Too many questions, just enough truth: Justice as a lifelong pursuit

There are interviews that pass through you and then there are those that stay with you long after the microphones are switched off. Recently, as I was hosting Power Week, I sat across from Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane (SC) for what was meant to be an hour-long conversation. It turned into something far more enduring, a meditation on justice, identity, anger, dignity and, ultimately, the unfinished work of building a nation.

Perhaps this is where it must begin. I have often wondered what it is that can truly unite us as a nation, what thread is strong enough to bind our many histories, our wounds, our hopes. I am beginning to believe that the answer may lie in something both simple and demanding: the search for justice. Not justice as an abstract ideal but as a shared commitment. Your justice must matter to me. My justice must matter to you. Their justice must matter to all of us. Because a nation is not built on comfort or convenience but on a collective refusal to look away from what is wrong. If we can learn to carry one another’s burdens of injustice as our own, then perhaps we will not only find justice but we will finally find each other.

The thread that held the conversation together was clear from the beginning: justice. Not the abstract kind confined to courtrooms and legal textbooks but justice as a lived pursuit. Justice as a lifelong calling. Justice as something that must be wrestled with, not merely referenced.

I walked into that interview expecting answers. I walked out with questions. Too many questions. Perhaps that is the point.

Let me begin with a moment of levity, because even in the heaviest conversations, humour reminds us of our shared humanity. Sikhakhane and I discovered we have two things in common: we were both teachers, though I must confess I lasted a grand total of three months. He once wanted to be a preacher. I, on the other hand, came close to becoming a Catholic priest. Somewhere along the way, we both found ourselves standing behind microphones instead of pulpits, still trying to make sense of the human condition, still trying to guide, challenge and provoke thought.

But the conversation quickly moved from laughter to something deeper.

At my request, Sikhakhane repeated a line he had just delivered, a line that demanded to be heard again, not just by the listeners but by me, so that I could fully absorb its weight. He said his mother taught him that it is better to starve in dignity than to eat in shame.

In a country where corruption continues to rob the poor and hollow out the state, that line felt like both a moral compass and a quiet indictment. It speaks to those who pursue ill-gotten gains, those who rationalise theft in the language of entitlement or survival. It reminds us that justice is not only about legality; it is about dignity. It is about the choices we make when no one is watching. I found myself asking: what would our country look like if we all lived by that one lesson?

We often speak about justice as something external, something to be demanded, legislated and enforced. But Sikhakhane brought it back to the personal. Justice begins with the self. It begins with how we earn, how we treat others, how we show up in the world.

From there, the conversation turned to kindness and the uncomfortable truth about how we measure it. He argued that kindness is not revealed in how we treat those we like but in how we treat those we dislike or those we consider beneath us. It is an unsettling idea because it exposes the conditional nature of our compassion.

It brought to mind the words of Nelson Mandela, who reminded us that “a nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but by how it treats its lowest ones.” That statement is often quoted but rarely lived. It demands a level of introspection that many of us are not always prepared for.

What does our treatment of the most vulnerable say about us as a society? What does it say about our pursuit of justice?

As the host of the show, I had received numerous messages ahead of the interview. Some expressed admiration for Sikhakhane. Others warned me about his temperament, describing him as angry.

So I asked him directly.

His response was unfiltered, unapologetic and deeply revealing. “People say I’m angry,” he said. “Well, I am angry. How can you not be in a world filled with injustice? If you’re black and not angry, then I envy you, yet I don’t want to be you.”

This was not anger for its own sake. It was anger rooted in history, in lived experience, in the enduring legacy of inequality. He spoke of 500 years of dispossession, of the paradox of living in a country where one can feel like a refugee in their own land simply because of the colour of their skin.

He reflected on his early observations of how white South Africans lived, often just kilometres away, yet worlds apart in terms of opportunity and access. It raised a question that lingers in the national psyche: how do you reconcile proximity with disparity? How do you not question a system that allows such stark contrasts to exist side by side?

In that moment, a more radical strand of thought emerged: a challenge to the idea that what is God-created can be owned by a few while others are excluded. Whether one agrees or not, it is a perspective that forces us to interrogate the foundations of inequality.

Sikhakhane went further to suggest that those who criticise him often fail to see that his anger is not directed at them but carried on their behalf. It is the anger of someone unwilling to normalise injustice. It reminded me of Benjamin Burombo, who once said: “Each time I want to fight for African rights, I use only one hand, because the other hand is busy trying to keep away Africans who are fighting me.”

There is a painful truth in that statement. Too often, the struggle for justice is complicated not only by external resistance but by internal division.

Another thread that emerged strongly was Sikhakhane’s insistence on learning from ordinary people. He spoke about how, when he is in the township, he sheds titles. He is not Advocate, not Doctor, not Mister. He is simply Muzi. In that simplicity, he listens.

He learns from people many would overlook, those without formal education, without titles, without platforms. It is a reminder that wisdom is not the exclusive preserve of the formally qualified. It lives in the everyday experiences of people navigating life with resilience and ingenuity. Nation-building, I was reminded, cannot be elite-driven; it must be grounded in the lived realities of ordinary citizens.

Perhaps the most confronting part of our conversation was the discussion on self-hatred among black people. Sikhakhane pointed to a troubling pattern: the tendency of the oppressed to seek validation by positioning themselves above other oppressed people.

We see it in leadership transitions, where a new incumbent feels compelled to discredit their predecessor, to frame themselves as the saviour fixing a “mess”, even when the previous leader served with diligence, albeit imperfectly. It is a cycle that undermines continuity, erodes trust and weakens institutions.

Here, the words of Steve Biko rang loudly: “The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” When we internalise inferiority, when we measure our worth through the diminishment of others, we become complicit in our own disempowerment.

Sikhakhane called for a return to source, a re-grounding in identity, history and self-worth: a cleansing of the internalised narratives that distort how we see ourselves and each other.

Importantly, he also shared that he, alongside Rev Allan Boesak and others, are in the process of organising the Black People’s Convention to interrogate these issues more deeply. It is an effort to create a platform for honest, sometimes uncomfortable, conversations about identity, justice and the future we seek to build.

It is a necessary initiative because if we are to move forward as a nation, we must create spaces where we can confront our truths without fear, where we can challenge one another without hostility, where we can imagine a shared future grounded in justice.

As the conversation unfolded, I found myself transported back to a deeply personal memory.

Years ago, I attended a meeting intended to foster dialogue with Afrikaner organisations such as AfriForum and Solidarity. The aim was to understand their fears and concerns.

But it quickly became a session dominated by grievances: fears of land loss, crime and marginalisation. Let me be clear: all fears deserve to be heard. But as I listened, I could not ignore the disproportion in the stories being told.

So I spoke about my mother.

My mother, who worked as a domestic worker for more than four decades and before that as a farm worker. A life defined by labour, discipline and sacrifice.

And yet, when she retired, she had nothing: no pension, no savings, no formal recognition of her lifetime of contribution. I had to place her on retirement myself, paying her a “salary” just to convince her to rest, because work had become her identity, her survival.

As I shared this, the room grew uncomfortable, because some truths resist easy comparison. The scales of loss are not equal. And justice demands that we acknowledge that.

That memory resurfaced during my conversation with Sikhakhane because it speaks directly to the heart of justice. Justice is not about competing narratives of pain. It is about recognising the depth, context and history of that pain and responding with honesty and fairness.

As I reflect on that hour I hosted, I am struck by how little we resolved and how much we uncovered.

We did not arrive at neat conclusions. But perhaps nation-building is not about neatness. It is about courage: the courage to confront injustice, the courage to question ourselves, the courage to listen, even when it is uncomfortable.

Advocate Muzi Sikhakhane’s life and career, as he shared them, are anchored in that pursuit: a relentless, sometimes unsettling, commitment to justice.

And as I left the studio, I realised that the questions I carried were not a burden. They were an invitation: an invitation to think deeper, to listen better, to build a nation that is not afraid of its own reflection.

Because, in the end, justice is not a destination. It is a lifelong pursuit.