There’s a corner in many South African homes that isn’t cleaned, it’s dusted. Reverently. Wiped down with a soft cloth and a little pride. Not the TV. Not the kitchen counter. The mantelpiece, or whatever stand-in version of it the house allows, maybe a shelf made of old chipboard, maybe the top of a glass display unit repurposed from another life. But there, standing with more presence than a security guard at the gate, is the trophy. Or if you’re lucky, trophies. Not made of real gold, of course, but shining anyway, because someone earned it and someone else never forgot. Soccer medals, chess plaques, debate certificates curling from the heat, spelling bee titles from Grade 4 laminated like state secrets. And then the big ones, those generic gold men caught mid-kick, mid-leap, mid-anything, that say nothing about the person and everything about the moment. The pride is disproportionate to the monetary value, but that’s the point.
In working-class homes, the trophy becomes something else. It’s not proof of wealth. It’s proof that despite how little there was, something still got done. It says, “We were here.” It says, “He played through the whole tournament with one pair of takkies and still scored in the final.” It says, “She made it into top ten despite the power being out the whole week.” It says, “We mattered, even if no one outside this yard noticed.” There are stories behind every one of them. Like how no one could afford the team tracksuit, so the kids just wore black jeans and yellow T-shirts and still made it to the finals. Or how the trophy itself was carried home on a taxi, held like a baby so it wouldn’t snap.
It’s not just the item. It’s what it meant at the time. It meant someone clapped for you, even if your dad couldn’t make it. It meant your mother had something to tell the neighbour. It meant your uncle, drunk or sober, now had a reason to call you champ at the next family braai. It gave the house something aspirational. Not because it looked expensive, but because it represented a brief moment when the grind of daily life paused just long enough for someone to say, “Well done.”
Some of those trophies never had names engraved. Some got names wrong. It didn’t matter. In a house where nothing stays shiny for long, the trophy is untouchable. The plastic polish is real gold for a second. That soccer cup from 2011 still holds a place next to the family portrait. It stays even after the microwave breaks, after the DSTV decoder becomes a paperweight, after the father leaves, or the kid grows up and moves to another town. The trophy stays. It’s not just about the sport. Or the academics. It’s the win that survived. The moment that outlived the month-end grocery list. And for some, it’s all they got to show that they didn’t just pass through this life unnoticed.
In this economy, not all value is transactional. Some of it is emotional, symbolic, and stubborn. That’s what the trophy on the mantelpiece represents. It’s the currency of memory. The gold you don’t spend, the gold you don’t wear, but the gold you look at every time things get hard to remind yourself, maybe we’ll get through this too. It’s an altar to resilience, plastic though it may be. Because in homes where there’s often more month than money, sometimes the real wealth is the story you get to keep.
