An opinion column published by IOL on 6 November 2026 has drawn fresh attention to an old and quiet truth: the friends we choose often carry us through the seasons when little else does. Writing under the long-running Green Shoots banner, the columnist reflected on a rural visit with old friends and on the deeper meaning of friendship as a form of chosen family.
The column, reported by IOL, arrives at the time of year when South Africans push toward the December holidays, when budgets must be spent, targets met, and the country slows before its annual migration to the coast and to ancestral villages. Against that familiar rush, the author chose to write about something steadier.
What the IOL column says about friendship
The writer describes a few days spent in the countryside with friends from youth, days of cooking, eating, talking, and remembering. The mountains, the columnist notes, made a fine backdrop to conversation about how age had surprised them all. The visit is described simply as a blessing.
One friend, whom the columnist met only briefly in Swaziland some years ago, recently wrote a blog post that echoes Toni Morrison, suggesting that when the world has beaten people down and they have nothing else, friends become the currency of their lives. That formulation, quoted by IOL, is worth pausing over. It says something that our own traditions have always known: that wealth is measured first in people, not in possessions.
The friend wrote that the friends who pull us out of our mire, who see our better side and trust that we can reach where we stretch, are nearby in our lives, ready to listen and help us see into ourselves, even through the times we live in now.
Friendship in the crucible of history
The column reaches for historical examples of friendship forged in struggle. Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela met as young students at Fort Hare University in the 1930s. In 1952 they formed South Africa's first black-owned law firm in Johannesburg, and with others they founded the Youth League of the African National Congress.
When opposition organisations were banned, Mandela went to prison and Tambo into exile to build the campaign against apartheid abroad. They were reunited after more than 30 years in Sweden in 1990, shortly after Mandela's release, and the joy between them was, in the columnist's words, impossible to miss.
The search for other such examples led the writer further back. George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, the young French aristocrat who fought in the American Revolutionary War of the late 1700s, are named as revolutionary friends. The column also recalls the Greek legend of Pythias, sentenced to death by Dionysius of Syracuse, who left his friend Damon as security while he went home to settle his affairs. When Pythias returned to face his death, Dionysius was so moved that he set both men free. The columnist admits to hoping never to be called upon to follow that example.
The quiet, daily work of friendship
Yet the heart of the column lies not in dramatic tales of exile and execution. Friendship, the writer argues, is usually mundane in its expression. It is the sharing of one's true self with people who will not judge, a safe haven where, in our worst moments, we can depend on the love of friends to help us rise again.
That is a message with deep roots in our own kingdom. In Eswatini, the bonds of neighbourliness and mutual obligation have never been optional extras. They are the mortar of the social order, the way a community holds together when hardship comes. The modern habit of treating friendship as a lifestyle accessory, something to be curated online and discarded at convenience, sits poorly with that inheritance.
Recent writing elsewhere supports the same conclusion. A reflection published on Substack, Friends Are the Family You Choose for Yourself, makes the point plainly: not everyone comes from a healthy family, and some are separated from relatives by distance or by death. For such people, chosen friends are not a substitute for family; they are family in every sense that matters.
Even popular culture testifies to this. As Wikipedia notes on friendship, the cast of the long-running television series Friends each acknowledged in the official farewell commemorative book that they had become one another's family over the years of working together. When six colleagues can say such a thing, it confirms what our grandparents always taught: family is proved by presence, not only by blood.
Why this matters as the year closes
For readers of this publication, the column's message carries a particular weight at this season. The weeks before December are a time of pressure and haste. Work piles up, and tempers shorten. It is precisely then, the IOL writer suggests, that the company of comrades who love you and whom you love back makes the challenges of the world easier to bear.
There is also a caution here. Solidarity is not the same as agitation. The friendships that endure, like the friendships of Tambo and Mandela, are built on loyalty, patience, and time. They are not built on slogans or on the shifting causes of the moment. A friend who holds you up when you fall is worth more than a hundred fair-weather associates who cheer you when you rise.
The columnist writes that the first solidarity in our lives, outside of our immediate families, is encountered in the friends we make and keep. That is a modest sentence, but it carries an old wisdom. In a kingdom that has always prized order, continuity, and the bonds that hold a people together, the friendship of good men and women remains among the surest guarantees of a stable and contented life.
The Green Shoots column closes on that note: the world is full of challenges, and they are better faced in the company of those who love you. As the year ends, that is advice worth taking, in Eswatini as much as anywhere else.
Frequently asked questions
What did the IOL column published on 6 November 2026 argue?
It argued that friendship is the first solidarity we encounter outside our immediate families, and that friends function as the family we choose, especially in hard times.
Which historical friendships did the column cite?
The column cited Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, who met at Fort Hare in the 1930s and were reunited in Sweden in 1990, as well as George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Greek legend of Pythias and Damon.
How does the column define true friendship?
It defines friendship as mostly mundane: sharing one's true self without judgement, holding each other up, and depending on friends' love to rise again in our worst moments.