The Chronicles of Load-Shedding . Harold Mawela

 The Currency of Conquest: Why Your Pocket is Empty but Your Purpose is Full By Harold Mawela Akasia, Pretoria In the bustling heart of Akasia, where the Pretoria sun warms the red earth and the distant hum of the N14 speaks of a nation in a hurry, I sat recently with a young entrepreneur. He was distraught. His start-up was stalling, his "side-hustle" was sliding, and he looked at me with the weary eyes of a man who had mistaken a temporary delay for a permanent defeat. "Harold," he said, "I’ve fasted. I’ve tilled the ground. Why is the harvest hiding?" I looked at him and realized he was suffering from a modern South African malady: The Poverty of Perception. We live in a country currently gripped by "Load-Shedding of the Soul." We see the rolling blackouts of our economy, the fluctuating Rand, and the scandals filling our newsfeeds, and we allow the darkness outside to dictate the degree of light within. But let us define our terms clearly. Fa...

The Architecture of Allegiance: Building the Bastion of Belief In the shadow of the Magaliesberg, as the sun dips behind the rooftops of Akasia, I’ve watched the Pretoria skyline flicker to life. But lately, I’ve noticed a different kind of flickering—the unstable light of the human mind. We live in an era of "Digital Distraction and Desktop Delusions." Whether it’s the constant ping of a WhatsApp group debating the latest SAPS briefing or the anxiety of the National Health Insurance (NHI) rollout, our mental real estate is being foreclosed upon by the bank of public panic. We must define our terms clearly: Peace is not the absence of a problem; it is the presence of a Person. Focus is not the exclusion of chaos; it is the enthronement of Christ. The Personal Parable: The Broken Perimeter Last week, while driving through the bustling streets near Wonderpark Mall, I saw a magnificent house with a towering boundary wall. It looked impenetrable. Yet, the gate was swinging wide o...

 Title: The Warfare of Rest: Why Your Stillness Confuses the Enemy Scripture: "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." (Psalm 46:10) Introduction: The Exhaustion Epidemic Let me be honest with you, beloved. I am writing this from my study in Akasia, just as the Pretoria afternoon heat begins to relent. Outside my window, the taxis hoot on the Mabopane Highway, and somewhere a neighbour's generator coughs to life because, well, this is South Africa in 2026—we plan for load shedding like we plan for December. And speaking of December, did we not just witness something beautiful? A British woman went viral on TikTok recently, utterly baffled by our South African habit of shutting down the entire month. She could not understand why we treat December not as a month, but as a lifestyle . We laughed at the video because it was true. We know something she does not know. We know that Dezemba is not laziness; it is sur...

Title: The Arithmetic of Ashes: Understanding the Mathematics of Divine Restoration By Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria I was sitting on my veranda in Akasia last Thursday, watching the afternoon light set the jacaranda trees ablaze with purple fire, when my neighbour Mr. Dlamini called over the fence. "Harold," he said, his voice carrying that weight a man carries when life has deducted more than he deposited, "I've just done the sums. Twenty-three years at that company. Twenty-three years of loyalty, of working Sundays, of missing my children's school concerts. And for what? A retrenchment letter and a box of my belongings." He tapped his temple. "Those years. Gone. Eaten." I walked over, leaned on the fence between our properties—that thin wire that separates one man's struggle from another's—and I said, "Bafana, you're using the wrong mathematics. You're using human arithmetic. But God? God does the mathematics of restoratio...

Title: The Siege of the Shining One Subtitle: Why Your Success Is a Mirror Some Cannot Bear to Look Into Scripture: "My soul is in deep anguish. How long must I wait? They charge at me with swords, like lions greedy for prey." (Psalm 57:4, paraphrased) The Morning the Assegais Were Sharpened I was sitting on my veranda in Akasia—you know the view, just there where the last pretentious walls of the suburbs give way to the thorny bushveld—when the news alert buzzed. Another bust in Stilfontein. More zama zamas surfacing from the deep . The government is deploying the SANDF now, sending soldiers with rifles into those holes because the criminal syndicates have made the rule of law look like a suggestion . And as I watched the report, a woman from Carletonville was being interviewed. Her son was one of those trapped in the labyrinth. She wasn't crying about the illegality; she was crying about the system. She said, "They told my son there was gold. They gave him a sack a...

The Blueprint in the Mind Scripture: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) I. The Architect's Secret Let me tell you about a Thursday morning last month—the kind of Highveld morning where Pretoria's jacarandas throw purple shadows across Lynnwood Road and the smell of kota from the spaza shop drifts through my Akasia study window. I sat there, coffee going cold, staring at a WhatsApp message that stopped me cold. It was from my neighbour, Mr. Dlamini—retired principal, pillar of the community, a man who'd spent forty years building schools and shaping young minds. His son had just been arrested for tender fraud. Forty million rand. Municipal contracts. A house in Waterkloof now under threat of forfeiture. "Pastor," he wrote, "I don't recognise the boy I raised. Where did we go wrong?" And sitting there in the morning light, with the sound of taxis hooting on Brits Road,...

Title: The Anchor In The Fog Scripture: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:18) By Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria There is a particular kind of fog that rolls in over the Hennops River valley just before dawn. It blankets the highway, swallowing the taillights of the cars crawling home to Soshanguve, to Mabopane, to Wonderpark. You cannot drive through that fog by feeling your way. You cannot close your eyes and hope the tarmac knows your name. You drive by the anchor—the white line painted on the road. You trust the line, even when you cannot see the destination. This is the geometry of love. And we have forgotten the mathematics of it. Let us define our terms clearly, lest we build a house on the marsh of sentiment. The world, in its dizzying wisdom, has sold us a lie wrapped in rose petals and backed by a string orchestra. It tells us that love is a feeling. It tells us that love is the flutter in the chest, the heat in the...

You Are Not Bread: The Grace of Being Versus The Grind of Doing Akasia, Pretoria — The Morning the Spar Queue Became My Pulpit Brothers and sisters, let me tell you about last Thursday. There I was, standing in the interminable queue at the Karenpark Spar—that peculiar South African purgatory where time goes to die between the checkouts and the braai pack section. The woman ahead of me, designer handbag gleaming like fool's gold, was on her Bluetooth earpiece, voice dripping with the particular anxiety of Pretoria's aspirational class. "No, no, no—tell him I need the tender documents by three! If we don't secure this contract, the board will think I'm failing. I must deliver. I must prove myself. I must..." Her voice faded, but the word hung in the air like municipal smog over the Highveld. Must. Must. Must. I wanted to tap her shoulder. I wanted to whisper what Jesus thundered to the bread-crazed crowd by Galilee: “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for m...

The Mirror They Carry: Why Your Light Exposes Their Darkness The lights went out suddenly. Again. Eskom se dinges, we muttered in the dark of our Akasia home, the familiar frustration rising. My phone screen glowed, a tiny square of light in the swallowed room. Scrolling, I saw not updates, but accusations. A pastor denounced for prosperity. A public figure torn apart for an old tweet. A neighbour’s WhatsApp group alight with venom over a boundary wall. In that load-shedding blackout, I saw a deeper darkness: our furious human habit of projecting our own inner chaos onto the nearest available screen—another person’s life. They hated Joseph because of his dream. Read it slowly: “They hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.” The offence was not his action, but his vision. His clarity became their indictment. His light did not create their darkness; it revealed it. And what is revealed, is often reviled. Here is the practical, paradoxical law you must etch on you...