At an emotionally charged forum debating whether the statute honouring Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town (UCT) should be removed, a young Black woman took the floor to say something that resonated with the many young Black South Africans seated in the room and throughout the country: the time for negotiating Black pain is over. Transformation is now.

I spent a great deal of my childhood in limbo. I was born two years shy of the demise of Apartheid in South Africa. Never in it but not too far to have felt the repercussions of it. I spent my mornings attending predominantly white schools in white places only to have spent my evenings with my black family in our black neighborhood. Despite being underage, I found myself dealing with the hangover of my country’s white supremacist binge. I could never quite escape racism. It would always find me. It would always corner me, imposing and threatening as I helplessly tried to dodge its constant tugging at my young sense of self.