I’ve been shot before. Twice. Once through the thigh. Once through the left testicle. A hijacking in Joburg. They dragged me from my car and beat me senseless – kicks, fists, the butt of a gun.
“Ningangi bulali, bafwethu — don’t kill me, brothers,” I cried out.
The ringleader spat back: “Who are you calling bafwethu? Do we look like your BEE comrades?”
Then he smashed my skull.
When the gun went off, I felt metal tear through muscle and blood spill like hot ink. But what nearly killed me wasn’t the bullet. It was the rage in their eyes. Rage that wasn’t about me – but had history.
So when I heard Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng say during the Senzo Meyiwa trial, “I don’t think a white advocate can have the gall to ask me that”, I didn’t just hear prejudice. I heard the whisper of isilonda esingalashwanga – a wound that was never healed.
A scar on the Bench
This wasn’t any courtroom. This was one of South Africa’s most televised murder trials, where celebrity tragedy, legal dysfunction and racial tension already hung in the air.
Judge Mokgoatlheng – a respected legal mind shaped by struggle – opened proceedings by criticising the conduct of some black lawyers. Then, in a moment heard across the nation, he rebuked a scheduling request from one of them – not on merit, but with a racial jab: “I don’t think a white advocate can have the gall to ask me that.”
Let’s be clear: the issue isn’t whether the request was reasonable. It’s how it was met. Not with reasoned critique, but with a statement soaked in internalised oppression.
His words didn’t merely call for order. They reasserted hierarchy – that to be black and professional is to be deferential. That assertiveness, when it wears a black face, is insolence.
When the backlash came, the judge issued a legal-sounding withdrawal: “On reflection... I admit my comments could be interpreted as intemperate, ill-advised... and if that is the perception, then I unreservedly withdraw the comments.”
That’s not an apology. That’s an escape clause. An elegant shrug.
We’ve become a nation fluent in false apologies – the kind that say, “I’m sorry you feel that way”, instead of, “I was wrong”.
Apologies that shield egos instead of restoring dignity; that offer withdrawal, not repentance.
Trauma in robes
South Africa is a wounded country pretending to be healed. We bury grief under degrees. Dress up our bitterness in power suits. Cloak our trauma in robes.
Judge Mokgoatlheng, like many of our leaders, is both hero and hostage – a man who rose from apartheid’s shadows but perhaps never shed them. So when he lashes out at a fellow black man for appearing bold, it feels familiar. Too familiar.
This is the cruel irony of internalised oppression – where those once dehumanised now become its defenders. Where usizi – sorrow – gets mislabelled as principle. Where moral biography is used to avoid honest inventory.
Yes, courts need order. But when that order is racialised, it ceases to be justice – it becomes theatre.
We saw it in his refusal to confront the racial undertones of his words. To imply that a black advocate lacks the gall of a white one is to measure dignity against a colonial yardstick – and to perform whiteness through a black voice.
We saw it in his apology – or lack thereof. “If that is the perception…” is not remorse.
It’s legal deflection.
I’ve done it too. After my hijacking, I returned to work too soon. Smiled in boardrooms.
Shook hands at conferences.
People called me strong. “You’re a miracle,” they said.
But at night I drowned in Black Label and nightmares – of my daughter, Hope, being shot. Of my wife, Dennise, screaming. Of me, powerless.
I told myself, Indoda ayikhali – a man doesn’t cry.
But I was bleeding in silence.
Echoes in the dock
The courtroom that day wasn’t just a legal setting. It was a theatre of black pain. Senzo Meyiwa, a black football icon, murdered. Five black men on trial. A black judge presiding. A fragile pursuit of justice – and then, a crack in the foundation.
But this courtroom moment didn’t exist in isolation. It echoed through a wider history – and a deeper ache.
His words didn’t just shatter decorum. They exposed old chains we’ve been pretending don’t rattle. The invisible chains we still carry. The lie that ubuntu demands submission – but only from those who are black.
My attackers wore beanies. The judge wore robes. But both were cloaked in something more ancient – the unhealed rage of being born black in a country that still punishes you for it.
And while we implode, those on the fringe are watching. Waiting.
When AfriForum grins
Groups like AfriForum seize moments like this. Not to heal – but to weaponise. They twist legitimate calls for dignity into proof that white South Africans are now the real victims. They decry judicial bias, not for justice, but for power.
They want to appear as guardians of fairness, while sidestepping the centuries of systemic injustice that built their safety. It’s arrogance dressed as righteousness.
Meanwhile, the ANC sings Struggle songs while emptying the national purse. Everyone claiming pain. No one offering healing.
What we really need
This June – Men’s Mental Health Month, Youth Month, the month of Father’s Day – we must confront not just our politics, but our pain.
The courtroom is one site of trauma. The living room is another. The taxi rank. The township school. The pulpit.
We need apologies that are not defences. Imagine if the judge had said: “I’m sorry. I let something out of my mouth that came from a place I haven’t healed. I was wrong. I want to understand that pain – and unlearn it.”
Now that would’ve been ubuntu. That would’ve been leadership.
But more than apologies, we need spaces where our leaders can say: “I am not okay.”
We need schools that teach not just history, but healing.
Churches that pray not only for revival, but also for repentance and healing.
Homes where ukukhala – weeping – is not weakness, but worship.
We are a nation haunted by unresolved violence. From colonial conquest to apartheid brutality – and from apartheid to the continued inequality of today – trauma has been passed down like an unwanted inheritance. Our crime stats, our gender-based violence, our epidemic of rage – they aren’t just the fruits of poverty. They are symptoms of a society where pain metastasised, unhealed, from one generation to the next.
We must stop acting like unhealed trauma makes us strong. It doesn’t.
It makes us dangerous.
A final plea
After my breakdown, Mpumi, my psychologist, told me something I’ll never forget: “You’re not addicted to alcohol. You’re addicted to avoiding pain.”
South Africa is the same. We are addicted to avoiding pain.
To legalese instead of confession.
To denial instead of lament.
But if we don’t weep we won’t heal.
Masikhale.
Let us weep. Let the judges weep. Let the pastors lament.
Let the children ask questions. Let the nation breathe.
Let us not be a people whose only language is pain.
Let us be the generation that looked at the wound – and chose healing.
Not for comfort.
But for our children’s freedom. DM