WE ARE STILL HERE: A BLACK CHRISTMAS, A SHARED BREATH
By Thami akaMbongo Manzana | The Creative Passport
A collective Christmas and New Year reflection from South Africa’s Cultural and Creative Industries — honouring the artists we lost in 2025, reflecting on a year that broke many of us, and expressing gratitude to those who stood with us when survival became the work.
A BLACK CHRISTMAS WE DID NOT CHOOSE
This Christmas does not arrive wrapped in lights and laughter for all of us. For many within the Cultural and Creative Industries, it arrives heavy, quiet, and uncertain. A Black Christmas — not by choice, but by circumstance. A season where joy feels borrowed, where celebration feels distant, and where survival itself becomes the unspoken task.
2025 has been a brutal year for South Africa’s Cultural and Creative Industries. Brutal in ways that budgets, reports, and policy statements will never fully capture. It has broken spirits, exhausted savings, delayed dreams, and forced many of us to question our worth in a country that celebrates culture loudly but protects its creators quietly — or not at all.
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Image: Burning Candle (no copyright infringement is intended.)
THE INVISIBLE REALITIES WE CARRY
Some of us will sit around full tables, surrounded by family, warmth, and familiarity. Others will sit alone — not because we are unloved, but because pride, shame, and survival told us it was easier to disappear than to arrive empty-handed.
Some of us will rely on handouts — from loved ones, families, friends, or colleagues from industries that still function. Some of us will smile through the season, hiding the fact that December has become something to endure rather than enjoy.
And some of us are not asking for miracles anymore. We just want December to pass quietly, so that the New Year can arrive with the possibility — however fragile — that things might be different.
Image: Various artists who passed away in 2025 (no copyright infringement is intended.)
IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO LEFT US
This season also asks us to pause and remember. To speak the names we carry in our hearts. To honour the artists, practitioners, cultural workers, and creative souls who left us in 2025 — some quietly, some suddenly, some worn down by a system that did not see them, protect them, or value them enough.
We remember them not only for what they produced, but for who they were. For the stages they built, the stories they told, the rooms they opened, and the courage they carried. Their absence is felt deeply — in rehearsal spaces, in studios, in community halls, and in conversations that now echo without their voices.
May we never reduce their passing to statistics or footnotes. May we continue to celebrate their legacy, carry their work forward, and speak their names with respect and intention.
SURVIVAL AS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE
Whatever our situation may be — seen or unseen, spoken or swallowed — we must remind ourselves of this truth: we are not alone.
We are not weak for feeling tired.
We are not failures because the system failed us.
We are not less of artists because the year took more than it gave.
This Christmas, survival itself is an act of resistance. Waking up when our spirits are exhausted is a performance no one applauds, yet it deserves recognition. Carrying hope with empty pockets is a skill only artists truly understand.
If all we can offer this season is our breath — that is enough.
If all we can hold onto is the belief that “next year must be different” — we must hold it, even if it trembles.
GRATITUDE FOR THE HANDS THAT HELD US
In the midst of this darkness, we must also pause to give thanks.
To those who listened when we needed to speak.
To those who checked in when silence became dangerous.
To those who shared meals, opportunities, transport, contacts, time, prayers, and emotional labour.
To families who stood by us even when they did not fully understand our calling.
To colleagues and comrades who became lifelines when institutions failed.
Your presence mattered. Your kindness mattered. Your solidarity kept many of us alive.
REFLECTION, NOT ROMANTICISATION
They often say, “Be grateful you are alive.”
And while those words can feel heavy, even dismissive, we reclaim them here — not as a way to silence pain, but as a reminder of endurance.
Being alive does not cancel suffering.
Gratitude does not erase injustice.
Hope does not mean pretending everything is fine.
Reflection allows us to tell the truth without shame — and to imagine something better without surrender.
WE ARE STILL HERE
As this year comes to an end, may this Christmas be gentle with us.
May the New Year meet us with dignity, restoration, and opportunities that do not require us to beg for what we deserve.
And may we one day look back at this season and say:
We survived — and we remained artists.
To the broken artist — to us:
Our story is not over.
Our voices are not silenced.
Our time is still coming.
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