‘Africans come from brilliance’: Nandi Madida challenges Errol Musk’s controversial apartheid comments

“I refuse for future generations to be brainwashed into believing our ancestors were anything less than extraordinary.”

Those are the words of South African media personality and radio host, Nandi Madida.

Madida was responding to Errol Musk, the father of the controversial tech billionaire, Elon Musk, after he said that he did not witness oppression of black people during apartheid.

Musk made the controversial statement during an interview with CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan for Sullivan’s upcoming special, MisinfoNation: White Genocide.

“You see, if you take South Africa, we have a small white population that projects European culture, or what we learned from Europe. How do you oppress? We know, we gave them work, we paid them.

“They grew from a tiny little group into a massive group. That’s not oppression, that’s feeding them. Do you understand? You only grow big if you get fed. You only start at 800 000 and become 50 million if you get fed.

“We feed them for crying out loud. You know, enough with this nonsense. Well, we never saw this oppression you’re talking about. No, I never saw it,” said Musk.

After a clip of the interview aired, it trended across social media platforms around the world.

Madida took to her X account and responded to Musk’s statement with a photo collage of nine pictures signifying traditional African life, particularly food preparation and cooking.

The pictures were captioned, “We fed them.”

Former news anchor Aldrin Sampear responded to Madida, saying, “You’d swear life didn’t exist in Africa before colonialism…”

Madida replied, “Exactly. I refuse for future generations to be brainwashed into believing our ancestors were anything less than extraordinary. Africans come from brilliance, civilisation, innovation, and genius, and colonialism has continuously appropriated, rewritten, and exploited that at our expense.

“Our children deserve to know the truth about where they come from.”

Several netizens applauded Madida for speaking her mind without fear of being cancelled or losing gigs.

Her posts also sparked a heated debate on the importance of teaching African culture and history.

This is what netizens had to say: 

User @iThando stated, “It’s not even a belief; it’s a fact. There are loads of books on African civilisation, cosmopolitan cities of Africa, before Westerners had ulterior motives. We traded with the Asians and the Portuguese way before the Portuguese decided to be greedy and destructive.”

Another user, @Ntje11, said, “But I blame African leaders who fail to introduce our African history curriculum. Youth can’t dispel Western propaganda without knowing themselves first. Knowledge is power.”

User @BookerZeee commented, “I used to think that I should ignore it and them because I KNOW what our history is. But we need more of THIS. It’s time we speak up LOUDLY and proudly of what civilisation in Africa as a whole used to be before and what we TAUGHT them.”

While @NegroNegro08 expressed, “👏🏿 I’m glad that, as a so-called celebrity, you are able to voice and speak out without being afraid of being censored or cancelled.”