Resistance is not always loud or visible. Sometimes, it lives in the ordinary like the meals we cook.
A Choice That Carries Meaning
What we eat, watch, and listen to often feels routine, quick decisions made between lectures, deadlines, and social plans. But these everyday choices can carry far more weight than we realise. They can reflect our values, shape our perspectives, and, at times, become quiet but powerful acts of resistance.
During Anti-Apartheid Week, this idea comes into sharper focus: that resistance is not always loud or visible. Sometimes, it lives in the ordinary, in the meals we cook, the businesses we support, and the stories we choose to engage with.
Food as Memory, Identity, and Resistance
Across communities affected by conflict, displacement, and apartheid, food holds deep cultural and political significance. Recipes are passed down through generations, preserving identity even in the face of erasure. A dish is never just a dish, it carries history, survival, and belonging.
Palestinian cuisine, for example, tells stories of land, agriculture, and resilience. Sudanese dishes reflect community, migration, and shared heritage. In many of these contexts, continuing to cook and share traditional food becomes an act of cultural preservation, a way of saying we are here.
For students far from home, preparing or sharing these meals can recreate a sense of familiarity and connection. For others, engaging with these cuisines respectfully can be a way of learning, supporting, and standing in solidarity.
Beyond Consumption: Choosing With Intention
Resistance today doesn’t always take the form of protest; it can also take the form of intention. Mindful consumption asks us to think about the impact behind our everyday choices.
- Choosing to support local, family-run restaurants from underrepresented communities
- Engaging with films, music, and art that amplify marginalised voices
- Learning the cultural and political contexts behind what we consume
These small, conscious decisions accumulate. They shift attention, redistribute support, and create space for voices that might otherwise be overlooked.
In this way, what we consume becomes a reflection of what we stand for.
Community Through Shared Experience
Food has always been a powerful connector. It brings people together across cultures, creating space for conversation, understanding, and empathy.
On campus, this becomes especially meaningful. Cooking classes, shared meals, and cultural workshops transform learning into lived experience. They allow students not only to taste new cuisines, but to understand the stories and struggles behind them. These spaces foster more than awareness, they build community.
From Awareness to Action: Anti-Apartheid Week on Campus
This year, Anti-Apartheid Week invites us to rethink resistance, to see it not just in large-scale movements, but in the everyday choices we make.
Through a series of events, students are encouraged to engage with culture as a form of solidarity and action. These include:
- A Palestinian cooking class, exploring food as cultural preservation and storytelling
- Dabke dance workshops, celebrating heritage, movement, and collective identity
- Film screenings that centre voices and narratives often excluded from mainstream media
Each event highlights how ordinary aspects of life: food, art, movement, can become meaningful tools for awareness and resistance.
More Than a Trend, More Than a Moment
In a world where culture is often consumed quickly and visually, Anti-Apartheid Week asks us to slow down and reflect. To move beyond surface-level engagement and towards deeper understanding.
Because resistance is not always about grand gestures. Sometimes, it’s about the quiet consistency of choosing differently and consciously.
Sometimes, it’s as simple as what’s on your plate, what’s in your playlist, or where you decide to show up.
And in those choices, we begin to shape a more aware, connected, and informed community.
By Sadiya Alom, Community Organiser, Anti-Apartheid Week 2026