I buried a friend in Fouriesburg this past weekend. The funeral was full of familiar rituals; lowered heads and hymns that promised peace where life had refused to offer any. 

Speakers spoke about my friend’s kindness, his laughter and his generosity. They said he had "fought a good fight" and he was now "finally resting." 

But in my heart was embedded a different question: why are so many young men dying long before they are buried? 

As I stood there, I kept thinking about the University of Witwatersrand. We arrived on campus carrying the same fragile dream. We believed education would free us from blackness. We believed a degree would loosen the grip of history on our families. We believed hard work was enough. 

We were young. We believed many things. 

Then my own dream collapsed. I failed academically and was excluded. The shame was unbearable. Returning home without a degree felt like returning with proof that witches who doubted me had been right all along. 

So I stayed in Johannesburg. I had nowhere to go. For a while, I was homeless until my friend got me a room in some old residential area behind Auckland Park. 

I have no recollection of him ever asking me how I had failed; he simply made space for me. With the passing of time, I realise that what he offered me was much bigger than accommodation. He restored something I had almost lost, that is, my dignity. 

But there is a strange cruelty in this life thing. People who carry others are carrying unbearable weight themselves; you only discover how heavy that weight was when they are no longer here to tell you. 

That is the thing about us men. We have become experts at hiding. Our smiles have become uniforms and our jokes some type of armour. We learn to perform strength so convincingly that even the people closest to us stop asking whether we are alright. We tell everyone else that things will get better when we rarely believe it ourselves. 

The tragedy is that this performance begins long before adulthood. It starts when boys are taught that tears are embarrassing, fear is weakness and vulnerability belongs to somebody else. Somewhere between childhood and manhood, many of us are taught that love must be earned through endurance. 

In our homes, the lesson arrives wrapped in a familiar proverb that says “Monna ke nku, ha a lle.” The saying is often repeated with affection. Our parents believe they are preparing us for a difficult world. Black people believe they are building resilience and our society celebrates this as wisdom. 

But any wisdom that cost us our lives is foolish. 

It is Bell hooks who wrote that patriarchy has no gender. It is a political and social order that demands domination, radical emotional suppression and control. Women suffer under it in profound and devastating ways. We suffer too, although differently. Patriarchy does not simply reward us men. It also punishes us. It teaches us to amputate parts of ourselves in exchange for acceptance. By the time we reach adulthood, we no longer know how to recognise our own pain. 

Steve Biko understood this too well when he wrote about psychological liberation. Systems of oppression do not survive through force alone. They survive because people begin to internalise them. They become the policemen of their own minds. That is exactly what patriarchy does to men. We police ourselves; we hide depression because we mistake silence for strength. We apologise for needing help. 

Then we wonder why so many of us disappear behind alcohol, violence and isolation. We wonder why so many funerals leave families asking the same impossible question: "why did he not say anything?". But this question too is foolish because we spend our whole lives being taught not to say anything. 

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called this symbolic violence. It is the kind of violence that leaves no bruises because it teaches people to participate willingly in their own domination. Men inherit impossible expectations and then spend decades convincing one another that those expectations are normal. 

South Africans only speak about masculinity when men become perpetrators of violence. That conversation is necessary. It cannot be avoided. But we should also ask what happens to the man who turns the violence inward. The one who never raises his hand against another person but wages war against himself every single day. 

He is often invisible. Until he dies. Then everyone remembers that he was always smiling. I refuse to remember my friend only through the circumstances of his death. I remember the man who paid for my accommodation when I had nowhere to sleep. I remember the mortal who protected my dignity without asking for recognition. At one of the lowest points in my life, he quietly reminded me that failure was not final. 

That is who he was. If his passing teaches us anything, it is that we have misunderstood strength for far too long. Strength is not silence and carrying unbearable pain until it crushes you. Real strength is telling another man that life is becoming too heavy. Real strength is asking for help before despair convinces you that you have become a burden. 

People say that funerals are for the living. I think that is only partly true. Funerals are also moments when the dead ask something of us. They leave us with unfinished work. My friend's final gift is this reflection. Not because it will ease my grief, but because somewhere a young man who has mastered the art of saying "I'm fine" might be saved. 

We bury too many men long before their actual deaths; many of them disappear beneath expectations they are never allowed to question. 

Perhaps it is time to bury something else, not another man though. What we need to bury is the lie that men must suffer in silence to deserve the title of man. And maybe the greatest tribute we can offer those we have already lost is to build a generation of boys who never have to choose between being men and being human.

*Tshediso Mangope moonlights as a social commentator in his spare time and writes in his personal capacity…

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of this publication (Journal News Network).