Kathryn Berman

Innovator & Strategist; Afro-optimist. Social, Cultural & Political Activist and commentator; Defender of Democracy. Impact Practitioner.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@_FreeExpression at @Wework_SA today. Commemorating #worldpressfreedomday and #media and #people #freedom. Marked by so much #silencing by #billionaire and #state collusion as well as unprecedented #media deaths in combat. And finally #rightscom last minute cancellation by #Zambian government

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

The launch of @CourageHubSA today in the permanent home at @44Stanley. A fabulous powerful #freedomday. Am amazing initiative. Congratulations to my #hero @cynthiastimpel best known as @saa #whistleblower.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

The launch of @CourageHubSA today in the permanent home at @44Stanley. A fabulous powerful #freedomday. Am amazing initiative. Congratulations to my #hero @cynthiastimpel best known as @saa #whistleblower.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

The launch of @CourageHubSA today in the permanent home at @44Stanley. A fabulous powerful #freedomday. Am amazing initiative. Congratulations to my #hero @cynthiastimpel best known as @saa #whistleblower.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

Thank you @ZackieAchmat. While the policy was promising with its inclusion of cutting edge regulatory concepts, despite those alluring shiny objects, the structure and conceptualisation was unwieldy, navigating a strange mix of consultant and bureaucrat voices. I was grateful in the past week that each of the 3 online forums that I have attended to deconstruct the policy, have treated it with more respect than I did. @sollymalatsi: May I suggest, Minister, that perhaps the policy be withdrawn immediately and you, the portfolio committee, and the DG enter into substantial public colloquia (independently mediated) ie: truly people-led innovative policy making would be a heroic move IMHO (sandboxing for the policy itself).

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@wework #Sandton has a special vibe today. @TEDxJoburg is here with the #redcircle. And people are sharing their views on #freedom.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@jozi_my_jozi. With my @impact4goodza team #lassie on #stilts. #bilal #facepainting and#zak #woodenart

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@zilevandamme Thank you for this - your lucidity and expertise. This was unconscionable.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

So: I travel to Cape Town regularly and am loving @FlySafair. Yes I am posting this to win the X-competition but genuinely the convenience and frequency of flights - and predictability of pricing - is a big win for #frequentflyers

#CustomerExperience #FlyWithFlySafair #FlySafairCares

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@BrentLindeque Always love you. Hello the helpers

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

#bokaap under control

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

#Firefighting #helicopters #Capetown

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

#Firefighting #helicopters #Capetown

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@BrentLindeque We love you @BrentLindeque

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

"Africa doesn’t need AI that works like #SiliconValley. Africa needs solutions that work when Silicon Valley #AI systems fail". SamanthaWolhuter at the @ITU @AIforGood #ImpactAfrica Conference who creates a tool for crisis management.
https://t.co/zUI0t9Dxpb
Logo still image here by hashtag @MushroomMedia
One of the exhibitors. Thank you @DriesuysUys

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

@AIforGood has reached #Africa. What a privilege. @aiexpo.

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

Really sobering observations today around the threats to Democracy in our beloved #SouthAfrica. {{Please log on to #youtube link}}. But, from my perspective, made even more so, by the assault on our individual and sovereign national democracies globally by the #broliSgarchy (thank you #carolecadwallader for the term) and #KingDonald - through #VLOP #digital #platform ownership and #algorithm #autonomy and manipulation. It is time for true #democrats to organise #offline through organisations like @defendourdemocracy and affiliates and #online and to reclaim our #democratic #rights

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

I am sad to be leaving this extraordinary organization today. But have to focus on my PhD in AI and justice. Follow the proceedings
#defendourdemocracy https://t.co/F99CjjekXW

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

I am sad to be leaving this extraordinary organization today. But have to focus on my PhD in AI and justice. Follow the proceedings
#defendourdemocracy https://t.co/F99CjjekXW

[Kathryn Berman @KathyLBerman]

And it's a full house for Day 1 of @TEDxJoburg COUNTDOWN. immersion starting at GIBS. But you still have time to book for tomorrow's incredible line up at @NiroxFoundation
Starting 10.00 25 October 2025.
Booking link here. But I have four complimentary tickets on offer. Please DM me. https://t.co/vuPJPxEQEm

[Dr. Ezzideen @ezzingaza]

I came back today. I thought I had known despair before, but what I saw today is beyond despair.
It is not grief, nor horror, nor pain. It is something colder, a stillness where even God seems to have withdrawn His hand.

The sky was impossibly blue. The kind of blue that mocks you, that makes you wonder whether beauty itself is a crime.
I walked through streets that no longer exist, streets that were my childhood.
They are now a wilderness of stone, wire, and dust.

A man stood on a heap, a neighbor, I think.
He pointed and said, “It’s here.”
I asked him how far.
He looked down.
And I understood: my house was beneath his feet.

I lifted my phone, as if the machine could recognize what I could not. The screen glowed; there was nothing to see. The earth had swallowed the distances. Even the smell of home was gone. It was as if the thread connecting me to life itself had been cut.

I dug with my hands. The dust burned. My palms bled.
My mother had told me: “Search for anything we can save.” And so I obeyed her like a son obeys the last voice that still believes there is meaning in obedience.

From a house that once cost my father one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, a lifetime of labor, of hope, of decency, I found two things:
a knife, and a pillow.

Two relics of civilization. One for necessity, one for illusion.
That is what remains of man.

I sat in the ruins, the blue of my shirt turned gray with ash, and I thought:
this is the end not of a city, but of meaning itself.

I thought of my parents, their hands, their faith in honest work.
How will they bear this? How will any man bear seeing his father’s roof turned into dust by a stranger’s hands, hands that will never know the names of those they destroyed?

But what tears me apart more than ruin is silence. No one speaks to us.
No one tells us where to go, who will rebuild, or who is responsible.
The politicians talk of victories, the generals of strategy, the world of peace and progress.
But none of them live here among the ashes. None of them stand where I stand, sifting through their own dead.

And those who claim to represent us, where are they? Where is the money they collected in our name, the promises they made before the cameras, the slogans they wrote while we buried our children?
Who among them will come to this ruin and say: Forgive us, we failed you?
Not one.

They sit in offices with clean shirts, counting our corpses as figures on paper. They say “reconstruction,” “aid,” “negotiations,” as though the vocabulary of power could fill the emptiness of a mother’s bed.

I tell you the truth: there is no crime greater than indifference.
The murderer at least acknowledges the victim.
But those who look away, they kill the soul itself.

I brushed the dust from my shirt, though I knew it was useless.
I wanted to see if there was still color left in the world.
There wasn’t.
The blue had become the color of mourning.

I looked at my hands. They were shaking, not from fear, but from the unbearable realization that we have become expendable to the world.
Our suffering is entertainment, our death a policy, our endurance a statistic.

I wept then, openly, shamelessly.
I, who once believed in the dignity of suffering, now see that dignity itself has been annihilated.
There is nothing noble in being forgotten.

If you are reading this, do not admire the style or the language.
Lower your head, and weep.
Because this dust, this silence, this cry, is what remains of us.

[TEDxJohannesburg @TEDxJoburg]

JEN VAN DEN BUSSCHE
Designing dignity into the basics of survival.

Urban innovator improving water & sanitation access.

Sandton + NIROX | 24–25 Oct

https://t.co/mzSu9qSv6a

#TEDxJoburg #DesignForDignity #Countdown