As another year closes, I find myself doing what historians do instinctively. I look backwards in order to understand what lies ahead.

The past year has been one of steady momentum, quiet challenges, and unexpected triumphs. It has been shaped by muddy boots on frontier paths, long conversations under Eastern Cape skies, research rabbit holes that began with a single name and ended in a web of human contradiction, and the ongoing effort to tell South African history honestly without polishing its rough edges.

Running history tours and talks is not simply about dates and battles. It is about people, loyalty tested under pressure, choices made when there were no good options, and the way landscapes remember what we sometimes try to forget. This year reminded me how hungry people are for those deeper stories. Not the easy narratives, but the uncomfortable ones that force us to ask who we are and how we arrived here.

Whether we are talking about frontier wars, the tangled loyalties of figures like Hans Lötter, or the uneasy alliances that shaped the Eastern Cape, the past refuses to line up neatly. That can be frustrating in a world that prefers slogans over nuance. Yet it is also our greatest strength. Complexity builds resilience, both in historical understanding and in the present moment.

South African history offers a cautionary tale and a quiet lesson here. On the Eastern Cape frontier, conflict rarely erupted without warning. There were always signals first. Broken treaties. Misunderstandings hardened into grievances. Leaders who mistook control for legitimacy. When dialogue failed, violence followed, and everyone paid the price.

Globally, we are seeing similar fault lines reappear. Nations are drawing harder borders, both physical and ideological. Loyalty is being demanded rather than earned. History tells us that these moments test societies profoundly. They expose weaknesses, but they also reveal unexpected strength.

One of the most striking lessons from our past is endurance. Despite repeated wars, forced removals, economic collapse, and political upheaval, communities adapted.

They carried stories forward when written records failed. They rebuilt social bonds in new forms when old systems collapsed. That capacity to endure without losing identity is something the modern world will need in abundance.

Another lesson is humility. Many historical disasters began with certainty. The certainty that one side was right. That the future was inevitable. That force could resolve what understanding could not. South African history is littered with the consequences of that thinking.

If 2026 teaches the world anything, I hope it is that certainty is not strength.

Curiosity is.

As we move into a new year, my hope is to keep creating spaces where people can slow down and think historically. Not nostalgically, but critically. To ask better questions. To listen to voices that history tried to silence. To recognise that the past is not finished with us yet.

The road ahead will not be smooth, locally or globally. But history reminds us that turbulence is not the end of the story. It is often the beginning of transformation. The Eastern Cape has taught me that landscapes shaped by conflict can also become places of reflection and renewal. The same may yet prove true on a global scale.