Solly Soka Madibela popularly known as MySol with his Rolls Royce at his R220 million mansion in Cape Town. The writer argues that South Africa has developed a harmful tendency to treat black success with suspicion instead of pride. While corruption must be confronted, the article warns against automatically associating black wealth and achievement with criminality, saying such attitudes reflect lingering colonial thinking that undermines true economic transformation and black excellence.
One of the most dangerous psychological wounds in South Africa today is the quiet habit of treating black success like a crime scene, admired in public, but immediately investigated in private. It is as if achievement must first prove its innocence before it is allowed to be celebrated, and excellence must carry a receipt before it is believed.
Yet a nation cannot claim transformation while suspicion still follows success like a shadow. Somewhere within our society, a poisonous mentality has taken root, the belief that when a black person rises economically, there must be corruption, theft, political connections or dishonesty behind it.
This mindset is not only ignorant but it is deeply insulting to the sacrifices made by generations who fought for freedom and economic justice in this country. The struggle led by the African National Congress was never simply about replacing political power.
