Failure Isn't Final. Harold Mawela

 The Unlayered Life: When Your Yes Means Yes in a Nation of Maybe Scripture: “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no.” (Matthew 5:37) Part One: The Diagnosis — A Nation of Masks Let me tell you about a Tuesday that still haunts me. I was sitting at Wonder Park Mall in Akasia you know the place, where the rooibos tea is always too hot and the air-conditioning fights a losing battle against the Pretoria summer. Across from me sat a man I had known for fifteen years. A deacon. A father. A man who had prayed over my family more times than I could count. He was crying. Not the quiet, dignified tears of a man who has learned to suffer in silence. No these were the ugly, heaving sobs of a soul that had finally run out of rooms to hide in. He had been living two lives for seven years. At church, he was the model of faithfulness. At work, he was the executive who closed deals with handshakes he never honoured. At home, he was a ghost  present in body, absent in everything that mattered. ...

 The Fetters and the Freedom Scripture: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." (Galatians 5:1) I. The Diagnosis: The Chains We Carry Let me tell you about my neighbour in Akasia, a young man named Thabo. Bright eyes, quick smile, a degree in accounting from TUT, and two years of sitting at home because there are no jobs. Last week, I found him standing at his gate at 5am, staring down the street as if expecting a bus that never comes. "I'm not lazy, Pastor," he said. "I'm just... stuck." Thabo is not alone. In this first quarter of 2026, South Africa's official unemployment rate rose to 32.7 percent, with youth unemployment among those aged 15 to 34 climbing to 45.8 percent. More than eight million South Africans are without work. And while Eskom celebrates 441 days without load shedding a genuine triumph our people are still sitting in the dark of a different kind: the darkness of diminished hope, of dreams deferred, of futures that ...

Loyalty That Chose a Foreign God Scripture: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." (Ruth 1:16) I remember the day I sat with a young man in Akasia, not far from my home in Pretoria. He had just lost his job again. The 32.7% unemployment rate had swallowed another soul. His girlfriend, a Zimbabwean migrant, had been told to leave the country amid the anti-immigration protests that have gripped our nation. She had every reason to return to her homeland, to the familiar, to the safe. Yet she chose to stay. She chose him. She chose loyalty. I looked at that young man, tears streaming down his face, and I said: "My son, you are witnessing something rare. You are witnessing a Ruth." Defining Loyalty Let us define our terms clearly. Loyalty is not sentimental affection. It is not convenience dressed in emotional clothing. Loyalty is covenant commitment a binding of one's life to another, even when th...

 A MOTHER WHO AROSE FOR A NATION Scripture: “Village life in Israel ceased… until I, Deborah, arose, arose as a mother in Israel.” (Judges 5:7) From my little corner of Akasia, Pretoria, I watch the Jacaranda City prepare for another season. The purple blooms have fallen, their brief majesty trampled into the dust of another hot Highveld summer. The season of spectacular beauty gives way to a more familiar, more honest terrain: the hard, sunbaked earth. This, my friends, is the perfect metaphor for our current moment. Just last week, I sat on my stoep as the evening news filtered through—another petrol price cut of 52 cents per litre, followed immediately by the sobering news that diesel would rise by over R1.23. A nation catching its breath, only to feel the weight press down again. The unemployment rate has climbed to 32.7%, with more than 8.1 million South Africans without work. Our young people those aged 15 to 24 face a staggering 60% unemployment rate. The headlines speak of ...

The Scarlet Cord of a Redeemed Reputation By Harold Mawela, from my study in Akasia, Pretoria The winter air bites sharp as a mamba’s tooth here in Akasia this August morning. I sit on my porch, watching the sun drag itself over the Magaliesberg, a rooibos tea warming my hands against the chill. Outside my gate, a nation holds its breath. The petrol price dropped 52 cents this month a small sigh of relief for taxi drivers hauling commuters through the potholed veins of Mamelodi and Soshanguve. But diesel climbed. Paraffin climbed. The poor feel every cent like a knife. Unemployment hovers at 42.4 percent. Youth joblessness exceeds 45 percent. Weary South Africans are, as one report put it, "weary, yet increasingly hopeful". Murder still averages 65 per day. Organised crime, the president warns, poses the most immediate threat to our democracy. Load-shedding has receded praise God for that small mercy but the lights flicker on and off in our souls. And yet. This morning, I am ...

Beloved Beyond the Ledger of Years By Harold Mawela | Akasia, Pretoria | 5 August 2026 From my study in Akasia, on the northern edge of Pretoria, I am writing to you on a Wednesday morning that feels like a sermon waiting to be preached. The air outside is thick with the hum of generators that sound we have learned to love, because it means the power is on. But inside my spirit, there is a different kind of hum. It is the sound of a question that will not leave me alone: What do you do when the world's applause lands on someone else's shoulders, and your own feel bare? I have been wrestling with this question all week. Not because I am bitter no, bitterness is too heavy a burden for a man my age to carry. But because I see it everywhere. I see it in the eyes of the young woman at the shopping centre in Wonderboom, scrolling through Instagram while standing in the queue at Checkers, watching other women's lives unfold like perfect little movies while her own feels like a blo...