But I don’t think lacking empathy is cool nor does it make you look strong.

In fact I think it’s a major flaw many people have. I think we often confuse emotional unavailability with emotional strength.

There is nothing impressive about being able to hurt someone and then sleep peacefully because you’ve convinced yourself that their feelings are indeed the issue?

And there is most definitely nothing powerful about making someone feel guilty about how they felt when you hurt them. Let me tell you a short story of my own experience.

2024 I had a little tiff with my family members (cousins to be exact). There were moments where I was wrong and obviously as a sane person I apologised. However, when I stated my feelings towards the situation I got heavily ignored, (blue ticked) by the whole group chat. I sent private messages to those who hurt me after sending a message on the group and I was ignored again, sneak dissed on the internet and I felt somewhat embarrassed about even saying a word to them. I cried, panicked and even overdosed on pain killers because it was a lot. My mom ran down to come check on me because I was crying a lot and needed her in that moment. She asked me “Nandi why would you apologise if you did nothing wrong? You apologised — they hurt you and took it far to the point where they didn’t feel any remorse”.

Despite such words from my mom, I still felt the same way till now.

2025 i rekindled with both my cousins. And fun fact they didn’t apologise — and I was the one to reach out and say let’s fix it. They were both down but haven’t apologised for the way they’ve hurt me and where they’ve gone wrong.

Unfortunately another situation happened — and I wasn’t wrong WHATSOEVER BTW! And I still apologised and one of them cut me off and I completely cut the other person off because I choose peace. Till this day I haven’t been apologised to.

Empathy isn’t weakness. In fact I think having empathy makes someone stronger. Lacking empathy is a major character flaw which makes you ultimately weaker.

Empathy is being able to sit with the uncomfortable reality that you are not always a good guy in every story. It’s being able to hear “you hurt me”.

It’s understanding that intent and impact are never the same thing.

Imagine being so committed to protecting your ego, that you stop protecting the people you claim to actually care about.

Eventually accountability starts to feel like humiliation.

However, being accountable isn’t humiliation.

It’s character.

Apologising ≠ weak. It means you’re capable of caring about the consequences of your actions.

I don’t think we should romanticise people that don’t care.

Because most of the time “I don’t care” isn’t confidence. It’s avoidance and emotional immaturity.

Sometimes it’s the inability to tolerate guilt or the possibility that you’ve hurt someone.

Personally I’d rather be the person that cares. Because that makes my character stronger, it makes my relationships with people even better, and people will vibrate better towards my energy.

In fact I’d rather care too much, than become so determined to appear unaffected that I lose my ability to empathise with people.

I’d rather apologise when I’m wrong.

I’d rather have difficult conversations than avoid what happened.

I’d rather admit that I hurt someone than protect my ego at their expense.

Lacking empathy isn’t cool.

Being able to hurt someone and not care afterwards is weakness.

And refusing to apologise doesn’t make you powerful. It screams pussy (my apology for the language).

Sometimes it just means you’re afraid to face yourself.

Put your PRIDE aside.

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And everytime I see one, I find myself asking a question. Why is someone elses lack supposed to be a joke?

I want to be extra careful with this because I’m not writing this from a place of pretending that I don’t understand wealth or a place of envy. I do come from a family that has access to wealth and I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up with things that many don’t have access to.

That’s actually a part of why this trend bothers me.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with having nice cars, wearing expensive clothing and jewellery or enjoying the privileges that come from having money. I also don’t think that people should have to hide their success to make other people feel comfortable.

However, there is a difference between enjoying wealth and turning wealth into a social hierarchy.

And sometimes, I think we forget that difference.

From a very young age, my mother has taught me that you should always remain humble. Not because having more is something to be ashamed of, but because there will always be people who don’t have what you have due to certain circumstances. Whether that’s friends, cousins, classmates or simply people you encounter throughout life, you never really know what someone else has access to.

You could walk past someone in a mall that wears clothing from PEP or JET but little do you know they are likely one of the wealthiest people in South Africa.

You could walk past someone wearing Gucci head to toe and assume they’re wealthy, only to find out that the pieces are fake or the pieces were a hand me down from someone else.

You simply don’t know.

So when I see a trend where the caption is “What the fuck is…” I can’t help but look past the joke.

Because at some point it stops being about what you have.

Instead, it becomes about what you think you’re above.

And this is where I think the conversation around classism comes in.

Classism is not always as obvious as openly looking down on someone because of where they come from. Sometimes, its more subtle. Sometimes its found in the way we talk about things people can and cannot afford. Sometimes its in the assumption that expensive automatically means better.

That’s what I think this trend taps into.

The issue isn’t that someone owns a Cartier watch instead of a cheaper watch. The issue is when the cheaper watch becomes some sort of a punchline.

Because when you say, “What the fuck is Lovisa?” And proceed to show a Cartier watch, you’re not simply saying, “I prefer Cartier.” You’re creating a distinction between the person who can afford a Cartier watch and a person that shops at Lovisa.

And that distinction matters in a country like South Africa.

We live in a country where the gap between different socioeconomic classes is incredibly visible. I experience this contrast in a very literal way. In order to get to my neighbourhood, which is surrounded by farms and houses that are far from inexpensive, I have to drive through a small village area that is less developed.

I can’t help but feel some type of way about it.

I constantly pass run down homes, roads filled with potholes, spaces littered with alcoholic beverages, and communities that clearly don’t have access to the same resources that the area I am travelling towards does. A few minutes later, I arrive at my parents home: a large farm with modern but also a vintage interior and access to things that many of the people I just drove past may never have.

That contrast has always sat with me.

Because the distance between those two realities can be small geographically yet so huge economically.

And that’s what makes trends centred around wealth and status feel particularly strange to me.

So when we make someone’s inability to afford a particular brand the punchline, I think it’s worth remembering that there is a real person viewing that post that doesn’t have the same privileges that you have. While you’re laughing about how you could never shop at a certain store, someone else may be saving just to afford their next meal.

Someone’s financial circumstances aren’t a reflection of their intelligence, ambition or worth.

Sometimes they’re simply circumstances.

And I think that’s something we could all afford to remember.

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“i’ll be okay”

“must i come to you?”

“noo dw”

“you sure?”

“yeah”

But the truth was, I did want him to come to my room to sit with me. Sitting in alone can be amazing times but at the same time it does no good. It leads to scary intrusive thoughts.

But you’re probably asking, “Nandi, if you wanted him to sit with you in the state you’re in, why didn’t you say yes?”

The truth is I learnt to say no.

I learnt to say no because other people I have been with previously didn’t give me much reason to believe that my feelings were safe with them.

I think to understand why I say no now, you have to understand where it all stems from.

My first relationship taught me that having feelings could make me “too much.” I remember having my first anxiety attack in Grade 9 during June exam season, it was terrifying and obviously the first person I thought to contact was my boyfriend at the time (I don’t really claim him but hey). He asked me what had happened what was it and even thought he was the one who triggered it. I told him all the details he asked for. Weeks later when I was in Zimbali I had another one and then I was told “what you’re going through is too much” which did hurt at the time — nobody should be told in their most vulnerable state that they’re too much? But hey not everyone has high emotional intelligence at the age of 16 right?

After that I started associating vulnerability with inconvenience. If I was struggling, there was always a little voice in the back of my head asking “Am I doing too much? Am I asking for too much? Am I disturbing them?”

So I learned to make myself smaller.

Then came the second relationship.

My second relationship or should I say situationship (we weren’t dating, though it felt like it).

This one was different, because I was told it would be different.

I was told they would never make me feel like I was too much, that my struggles wouldn’t scare them away and I believed them. I thought maybe this time I could be completely honest about what I was feeling without worry about someone leaving me in the dark again.

When things became quite heavy they left.

And that most definitely did something to me.

Someone had told me “I wouldn’t leave you when things become heavy” but there I was, in my room carrying the weight of it, anxiety + stress + a heartbreak.

What am I supposed to believe after that?

That people stay?
That people mean what they say?
That I can reach for someone when falling apart and trust that they will still be there when they see how far I’ve fallen?

I wanted to believe that.

But I learned something else instead:

Nandi, don’t ask for too much.

Nandi, you don’t need anything.

Nandi, don’t disturb them.

And Nandi, don’t make yourself a burden.

So when my boyfriend asked me if I wanted him to come sit with me, saying “no” felt safer than saying “yes”

Even though I wanted him there.

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Now I think I spiral when there isn’t noise, laughter, music, just silence.

When I’m in res, a res based in a very loud city, a city that moves quite fast there isn’t much room to sit down and think or tap into your thoughts. There are lectures, parties, clubs, friends in the building and multiple events to look forward to. My days have become so full that my mind doesn’t have the chance to wander.

I accidentally took that as some sort of healing.

But every time I come home, a very quiet place, birds chirping and just wind blowing, my head is so loud I can’t even distract myself anymore.

It’s almost cruel how fast it happens.

Within hours of getting home, all the things I haven’t processed came rushing back. Missing an event I looked forward to. The anxiety of missing schoolwork. The uncertainty of getting back to uni in time to finish group projects.

People often ask “are you okay?” And obviously I lie and say I’m doing great/well/amazing. I lie because I don’t have the capacity, energy to tap into why I’m not okay. I prefer to be distracted.

As long as there is somewhere to be, people to see, something to finish, I convince myself that I’m doing okay though in reality I’m not okay.

However, silence doesn’t negotiate.

Silence asks questions.

Silence remembers things I’ve tried suppressing.

Silences introduces me to emotions I’ve been running away from.

Silence is louder than I thought.

Tonight, I realised something uncomfortable.

The feelings never disappeared.

They were simply waiting for me to stop moving.

There’s a strange loneliness in that. Not because I don’t have people who love me, but because I’ve become so good at carrying things quietly that the people around me don’t always know how heavy my luggage has become.

Sometimes I even convince myself that if I disappear from social media for a while, someone will notice. Not because I want attention, but because, deep down, I want someone to ask if I’m okay before I have to find the words myself.

I deactivated all my accounts tonight.

Not as punishment

I just needed the world to become a little quieter.

The irony is that I was already drowning in silence.

I’m still learning the difference between avoiding my feelings and making space for them.

I’m still learning that surviving isn’t the same as healing.

And maybe that’s where I am tonight.

Not healed.

Not broken.

Just someone who discovered that the hardest conversations are the ones you have with yourself when the room is quiet.

Which leaves me with a quote from Kendrick Lamar.

“Me, I wasn’t taught to share, but care, I care” - PRIDE by Kendrick Lamar

That’s the response I’ve heard, directly or indirectly, every time I’ve spoken about discrimination against Tsonga people.

As someone who is both Tsonga and Zulu, I have spent many years navigating an identity that should never have been a problem. Yet somehow it became one.

From 2024 to 2025, I was in a school where Zulu dominated the entire school. I experienced countless comments about being Tsonga, some were disguised as jokes, others were more direct. People questioned where I was from. Comments that implied Tsonga people weren’t really South African. They repeated stereotypes and belittled an entire group of people and expected everyone to laugh?

Overtime I got used to it.

Well I thought I did.

Recently someone told me to “stick to Tsonga” after I said a Zulu phrase. Then they asked, “do you even have papers?”

To many, that might sound like a joke.

To me, it wasn’t.

Initially I tried to not deep it but it really rubbed me the wrong way. That comment immediately brought back stories I had heard about how my mother and her family were treated because they were Tsonga. It reminded me that what people see as harmless humour often comes from a history of exclusion, stereotypes and the idea that certain groups don’t belong.

What frustrates me most is the fact that this kind of discrimination is invisible to everyone except the one experiencing it.

When you speak up, “you’re too sensitive”.

When you’re silent people assume it doesn’t affect you.

However, the reality is that being repeatedly reminded that your culture is seen as lesser leaves a mark.

I am proud to be Tsonga.

I am proud to be Zulu.

I should not have to choose between the two, and I should not have to defend either part of my identity.

What hurts most is the fact that people refuse to acknowledge that tribalism still exists in this country. They dismiss it because it isn’t happening to them.

But discrimination doesn’t stop being discrimination simply because it is directed at a group that people don’t often talk about.

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t the prejudice itself. It’s the convincing people that it happened.