Perhaps the most important lesson from the Madlanga Commission was not legal. It was moral. Words matter.
They shape perceptions. They influence careers. They affirm dignity.
Or they quietly remove it There is a Setswana proverb that warns us: “Lefoko ga le boe go boa monwana” A word, once spoken, cannot be called back. It travels, it settles, it wounds and sometimes it outlives both the speaker and the moment in which it was uttered. It was with that truth weighing heavily on my heart that I watched the Madlanga Commission.
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I was drawn not only to its pursuit of truth, accountability and justice but to a single word that, for a moment, eclipsed the evidence itself: “token.” In that instant, the Commission ceased to be merely about testimony. It became a reminder that words are never just words. They carry histories, shape perceptions and can either affirm a person’s dignity or quietly diminish it.
In the course of proceedings, the now former head of IDEAC, Advocate Andrea Johnson, was required to retract and apologise for language contained in an affidavit that referred to Ms Dineo Mokwele as a “token appointment.” The Commission did what every institution committed to justice ought to do: it paused, confronted the language and insisted that words matter. That moment lingered with me. Not because it was dramatic but because it reopened wounds that many South Africans carry quietly.
Some words are not merely descriptive. They carry centuries on their backs. They arrive in a room carrying history before they carry meaning.
“Token” is one of them. Watching that exchange also reminded me of another painful moment regarding the same issue of the appointment of Ms Mokwele to Crime Intelligence. The self-described forensic investigator, Paul O’Sullivan, repeatedly referred to Ms Mokwele as “a girl.” For some, that may have sounded insignificant.
For many black South Africans, it was anything but. I immediately thought of my mother. I remember finally persuading her to retire from domestic work when she was approaching 70 years of age.
She had worked with dignity all her life. She had raised children. She had survived apartheid.
She had carried burdens most people will never understand. Yet even at that age, she was still being called “girl.” I could tolerate the physical exhaustion of her work. I could not tolerate the indignity.
That word pierced me every single time, because she was never a girl. She was a woman. She was my mother.
She was someone’s grandmother. She was a citizen deserving of respect. Language has always been one of the quiet instruments through which inequality survives.
It often succeeds where laws can no longer openly discriminate. It quietly questions belonging. It subtly undermines competence.
It gently whispers that perhaps you are here for reasons other than your ability. That is why “token” hurts. It does not merely question how someone arrived.
It questions whether they deserved to arrive at all. It plants suspicion before evidence has even been heard. It asks colleagues to look twice.
It invites others to wonder whether excellence was sacrificed for representation. It forces talented people to spend years proving that they deserve to occupy spaces they have already earned. I know something about that burden.
I have often said, without embarrassment, that I am an affirmative action beneficiary. I have never hidden from that reality. Similarly, I have also spent every chapter of my career working tirelessly to prove worthy of every opportunity entrusted to me.
That is the hidden tax many black professionals continue to pay. Others are presumed competent until they fail. We are often presumed inadequate until we prove otherwise.
That is a very different way of entering the same workplace. The irony is striking.
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