Some memorials arrive late, not because the love was absent but because the heart needed time.
Grief has a way of hiding in the corners of our busy lives. We bury it beneath meetings, deadlines, public appearances and the noble insistence that we must “be strong.”
We learn to function. We learn to perform. We even learn to laugh. But grief is patient. It waits for silence.
I have watched grief up close. I have watched it through the eyes of my own mother, who buried not one, not two but four of her children.
Four times she stood at the edge of an unimaginable loss. Never mind her siblings, her parents, her grandparents, grief has been a frequent visitor in her life. Yet she rose each time. Not untouched, not unscarred but upright.
From her, I learned that grief does not disappear because we ignore it. It softens when we sit with it. It becomes bearable when we give it time.
As a nation and as individuals, we must make time to grieve, because ungrieved pain becomes inherited pain, the kind of inheritance we should never pass on to the next generation. Left unattended, it seeps into families, shapes behaviour and silently damages the future we are trying to build.
There is a way we find refuge from mourning. We distract ourselves. We move cities. We change jobs. We scroll endlessly. We convince ourselves that strength means silence. But strength is not the absence of tears. Strength is the courage to feel.
This truth came back to me unexpectedly as I listened to Stay Real by DJ Fresh, Kyllex and Thabiso Sikwane. The song is more than melody; it is memory. As it played, it did something profound, it brought her back to life in the most dignified way.
Not as an echo of sorrow but as a presence of conviction. Her voice did not sound like the past. It sounded like an instruction.
Stay real
In that simple refrain was her entire philosophy. Thabiso, Ausi, as I called her, was unapologetically authentic.
She gave herself fully to every cause she embraced. Her love for literacy was not performative; it was transformative. Through Literacy4Life and other initiatives we worked on together, she championed children’s books as instruments of dignity.
She believed that a child who reads is a child who refuses limitation. She believed in redemption, especially for those society had discarded. Her work with ex-prisoners seeking reintegration was rooted in a conviction that people are more than their worst mistakes.
Listening to the song, I realised something uncomfortable: I had postponed my own mourning of her. I had paid tribute publicly. I had spoken warmly of her life. But I had not sat long enough with the silence she left behind. The music forced me to pause.
I have come to understand that grief postponed is not grief erased. It waits patiently for us to be ready.
In our culture, especially as men, we are taught to move quickly past sorrow. We are encouraged to be strong for others, to resume productivity, to keep going. But the melody of Stay Real found me and reminded me that grieving is not weakness, it is loyalty. It is our way of saying: you mattered.
Her song did not reopen wounds; it completed a conversation I had left unfinished. It allowed me to celebrate her brilliance while honouring the ache of her absence. Grief and gratitude occupied the same room. And neither diminished the other.
This same truth surfaced again on my show, Power Week on Power 98.7, when I hosted the partner of the late Eusebius McKaiser, Nduduzo Nyanda.
Eusebius was a formidable thinker, a fearless intellectual, a man who believed that excellence was a moral obligation. He had little patience for mediocrity. He demanded rigour in thought, clarity in speech and honesty in engagement.
He loved literacy deeply. Books were not décor; they were discipline. He believed that reading sharpened democracy. He also loved sport, not merely as entertainment but as a crucible for excellence.
In sport, he saw preparation, accountability and national pride. In public discourse, he demanded the same virtues.
Celebrating his life alongside those who loved him reminded me again that grief is not the opposite of joy. It is the price of having loved deeply.
The conversation on Power Week extended further when we hosted Mpadi Makgalo of Heal SA, an organisation doing sacred work in our country.
Heal SA has supported more than 15,000 young people navigating grief and trauma. Each week, they receive roughly 1,000 inquiries but can only assist about 500. The need is overwhelming.
Mpadi spoke candidly about how our apartheid past continues to manifest in the present generation. Trauma does not dissolve with political change. It lingers. It seeps into families. It shapes identity.
She described young people who inherit silence from parents who survived brutality but never processed it. She spoke of hyper-vigilance, children living in constant alertness because instability feels normal. She spoke of anger that appears excessive but is historical in origin.
One of her most profound observations struck me deeply: we have normalised the abnormal.
We have made friends with trauma. We live with it, joke about it, ignore it, until it catches up with us.
Her words reminded me of Professor Jonathan Jansen’s Knowledge in the Blood, a powerful reflection on how the residues of apartheid persist across generations. What we inherit is not only land and language. It is memory. It is fear. It is bias. It is silence.
Unless confronted, trauma quietly governs our responses.
This year, as we mark the 50th anniversary of the June 16 Student Uprising, the 30th anniversary of our Constitution and the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March, we are confronted with mirrors. These anniversaries are not ceremonial. They are questions.
Have we honoured the sacrifices of those who came before us by doing the difficult work of reckoning? Or have we become comfortable with symbolic remembrance while avoiding structural healing?
I dream of a nation that understands it can never claim to be healed if it abandons the path set by its forebears.
Healing requires truth. And truth requires courage.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission offered a blueprint: tell the truth, confront the pain, seek restoration. That work cannot be seasonal. It must be generational.
We possess extraordinary potential as a nation. I see it in our young people. I see it in organisations like Heal SA and the Khulumani Support Group. I see it in the brilliance of thinkers like Eusebius and Thabiso who refused intellectual laziness. I see it in the resilience of mothers who bury children and still choose hope.
But potential without courage is wasted
We must be willing to do the difficult work of therapy, of dialogue, of policy reform, of accountability. We must refuse to normalise decay in our communities or despair in our youth. We must refuse mediocrity in governance and in ourselves.
And we must celebrate. Celebrate lives well lived. Celebrate books written. Celebrate songs sung. Celebrate courage displayed in classrooms and courtrooms, in homes and in studios.
Grief without celebration becomes heavy. Celebration without reflection becomes shallow. We need both.
When I think of my mother and how she wept, how she prayed, how she cooked and laughed again after unimaginable loss, I am reminded that life insists on being lived, even in the shadow of death.
Our nation, too, must insist on living, not by ignoring its wounds but by tending to them.
I believe that when we make time to grieve, we make room to heal. And when we celebrate those we have lost, we extend their legacy.
The journey ahead is long. But it is ours.
And we must walk it, honestly, bravely, together.
Sello Hatang is the executive director of Re Hata Mmoho
There is a way we find refuge from mourning. We distract ourselves. We move cities. We change jobs. We scroll endlessly. We convince ourselves that strength means silence. But strength is not the absence of tears. Strength is the courage to feel
