Against ‘Black excellence’

Several billboards around Johannesburg proudly advertise a black-owned law firm, featuring a striking image of black men and women accompanied by the bold caption “black excellence”. The men are dressed in exquisite suits and ties, while the women exude elegance and class, radiating poise and intelligence.

I was featured in a similar photograph at the end of my scholarship residency with the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, whose mission is to “build exceptional leadership in Africa”. Recipients of this prestigious scholarship are often taken as the exceptional few that will make meaningful dent in addressing the many social, economic, political and epistemic quagmires that confront Africa.  The scholarship’s mission underscores how the ideals of black excellence often chime with the ideas of black exceptionalism. 

The idea of black excellence or black exceptionalism assumes the transcendence of the “standard” version of blackness, making one a rarity in the black population. This perceived rarity earns an individual respect, dignity and the status of being worthy of emulation. 

Having representations of “first blacks” and successful black people in various fields has its place. But individual excellence must be properly situated and its role in the liberation of our people must not be overstated. Barring claims that “representation matters”, I argue that the idea of black excellence reinforces negative stereotypes about black people and will not lead to total liberation from the gaze of whiteness of our people, who continue to be burdened by oppressive systems. 

We should care about the critical interrogation of the idea of black excellence because, despite many successful and laudable black figures, a greater number of us are still caught in the perils of indignity, dehumanisation, poverty and contracted lifespans. The idea of black excellence ignores the structural and systemic factors that continue to keep black people and black nations in perpetual disadvantage and, at the same time, places undue, and perhaps unrealistic, demands on a few to change an oppressive system by acquiescing to it. 

Oppression’s chief obscurer is the excellent and exceptional black person. Exceptional black people, who have managed to navigate oppressive systems, often at enormous personal cost, obscure the struggle; they prevent us from looking too closely into why most of our people are still living in indignity, poverty and rising inequality in many parts of the continent. They fragment the struggle and destroy the common denominator — that we are all under systems of oppression. 

The broader logic that underpins the idea of black excellence — that exceptional black people will change the fortune of Africa — is not only false but harmful to genuine liberatory politics. We ought to interrogate the roles of figures such as Nelson Mandela, Beyoncé, Aliko Dangote, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Siya Kolisi, Patrice Motsepe, Wangarĩ Maathai, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and the many other black men and women who have assimilated, progressed and made significant contributions to white institutions. 

Even if these remarkable individuals were united in a single political party, without a steadfast commitment to radical change that prioritises and centres people — not profit through exploitation — their effect would remain marginal, their achievements fragmented, and any progress ultimately limited by the inherently flawed system under which they work. 

The idea of black exceptionalism has existed in black thought for generations. The earliest and most sustained defence of it is by WEB Du Bois, the intellectual figure of Pan-Africanism. The “negro race”, like all races, Du Bois argues, is going to be saved by its exceptional men — the Talented Tenth. “The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races” (Du Bois, 1903: The Talented Tenth). 

This idea of the Talented Tenth shaped the initial impulse of Pan-Africanism and revealed that the ideology of Pan-Africanism was designed not to challenge the imperial social, political, economic and epistemic dominant order and structures of the West that continue to subjugate and dehumanise our people. It is no coincidence then that the most significant Pan-Africanism conference, the fifth conference, was held in the United Kingdom. So, too, was the first congress held at the Westminster Town Hall in London — the very centre of the British Empire. 

The perennial idea of black exceptionalism continues to shape the black imagination of the world. It was no surprise, then, that as the wave of independence swept across Africa in the late 1950s and 1960s, many of its sons and daughters returned from the citadels of higher learning in Europe and America to take up leadership roles and changed the “face of leadership” on the continent. 

By the face of leadership, I mean that black people were now proxies of a system that continues to be inherently oppressive of the people they were to serve while invisible hands dictated, from behind, the destiny of black people. In some cases, the claim that “representation matters” only attends to the “face” or formal aspects of leadership without substantive transformation. Often, the excellent black, who “represents”, is simultaneously the perpetrator and victim of structural racism and other structural oppressions. 

Across Africa and the whole world, these faces are now varied and diverse. They constitute a putrid class that is a friend of the white who is learned, safe and hardworking as opposed to the “standard” black who is lazy, dangerous and stupid. 

In many ways, the excellent black is the “house negro” living on. Where the exceptional black is radical, their radicalism must be palatable enough to the dominant group that they are not considered a threat — in fact, this is what secures them a seat at the proverbial table, at panels, as keynote speakers, as technologists and innovators who can raise funds from venture capitalists to advance products and “solutions” that are incremental, fragmented and profitable, often under the guise of being sustainable. 

Proponents of the radical call that aims to dismantle the roots of oppression and domination are often seen as irrational and dangerous to the “well-functioning” society where all that is needed is for individuals to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make something excellent of themselves. 

Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, in his book The New Apartheid, defends the view that South Africa is in a new apartheid era that has stark and distressing similarities with the abolished apartheid system, which continues to thrive despite, or even because of, the democratic system. The inequality and dehumanisation of black people persist after 30 years of democracy. The ills of inequality and poverty have persisted across much of the continent, despite being led by a generation of its exceptional men and women who returned from Europe and America to guide newly independent African states and current leaders who have excelled in Western institutions.

In this new apartheid/neocolonialism, we’ll find exceptional black people who are used as perfect examples of a working system and used to fuel the neoliberal fantasies that individualism is the hallmark of well-being. The consequence has been the loss of the collective vision of transformation — in fact, dismantling the new apartheid would be far more difficult than Verwoerd’s kind, for the new class of exceptional black people has more of a stake in the preservation, and continuance, of the system than it does in the pursuit of justice for all. 

As a sidebar, it was not surprising to see so many well-to-do black people in South Africa protest the recent signing of the National Health Insurance Bill that aims to guarantee, in principle, equitable and quality access to all, a move that can only be described as “privilege-preserving pushback”. 

In South Africa, as in other parts of the continent, the black middle class was, and continues to be, touted as the exemplar of a self fully liberated. This is a lie. Instead, what has happened in many places, in South Africa and in Africa in general post-independence from “formal” colonial rule, is a small group of black elites and aspiring elites who have broken their backs to reach the peak of their chosen careers while sinking under the weight of hyper-scrutiny from a system that denies them the exercise of the full complexity and contradictions of what it means to be human. 

Exceptional black people are often the backbone of functioning institutions and organisations that they have paid for by sacrificing their health, family and mental well-being. 

Exceptional and excellent black people often own nothing but believe they own something worth preserving by being acolytes of the system. As acolytes, they are pariahs in the corporate halls and pariahs at home in the townships and their communities; they are neither here nor there. Yet, they are often filling in the gaps that come with state failure by driving the “integration” of their family and community into the mainstream culture through support in education, health needs and daily sustenance. 

It is not part of my argument here to settle the question of what would guarantee the total liberation of our people. My argument is a modest one — that we should not be fooled into believing that elevating exceptional black people is the panacea in itself to dismantling oppressive systems and structures. 

We must not be fooled by political parties that become the enclave of black elites without substantive commitment to radical politics. The talented black professionals and elites (both actual and aspiring) will not, through their individual good intentions and actions, bring about justice for people and the planet. We have to collectively upend the global social, political, economic, cultural and epistemic powers that have been built and sustained by power accumulated through colonialism, slavery and genocide. 

Akanimo Andrew Akpan is a senior consultant at Reos Partners. He works in the area of complex adaptive problems in various social systems, designing and facilitating cross-sectoral multi-stakeholder engagements to address humanity’s challenges where collaboration among diverse stakeholders is required. He is a member of the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg. The views expressed here are his and do not reflect those of any of his associations.