Last Tuesday, stuck in Akasia’s gridlocked traffic near the Soshanguve crossing, I watched a BMW driver—tinted windows, loud amapiano—cut off a minibus taxi. The taxi retaliated with a symphony of hooting. The BMW, undeterred, sped ahead… only to stall at the next robot, victim of Eskom’s load shedding. The taxi driver rolled down his window, laughed, and shouted, *“Nna ke na le battery, wena o na le pride!”* (“I have a battery, you have pride!”). We all chuckled. Pride, it seems, falters in the dark.
That moment crystallized James 4:6 for me: *“God resists the proud.”* Pride, like Eskom’s turbines, sputters when overburdened. Humility, though? It’s the solar panel on a township rooftop—quiet, resilient, drawing power from a Source that doesn’t dim.
**South Africa’s Current Crossroads:**
Our nation mirrors that traffic jam. ANC and EFF rallies echo with messianic promises, while service delivery protests burn like veld fires. On Twitter/X, we weaponize hashtags #NotMyPresident and #PayBackTheMoney, yet load shedding unites us in shared darkness. We’re a country addicted to grandstanding but starved of grace. Even our protests—necessary as they are—often bleed into performative rage, a pride that shouts, *“Look at my pain!”* but resists the harder work of repair.
**Theology in the Soil:**
Let’s dig deeper. Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach once wrote, *“A tree’s truth is not its branches but its roots.”* Humility is the taproot feeding resilience. Consider the baobab: its trunk, gnarled and hollow, survives droughts by storing water underground. Pride? It’s the invasive Port Jackson willow—flashy, thirsty, destabilizing the very ground it claims.
Scripture warns that “pride goes before destruction” (Proverbs 16:18), a truth our politicians ignore. Yet Christ, the “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3), modeled radical humility: washing feet, dining with outcasts, dying naked on a cross. Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard called this *“the infinite qualitative distinction”*—God’s glory cloaked in frailty. In a world obsessed with “influencers,” Jesus inverted the algorithm: the last became first, the meek inherited the earth.
**Modern Parables:**
Take Tshwane’s potholes. We curse them, but they’re masterclasses in humility. A pothole doesn’t disguise its emptiness; it says, *“Fill me.”* Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) was a spiritual pothole—a weakness that became a receptacle for grace. What if we stopped Photoshopping our lives and admitted our cracks?
Or consider DJs Black Coffee and Uncle Waffles. Their global fame? Built on *ubuntu*: sampling others’ beats, elevating local voices. Pride shouts, *“I made this!”* Humility whispers, *“We received this.”*
**Confronting Ourselves:**
Here’s the rub: humility isn’t passive. Desmond Tutu, our moral baobab, called it *“the courage to admit we are wrong.”* When students protest fee hikes, humility demands universities listen, not just deploy security. When a husband apologizes to his wife mid-argument, he disarms a decade of generational pride.
Yet we resist. Why? Pride is anesthetic. It numbs the shame of our Marikana massacres, our #LifeEsidimeni tragedies. But humility? It’s the antiseptic—stinging, then healing.
**Invitation:**
Friends, let’s become pothole saints. Let’s credit God for our BMWs and battery-powered taxis alike. Let’s kneel where others strut, knowing—as the Tshwane heat wilts our collars—that “those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11).
**Prayer:**
*Lord of the Load-Shedded,
When my ego flickers like a faulty generator,
Ground me in Your grid.
Make me a baobab, not a Port Jackson;
A pothole, not a pavement.
Let me laugh at stalled BMWs—
And recognize myself in them.
Amen.*
**Final Thought:**
In Akasia’s dust, where pride stalls and humility revives, we’re all just cars in God’s traffic jam. The road to Zion? It’s paved with surrendered steering wheels.
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