Blessed are the youth, they have the purity of message

Students hold placards and a banner showing 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg (right), who seeks to stop global warming and climate change, as they take part in a sit-in against global warming in central Rome on March 22, 2019. PHOTO | AFP 

In Summary

• Greta Thunberg called us all out for claiming to love our children while continuing to indulge in the voracious capitalist-driven consumerism that is virtually guaranteeing these loved children’s future is being compromised.

By ELSIE EYAKUZE
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I was researching the dynamo behind the Fridays for Future movement and one thing led to another; next thing I know, I am reading their list of Most Impressive Youth of 2018.

There are “kids” out there doing mindboggling things. Like making cancer cures more accurate by using technology, improving internet security, starting cosmetic companies for anti-bullying purposes and, why not, being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. All before the age of 21.

This is the generation I have been waiting for: The Can Dos. Is there anything more uplifting than hearing what young people are achieving all the things we grey hairs mumble about and don’t engage with?

Like climate change. So the Nobel Prize Nominee behind the Fridays for Future movement is a young lady named Greta Thunberg who decided last year to skip school on a Friday to go stand in protest in front of the Swedish Parliament. Cause: in her opinion countries are not doing enough about climate change so she decided, aged 15, to do something about it personally.

This year, according to the World Economic Forum website and the movement’s own website, an estimated 1.5 million people around the world participated in a “climate strike” on Friday March 15 to lend their support to the drive for taking climate change seriously and addressing it as a global crisis.

Of course I checked. Three sites in Tanzania were reported to have participated: Arusha and Mwanza predictably, and best of all Nyangao Hospital in Lindi, which according to its website is a Catholic institution supported by Benedictine nuns. Yes, you read that right: Middle-of-nowhere, nuns.

Meanwhile in Dar es Salaam… I would like to think somebody did something and forgot to check in and report it to the Movement website. But I also know that apparently a gathering of three or more citizens can be considered illegal and with the current slap-happy paramilitaries we have cruising the city looking for trouble, it’s okay if the kids stayed in school.

Though this event took place last week, I would like to link it to Cyclone Idai, which has ravaged our southern neighbours Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi and caused so many deaths. With the caveat that climate change is not the same as weather, the one does cause extreme weather events to happen with greater frequency.

Tanzania has sent neighbourly help, but is that enough? Three sites of protest in support of a liveable future: Is that enough?

Greta Thunberg, dissatisfied with the lukewarm UN Climate Conference in Poland in 2018, gave a refreshing speech. When you are 15 years old, your political filters are practically non-existent which gives rise to a purity of message that can’t be faked.

She called us all out for claiming to love our children while continuing to indulge in the voracious capitalist-driven consumerism that is virtually guaranteeing these loved children’s future is being compromised.

This is the generation I have been waiting for. I hear you, girl.

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report.