"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
It cannot be denied that BC freed black people from psychological oppression in a way that previous organisations had not managed to – and this is no slur on those organisations.
Today, however, a number of people feel it is retrogressive to speak about the need to liberate people psychologically. In our view the process of conscientisation will continue until the forces of change triumph over the forces of oppression. Our experience has been that those who think psychological emancipation is a matter belonging to the past are very often themselves in dire need of it. Some of the events during the railways strike bear out this.
A railways truck, driven by a white worker, was stopped as it drove past Cosatu House. Two black scabs were dragged out and dealt a few blows. One of the workers who were administering the blows is reported to have wondered, on reflection at the racialism implicit in their activities. Here was a group of people committed to non-racialism, singling out black workers for assault as if the white driver was not also a scab.
I am not at all suggesting that they should have assaulted the white driver. I don't even think it was correct for them to assault the black people. I am observing merely that their logic was strange, and that it confirms my claim that they stand in need of psychological emancipation.
BC has always been acutely aware of the importance of the national question in our struggle. This is borne out by the manner in which the land question was and continues to be emphasised in BC documents. To some this has been an index of the narrow nationalism BC has been accused of since its inception.
Indeed that have characterised BC as a reactionary tendency as a result of our approach to these questions. We are not overly worried since, in our view, our approach seems on historical grounds to be sound. The clarity on the economic orientation of BC has come a long way.
From its inception, BC declared itself to be committed to a classless society. A classless society by definition is socialist. When it was suggested to Biko that the problem of South Africa was capitalism and that, therefore, whites had a role in the struggle, he retorted: "Go to the Free State and tell that to Van Tonder." It has been inferred from this that – at least at that time – BC was not committed to socialism.
Then the Black People's Convention (BPC) adopted the Mafikeng Manifesto in 1976. That document committed BC to black communalism. Now all that is our history and we cannot blot it out. With regard to Biko, however, I would like to say that other statements he made cannot bear an anti-socialist interpretation.
In an article entitled "Our strategy for liberation", for instance, he wrote: "We are by no means communist … I think there is no running away from the fact that now in South Africa them is such an ill distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not (ouch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless … For meaningful change to appear, there needs to be an attempt at re-organising the whole economic pattern …. within this … country."
Today, however, BC's commitment to socialism is unmistakable. By adopting the Azanian Manifesto, Azapo placed Black Consciousness squarely in the socialist camp. But that does not mean BC has turned its back on the national question. It means that BC bas fused the economic struggle with the national struggle. In a nutshell, BC recognises the dangers of dividing up the struggle into phases. Too many struggles have gone wrong as a result of the two-phase approach. On trade unions, from the beginning BC saw the need to organise workers.
Thus, for instance, one of SASO's projects was the Black Workers Project (BWP). Later the Black Allied Workers Union (Bawu) was formed by BC adherents. Interesting debates were carried on between BWP and Bawu around the issue of industrial unions and general unions, even during those days. We believe our message on trade unionism is as valid today as it was in 1967. Then we committed ourselves to organising black workers because history told us that the white working class cannot yet make common cause with the black working class.
How could we try to organise people who had introduced trade unions in South Africa for the very purpose of thwarting the advancement of black workers? How could we make common cause with people who had used the strike action so many times in order to guarantee that black workers would forever remain underdogs?
Recent events suggest that, white workers have not made any marked shift from the positions which informed our original decisions. A cursory look at the recent strike would be instructive. Before the dispute arose, both NUM and the white Mine Workers Union were threatening a strike. Later the Mine Workers Union declared that its members would accept the offers made by the Chamber of Mines and that therefore, they would no longer go on strike. We accept, at face value, that there is nothing wrong with that decision.
When the NUM strike started, however, several white mineworkers doubled their efforts in order to ensure that the striking black workers would not be missed in our view this has demonstrated – for the umpteenth time – that the interests of the white- working class are not genuine working class interests. Therefore we have no historical reason as yet for bringing them within ours.
On alliances, we recognise that the South African problems are so complex that no organisation can be said not to have a place, provided only that it is not collaborationist in our view, therefore, all progressive organisations have the right to exist. We do not measure the progressiveness of an organisation by the number of white members it can show. Issuing from the fact that South Africa's problems are complex, we think that no single organisation can presume to address them adequately. Therefore people's organisations should search for a principled basis for working together — Mandla Seloane [Former Azapo vice-president and executive of Saso]
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
