Failure Isn't Final. Harold Mawela

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...

 The Girl Who Ran Toward Destiny By Harold Mawela | From my study in Akasia, Pretoria The jacaranda trees outside my window have shed their purple confetti onto the streets of Akasia. I sit here on a Tuesday morning—the hum of generators a familiar lullaby, though by God's grace we have now gone over 441 days without load-shedding. Yet even as Eskom reports progress, with five provinces now free from load reduction, the cost of living still bites like a hungry dog. Inflation jumped to 4.5% in May 2026. Electricity tariffs have risen 5.3 times faster than inflation since 1996. More than a third of South Africans live below the poverty line. In this environment, many are asking: How do I run toward my destiny when I can barely afford to stand still? The Law of the Willing Runner Let us define our terms clearly. Destiny is not a passive inheritance you wait to receive. It is an active pursuit you run to possess. Calling is not the whisper of privilege; it is the cry of obedience. And ...

 Title: The Laughter That Refuses to Quit: A South African Waiting Psalm By Harold Mawela, from Akasia, Tshwane Greetings, family. Harold Mawela here, writing from my study in Akasia, where the Highveld winter sun cuts through the window like a blade of promise—but the cold outside reminds me that we are still in a season. And if there is one thing we South Africans know, it is waiting. We wait for Eskom to keep the lights on and now that load-shedding has been absent for over a year, we wait for the bills not to cripple us. We wait for jobs that do not come 32.7% unemployment, 45.8% among the youth. We wait for water that does not flow, for justice that does not arrive, for a government that governs. We wait for the promised land that seems perpetually on the horizon but never beneath our feet. And in that waiting, we laugh not because we are amused, but because laughter is what happens when hope collides with impossibility. The Laughter of Impossibility Picture a ninety-year-old ...