The Archaeology of Conversation Scripture: “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt.” (Colossians 4:6) I write these words from my study in Akasia, Pretoria. The night is quiet, but my mind is not. Outside these walls, South Africa is a nation in convulsion weekly anti-immigration protests erupting across our cities, youth unemployment stagnating at 45.8 percent, crime operations arresting over 23,000 suspects in a single week. We are a people drowning in noise, yet starving for meaning. Just this past week, as I drove through the streets of Pretoria North, I passed a group of young men standing at a robot. Their eyes were hollow. Their mouths moved talking, laughing, cursing but their souls were silent. I rolled down my window and asked one of them: “Kunjani, mfethu? How are you really?” He looked at me like I had asked him to translate ancient Greek. His answer was automatic: “Sharp, sharp.” But his eyes told a different story. They told of a father who left...
The Foundation Unseen "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock." Matthew 7:24 I live in Akasia, Pretoria a place where the earth shifts beneath your feet if you don't anchor well. Our national soil is famously unstable; sinkholes swallow houses without warning. One morning you wake up in your four-bedroom dream home; the next morning, a gaping chasm has claimed your kitchen, your bedroom, your legacy. The foundation you cannot see determines everything you can. This is the parable of our lives. The Termite Tower Picture, if you will, the African termite mound that towering monument of clay rising defiantly above the savannah grass. Tourists photograph it. Children play near it. From a distance, it is magnificent. But beneath that visible tower lies a dark, sprawling, complex subterranean city that no human eye has ever fully mapped. Tunnels, chambers, nurseries, fungal gardens a civilisation of...