If we are employing dramatics, and in our theatre of manufactured outrage President Jacob Zuma is Public Enemy Number 1, then black success is Public Enemy The Original.

Everybody hates black success.

And nobody hates black success more than black people. We have been conditioned to. Along with our conditioning to suffer, to accept poverty, to expect and accept less to nothing, we, as black people, have been conditioned to absolutely abhor it when one of us succeeds. They have no right.

They have no right: to overcome; to come out of and to change the way that things are supposed to be. They have no right to not suffer.

We hate black success.

We hate black success so much that we need to taint it, diminish it, bedevil it and punish it. It has to be dirty, seedy, corrupt and contemptible, in order for it to earn its place. Black people need to have not formed networks, they need to have “plotted”, to have “schemed”, they need to have benefited from nepotism, in order for us to be able to swallow their success. And when black people occupy meaningful positions in the construction of our society, then they certainly must have been deployed rather than employed based on ability, skills, and qualifications.

But perhaps the worst betrayal and biggest deviation from the way that things should be, is when black people are courageous enough to start their own businesses, and in this approach the one entity which is willing to work with black business and afford black business the opportunities necessary to enter markets: government. That must surely be the worst and most contemptible class of black people, the lowest form of being black, the nether, the “tenderpreneurs”. The ones who get very successful very quickly and even more unpalatable: very young.

Oh! We hate those tenderpreneurs.

Even, I hate them. I have never once applied for a tender and I have no idea what goes into applying for a tender but I am quite entitled to loathe tenderpreneurs, just as I am entitled to call them lazy, corrupt, and opportunistic. And you will agree with me and even add that their work is substandard and that the only reason that they get those tenders is their “struggle credentials”. We will both be right and justified in all this, of course, because how dare they get rich so quickly? How dare they acquire financial success without having to toil for peanuts for years and years, without having to break their backs and stumble and fall and be ridiculed and mocked? How dare they change the game so drastically?

We hate tenderpreneurs.

And nobody knows that better than the ANC, because nobody uses and exploits tenderpreneurs more than the ANC, usually for votes and financial contributions and every once in a while as scapegoats.

President Zuma opened his Nkandla home to viewing, photographing and public parading and assessment last week. He did this after no less than two years of doublespeak, spin, denials, and just plain lies. Of course, he didn’t open Nkandla to us to show us a marvellous pad of luxury, he did so to show us a sorry, shoddy, ill-planned and ill-constructed waste of millions of our tax money. And if you are wondering about the purpose of that Nkandla parade, and perhaps like others have made the mistake of viewing it as mistake or misstep by the President and/or the ANC then you may need to reconsider some of your considerations, pay attention and watch the Nkandla narrative change from the ANC is corrupt, Zuma is corrupt, the ANC has failed us to:

Those contemptible corrupt, money-grabbing BEE tenderpreneurs defrauded the nation.

Watch the purpose of the Nkandla parade unfold and reveal the above little words; watch it obliterate all questions about who authorized plans, construction and payments. Watch, so that you do not miss that the real purpose of the Nkandla parade is to change the current narrative and replace it with the scapegoating of tenderpreneurs who have defrauded our nation and duped our ruling party; compelling it to pour millions into a shoddy dud. And this new and currently being workshopped narrative will very easy to swallow because we hate black success and absolutely loathe those contemptible tenderpreneurs, and nobody knows and exploits that more than our ANC.

….but really, this is just an outsider’s opinion.

Writer: Nomfundo Shezi