Failure Isn't Final. Harold Mawela

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 ...

 THE DOOR NO HAND CAN HEM By Harold Mawela | Akasia, Pretoria August 1, 2026 My name is Harold Mawela. I am writing to you from my study in Akasia, just north of Pretoria, where the Highveld winter has stripped the Jacarandas bare and the morning mist hangs over our township like a question mark. The year is 2026, and if you are reading this, you already know this nation is standing at a door. Let me tell you about the morning I almost gave up on doors altogether. It was a Tuesday. The news feed was a battlefield. Statistics South Africa had just released its Quarterly Labour Force Survey: 8.1 million South Africans officially unemployed, the economy shedding 345,000 jobs between January and March alone. Six in ten young people between fifteen and twenty-four have no job. The official unemployment rate had climbed to 32.7%. In my own household, the electricity meter beeped its desperate warning while my daughter asked me a question I could not answer: "Dad, are we going to be okay...

The Ecology of Relationships: A Garden Under Siege By Harold Mawela, from my study in Akasia, Pretoria I am writing to you from my study in Akasia, just north of Pretoria, where the Jacarandas are blooming against a Highveld sky that seems perpetually at war with itself half brilliant blue, half bruised purple with thunder. The rains have been unpredictable this year. Some gardens in my neighbourhood are lush with life; others are cracked earth, barren and begging. As I sit here, I think about the body of Christ. The Scripture declares unequivocally: “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts” (1 Corinthians 12:12). Yet I wonder looking at the Church in South Africa today have we become a field of identical maize, or are we a forest? A single type of plant makes a field. Many types make a forest that can weather any storm. Imagine, if you will, two gardens side by side in Soshanguve. One is a monoculture rows upon rows of the same crop, identical, uniform, predictable. Whe...

 The Storm That Sanctifies By Harold Mawela | Akasia, Pretoria Scripture: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you cross the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze." Isaiah 43:2 I. The Morning the Storm Came to Akasia I remember the Tuesday like it was yesterday. The winter wind had clawed its way across the Highveld, rattling my corrugated roof like a drunkard hammering on a gate. I stood on my stoep in Akasia, coffee in hand that familiar bitter warmth that Pretoria mornings demand watching the sky turn from bruised purple to sickly yellow. The minibus taxis on the R101 were still hustling, conductors hanging out windows with that famous South African urgency: "Kasi to town! Kasi to town!" But even they knew something was coming. Then it hit. Not just rain, rain is what falls on your garden when you've forgotten to bring the washing in. This was...