South Africa, March 19 -- Every year on 20 March, the world celebrates World Storytelling Day - a reminder that for most of human history, stories were how communities made sense of the world. South Africa knows this tradition well. Across our cultures, storytelling, folktales and praise poetry have long carried history, values and wisdom forward. Stories were rarely just entertainment. They were tools for interpreting events, sharing knowledge and helping communities decide what to do next.

Yet something strange happens when those same storytellers enter the modern workplace.

They step into organisations dominated by dashboards, slide decks and (increasingly) AI-generated content. Machines can now produce emails, reports, summaries and...