The lost power of Blackness

SOUTH Africa has a problem with Blackness. Most of the world has. Black people have a problem with Blackness.

- LORENZO DAVIDS

Blackness is a political synonym for “failure” It’s an economic synonym for “incompetence.” And it’s a class synonym for “not good enough.” What we saw at the Zondo and Madlanga Commissions is the deepening problem with Blackness. We saw Blackness laughed at and mocked. We observed accounting officers who were unable to provide proper evidence when questioned. Every Commission of Inquiry is a deepening of the crisis in Blackness.

Blackness, in the post-W.E. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey eras, still attempts to be proud, beautiful and intelligent. But it has become a burden instead of a celebration. In South Africa, the ANC has condemned Blackness to something akin to lingering incompetence, with corruption as its ever-present cousin. The inherent racism that most white people carried for centuries as part of their transactional relationship with Black people in South Africa is at an all-time high. Go into any meeting as a Black individual, and you will be treated with elevated levels of suspicion. Those who deny this are simply hiding their inherent racism that believes that Blackness is not on the same level of competence as whiteness, and their suppressed scepticism that Blackness can’t be trusted the same way whiteness can be trusted.