans are under the age of 30. This, along with entrenched inequalities, poverty, unemployment and socioeconomic fault lines, is reshaping how our societies interact with one another and the world. This is Africa's most consequential decade. Leaders who take office over the next 10 years will have to deliver on difficult mandates within a political, economic and social landscape that has been fundamentally altered.
Not so long ago,I found myself staring at my laptop screen, unemployed for the third month straight. The media industry cuts had claimed another victim, and that victim was me. At first, I told myself it was just a temporary setback. But as rejection emails piled up and freelance gigs barely covered my rent, I started wondering if this was less of a speed bump and more of a dead end.
On January 22, artist Gabrielle Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo filed a founding affidavit in the High Court of South Africa in Pretoria, stating their intention to challenge South African Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie's unilateral decision to terminate the video and performance series, Elegy, at its national pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. McKenzie had attempted to characterize Goliath's piece, which would have centered Palestinians enduring genocide in Gaza, as "highly divisive" and not aligned with South Africa's interests - even though the country famously brought a legal case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague over allegations of genocide in Gaza.
In the displacement camps of Ad-Damazin in southeastern Sudan's Blue Nile State, the war is reshaping social norms and introducing new realities that are forcing Sudanese women into manual labour to survive. Rasha is a displaced mother. She has ignored old boundaries and perceptions of what a man's work is and started working as a woodcutter to feed her children. Carpentry is hard, but the axe has become an extension of my hand, Rasha told Al Jazeera Arabic.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. took a chance on me as a 19-year-old college student. At that age, as an intern in 2009, I should've been pouring coffee, maybe making copies. Instead, he put me to work on college affordability policy, youth violence prevention, and immigration reform at his Rainbow PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) Coalition on the South Side of Chicago.