BY SANDILE MEMELA:
There is a disease in Black politics. It goes like this:
If a white person agrees with you, you must be wrong. If the system that oppressed you praises you, you must have sold out. If your truth embarrasses your own leaders, you must have been bought.
This is the lie we use to blackmail our own seers, prophets and intellectuals. And it must be shattered.
Why must we shatter the myth that black seers, prophets and intellectuals have no grasp of the truth? Because that myth says Black people cannot know truth on their own. They can only know loyalty.
The script is familiar. A Black intellectual stands up and says: “The ANC has failed. Corruption is killing us. Tembisa Hospital was looted not by whites, but by Black comrades with struggle credentials.”
Immediately the response: “Who are you quoting? Why are whites clapping for you? You are being used by the system.”
They are constantly blackmailed, quoting unsubstantiated claims of leaders with so-called struggle credentials, that when praised by a system that has oppressed you or is corrupt, you must be concerned or worried.
You know the line: “If the enemy praises you, check yourself.” It sounds revolutionary. It is actually infantilizing.
But this elevates whites to a superior position and status.
Think about it. If I say: “The municipality has no water because the tender was given to a comrade who cannot lay a pipe,” and a white ratepayer says “Yes, that is true,” does that make my statement false? No. It makes it true twice. But we are taught to feel shame that a white person agrees. We are taught to retract.
What does that mean? It means whites are the arbiters of truth. If they disagree, we are authentic. If they agree, we are suspect. So we must always be anti-white to be authentic. That gives whites the power to define Black truth by their reaction.
It means that blacks cannot arrive at certain truths, especially when these transcend their so-called people and embarrass them.
And that is the heart of it. There are truths that embarrass Black people. Not because we are Black, but because we are human. Humans steal. Humans lie. Humans, when given unchecked power without accountability, become corrupt. This is not a white truth. It is a human truth.
When a Black prophet says: “Men are killing women not because they are patriarchal monsters only, but because we have 54 men being killed per day and we have normalized male death, and violence begets violence” – that embarrasses the NGO that gets millions to say “men are the problem.” So we silence him: “You are defending killers.”
When a Black intellectual says: “The 4890 men murdered between Jan and March 2025 are also a crisis, and their children are also orphans” – that embarrasses the movement that wants only 837 women to matter. So we say: “You are whataboutism; you are funded by white men.”
We have created a condition where Black truth must simply be anti-white to be valid. If it is not anti-white, it is not Black.
This is a fallacy. And a dangerous one.
The truth knows no colour and is universal and human. But it looks like that black truth must simply be anti-white.
Let’s be concrete:
- Truth: Water is H2O. If a white scientist says it, and a Black sangoma says it, it is still H2O. It does not become “white truth” because a white person said it first.
- Truth: If you steal R1 billion from a hospital, people will die. It does not matter if the thief was Black and had struggle credentials, or white and had apartheid credentials. The body does not ask about the thief’s race before it dies.
- Truth: Children need fathers who are present and non-violent. That is true in Soweto and in Stockholm. It is not a white family value. It is a human family value.
When we say Black truth must be anti-white, we cut ourselves off from universal human truth. We make Blackness a reaction, not an origin. Steve Biko never said that. Biko said Black is Beautiful – an affirmation, not a negation. He said: “We do not want to be white. We want to be ourselves.” Being ourselves means we can arrive at the same truth whites arrive at, but from our own road, without asking permission.
Biko himself was praised by some white liberals when he said Black Consciousness is not anti-white. Did that make him a sellout? No. It made him prophetic.
The prophets we need now are not those who know how to chant “white monopoly capital” on cue. We need prophets who can say:
- Black leaders can oppress Black people. That is not a white narrative. That is what Fanon warned about: the black skin, white mask elite.
- Not all that is Black is good, and not all that is white is bad. Good and bad know no colour.
- If the facts support you, you do not need to check who claps. Facts don’t need a racial permit.
Whites have no monopoly over the truth. This is the final liberation.
For centuries, whites told us they have a monopoly over truth: over God, over science, over civilization. We fought that. We said: We too know God. We too can do science. We too are civilized.
Now we are doing it to ourselves. We are saying: If a white person agrees with a Black truth, that truth must be white. We are giving back the monopoly we fought to break.
Blacks who speak their truth must not allow themselves to be bullied or feel ashamed because some whites agree with them.
If you are a young Black woman theatre director like Nikita Baloyi who says “my body remembers trauma perpetrated by Black men in my community,” and a white feminist says “I agree,” you must not be ashamed. Your body is telling the truth. The white woman recognizing it does not make your trauma white.
If you are Prof William Gumede at Wits Business School saying “BEE is cronyism that has benefitted the politically connected and betrayed the majority,” and a white journalist writes about it, you are not a puppet. You are a prophet that even your enemy can hear. That is power, not betrayal.
We must teach our children: Truth is not a popularity contest between races. Truth is: does it correspond to reality? Does it advance human development? Does it set us free?
If a thief steals, say he steals, even if he is your uncle who was on Robben Island. That is not anti-Black. That is pro-truth. And pro-Black in the deepest sense, because you want Black people to have hospitals that work.
The seer, the prophet, the intellectual – the Black seer – has always been lonely. In the village, the prophet is not loved when he says the rain will not come because the chief stole the grain. But the prophet is still right.
We must protect that loneliness. We must say to that young Black thinker: Speak even if whites clap. Even if Blacks boo. If it is true, it is true. Truth knows no colour. It is universal and human.
And only when we believe that will we stop being mental slaves waiting for white validation – even if that validation comes in the negative form of “if they praise you, you are wrong.”
Whites have no monopoly over the truth. And Blackness has no monopoly over falsehood to prove authenticity.
Let the truth be Black, white, universal, embarrassing, inconvenient. Let it be truth. – @NewsSA_Online
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