This month marks the 30th anniversary of the death of black consciousness leader Steve Bantu Biko. How do we honour him? No doubt Biko would have been happy with the turn of history. President Thabo Mbeki has been an enthusiastic proponent of black consciousness and of pan-Africanism, so much so that organised political formations of these two ideologies have withered and died on the political vine.
This week the Pan Africanist Congress breathed what is undeniably its last political breath. Most of its members of Parliament have crossed to the African People’s Convention. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Black People’s Convention and the other formations of the best BC organisations have long lost relevance.
But Biko remains a founding son of the South African democracy; his ideas no less germane and prescient than they were 30 years ago.
In urban centres these include the fractured debates about employment equity and empowerment. In rural areas, where Biko’s analysis of society is still sorely and painfully relevant, racial relations reflect the neo-feudal arrangements of the Seventies. Be this the treatment of farmworkers, farm dwellers or the ordinariness of the ugly between whites and blacks, it’s clear that the path is still long.
Black consciousness is vital still in an era where so many power relations reflect yesterday rather than tomorrow. But how do some of today’s stewards argue for that power? Often, unfortunately, it is in the language of powerlessness; in racist terminology that calls some black people “native assistants” and “coconuts”. This view can brook no difference of opinion among black people; and, as Sowetan editor Thabo Leshilo argues on these pages this week, it is a no less racist perspective.
Black consciousness is not the chauvinism which seems to suggest that no white South Africans or those of a lighter black hue should ever take leadership positions in the country. Neither is it a narrow-minded understanding of who and what an African is.
Though we claim no mantle as the interpreter of Biko in the 21st century, a thorough reading of his work suggests his vision was of a black identity that understands and asserts its own worth without detracting from the worth of anyone else.
A further worrying trend that can cast aspersions on Biko’s legacy is one which, in turn, makes “Africanism” and “black consciousness” pejorative descriptions. Too often, in our political discussion, do we hear people discounted as “Africanist” or “BC”, as if these are bad things. The tendency to label and to isolate is one we must lose.
The logical step up from black consciousness is non-racialism, with its promise of a common humanity. This is a path from which we should not stray. There is a constitutional and a human imperative on us to do so.
For crying out loud
Snot en trane in the media this week. The South African Broadcasting Corporation pulled out of the South African National Editors’ Forum, citing the organisation’s descent into an ethical swamp.
This, after a Sanef media statement that supported the principles underlying the Sunday Times’s exposé of the health minister’s shenanigans at a Cape Town hospital, part of which was gleaned from her medical records.
There was a second theme to the SABC’s pull-out and that was its treatment in the press. For a long time now the SABC has decried the column inches that newspapers devote to the broadcaster. “For how long,” said chief executive Dali Mpofu, “must we ignore and actually sponsor the ideologically driven low-intensity war long declared by the commercial media against the public service broadcaster?”
This position misunderstands the SABC: it is ours (publicly owned) and it is highly visible; the key provider of news and current affairs to the majority of the country. It is, arguably, more interesting — and of greater public interest — than all the other parastatals. And it reports to Parliament, rather than to the executive. Media attention comes with the turf.
The debates the SABC and the Sunday Times raise are both vital in a young democracy: what degree of scrutiny of leadership will be palatable? Will our mores settle around a French turn-the-other-cheek model? Or will we follow the robust Nigerian and Kenyan models of journalism, where the right to privacy is tested and limited every day?
What of our ethical decision-making? Are our newsroom systems strong enough? In the Sunday Times judgement last week Judge Mahomed Jajbhay challenged the media to improve these to enhance credibility.
And what of dignity? Mpofu set the broadcaster’s compass when he said: “We cannot remain quiet while our mothers and our democratically chosen leaders are stripped naked for the sole reason of selling newspapers.” He is choosing a definition of dignity that will not allow the scrutiny of the powerful. Or is dignity something far simpler: the assurance of a common humanity, the extension of the beautiful — but basic — rights contained in our Constitution? Can skelms hide behind the veil of dignity; should incompetence be allowed to so shroud itself?
These are vital debates for a vital institution. Leadership demands that the SABC not throw its toys out of the cot, but throw its hat into the ring of debate and contestation. The politics of tantrum and of boycott are just so passé.