My maternal uncle left for Southern Rhodesia in the 1950s, before I was born. He eventually found employment on a farm owned by a white settler. After some time, however, he returned to Nyasaland on holiday, and his stay gradually became indefinite. His employer, growing impatient at the prolonged absence of his trusted servant, drove to Nyasaland in search of him. Somehow, he located our village and found my uncle. He fetched him and took him back to Rhodesia, and my uncle never returned to Nyasaland. When Zimbabwe attained independence, the white farmer left the farm, and my uncle moved to another part of the country. He died in Zimbabwe in the 1980s and was buried there.
One might therefore be tempted to imagine that my uncle had achieved some measure of greatness. After all, a white man had undertaken the journey from Rhodesia to an obscure Nyasa village to find him. Yet that extraordinary effort did not alter my uncle’s status. He remained a servant and died as such. Had he acquired a share of the farm or established an enterprise that matched or surpassed his employer’s, the story would have been different. That would have represented genuine achievement.
We Africans sometimes attach an exaggerated value to whiteness. We unconsciously assume that every white person must be socially, financially, technologically and intellectually superior to every black person. Surely, then, every white person is automatically above every black person? Wrong! Such an impression might be understandable among people who have never observed white people in their own countries, where skin colour confers neither wealth nor intelligence.
In 2015, I encountered a white beggar at a minibus station in Kempton Park, Johannesburg. Most passengers were black South Africans, and there stood a white man appealing to them for money. The assumed hierarchy between black and white was turned neatly on its head. He also approached me, but unfortunately I had no spare cash to offer.
My experiences in London in the 1980s had taught me a similar lesson. I saw numerous white people living in genuine destitution on the streets of that great metropolis. Others I encountered were not destitute, but merely stranded and bewildered, unable to find their way to their intended destinations. Several approached me for directions or information. Their whiteness had not endowed them with infallible knowledge of the city or protected them from life’s difficulties.
I submit that genuine greatness belongs to the person who conceives something useful and has the vision, determination and ingenuity to make it real. Such people often leave their names permanently attached to their creations, leaving a lasting testament. Consider Karl Benz of Germany, who developed one of the world’s earliest practical motor cars in the 1880s. His name became inseparable from the history of the motor vehicle.
Then there was Emil Jellinek, an Austrian businessman associated with Daimler. He had a daughter named Mercedes and persuaded the company to name a line of cars after her, beginning with the Mercedes 35 hp of 1901. Daimler and Benz eventually merged in 1926, giving rise to the Mercedes-Benz name, which remains famous worldwide.
Henry Ford, the American automobile manufacturer, provides another example. In 1913, he introduced the moving assembly line into automobile production, increasing factory productivity eightfold. His name, too, became attached to an entire family of vehicles. These men were creators, innovators and builders, not merely consumers of technology.
Africa itself offers an extraordinary example in Apostle Dr Kwadwo Safo Kantanka of Ghana. In my view, he is a genuinely great man of God who has demonstrated remarkable ingenuity and enterprise. He manufactures a range of vehicles under his own brand, including the Kantanka Odeneho V8, described as the world’s first motorbike limousine. He has conceived, developed, and brought tangible products into existence.
Let him boast, then, about his enterprise. Let him proclaim them with confidence. The world should pause because he has demonstrated the qualities that make greatness worthy of recognition: imagination, courage, ingenuity, perseverance, and the ability to transform an idea into something real. That is greatness worthy of applause, whatever the colour of the person who achieves it.
The lesson is not that white people lack ability, nor that black people are inherently superior. Human worth cannot sensibly be measured by complexion. Achievement, character and contribution are more meaningful measures. Greatness is earned rather than inherited, demonstrated through what one does with opportunities, talents and imagination. Someone of humble beginnings may change an industry, inspire a generation, or create something that improves countless lives. We should therefore admire accomplishment rather than appearance. A famous name may command attention, but a useful creation commands lasting respect.