In South Africa, the struggle against apartheid found its most potent voice in a confluence of literature and activism. Steve Biko, a revolutionary thinker and anti-apartheid activist, authored I Write What I Like.
Great writing and scholarship steeped in black consciousness narratives direct black people weighed down by oppression to be more intentional to end racism and injustice.
Additionally, they must commit to taking responsibility to fight injustices of apartheid, inequality and dehumanisation, in line with the thinking of Bantu Stephen Biko so that, in keeping with his perspective, we may “in time be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible” — a more human face.
As his adherents do so, they should walk the revolutionary paths of self-affirmation, to negate and resist the tendency of racial subjugation.
This revolutionary journey to freedom and justice has been with us for a long time, coming in different forms, including social and economic and industrial protestations by students, workers and the general population — this dating back to days when colonisation and imperialism first landed on the southern tip of Africa.
Mabogo Percy More, the retired professor of philosopher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and associate researcher at the University of Limpopo, in his book, Biko: Philosophy, and Identity and Liberation, cites Frantz Fanon, the author of Black Skin, White Masks, as helping society to “liberate black people from ‘the zone of non-being’”.
More is a prolific author whose focus is to explore narratives on black philosophy. But what is so special about his philosophical exploration as it relates to black affirmation, and the way Biko sees it?
Why is it important for a black person to continue to affirm and announce to the world that they are not “non-being”, that their presence on Earth matters and is deserved, and for that reason should be respected, and not undermined through racial stereotyping?
Such an approach is to negate stereotypes propagated by racist leaders such as Henrik Verwoerd, the chief architect of apartheid, and his ilk.
Verwoerd, in his speech to justify apartheid laws, declared that black people lacked capacity to crunch figures, and the work they could do with efficiency was limited to being “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.
During the closing years of the 1960s, young, proud and militant black student leaders Stephen Bantu Biko and Barney Nyameko Pityana, among others, became torchbearers of the black consciousness philosophy.
They would, to counter such racist-based stereotypes, facilitate the formation of the South African Students Organisation (Saso), and break ranks with white National Union of South African Students (Nusas). They believed that organisations such as Nusas could not take care of the interests of the oppressed black people because they had no understanding of how it felt to be oppressed.
The nascent movement, whose political life began to germinate in 1968, believed that black people must aspire to collaborate with one another to fundamentally change the trajectory the country was set to take.
Black students were convinced it was radicalism, and not liberalism, that would accelerate the struggle for freedom, not only at university campuses, but in society as a whole. And so Saso was committed to “conscientise” every black person to ensure the project of black empowerment was not thwarted.
The then University of Natal’s black campus student representative council (SRC), acting as catalyst, brought into the black fold all black campuses to initiate a revolutionary spirit among students to fight for social and political justice in apartheid South Africa.
The desire of black students was to seek happiness, not only for themselves, but for the black people throughout the long years of apartheid oppression.
And so, what is happiness?
Responding to his rhetorical question, the former president of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk said: “It is having the right to go out onto the main square and shout at the top of your voice, ‘Lord, what a bad government we have!’”
It is that voice that black consciousness-oriented students were hearing, “Oh Lord, what a bad apartheid government we have, and so we must mobilise our students and parents to change the status quo, and breathe new life into the rotten apartheid rule.”
The fruits to reject Nusas were beginning to show green shoots. The new movement agitated for change and the overthrow of an apartheid system to be replaced by an egalitarian society.
July 1969 saw Saso having its inaugural conference at the University of the North, now the University of Limpopo, with Biko elected as its president.
The Black Consciousness Movement, founded by Biko, with Pityana and others, held that the liberation of black people must be driven by the black leadership.
The late 1960s saw black consciousness philosophy gaining traction, and one of its manifestations began to show at the University of Cape Town. Its council would, in defiance of the apartheid status quo, approve the appointment to a senior lectureship position, social scientist and activist Archie Mafeje.
But what has all this to do with the question this article seeks to answer, which is, to what extent has the black consciousness philosophy contributed to the black struggle in the country?
In his book, philosopher More asked an important question: What does it mean to be a human being?
He also argues that “blackness” could be bastardised and devalued, and this could be done through “language symbolism” serving as an instrument to be used as “an important source of prejudice against those who are black”.
He says “the symbolism which debases and demeans blackness and elevates whiteness inevitably affects the consciousness of every black person and every white person …”
Elsewhere in the book, More states that black people are confronted with hostile anti-black existential reality.
This reality defined them not only as evil, ugly, criminals, irrational or non-rational, among other things, but also lacking in intelligence, morality and civilisation.
The Bible also seems to be complicit. More writes: “Even the Bible, in which most black people believe, is heavily laden with negative images, symbolism and narratives of blackness. It identifies blackness with evil, disaster, famine, plagues, doom and ugliness.
“In the biblical narrative of Ham, as the epitome of antiblackness, blackness is the colour of those who have been condemned to perpetual servitude of being ‘the hewers of wood and drawers of water.’”
More concludes by drawing from Biko’s chapter in his book, I Write What I Like, quoting from the chapter titled, Black Consciousness and the Quest for True Humanity, which reads:
“We have set out on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere in the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize.
“Let us march with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and our brotherhood. In time, we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible — a human face.”
He affirms Biko’s words, that black consciousness has become the black people’s fundamental project: “A humanist project demanding a new humanism reminiscent of Fanonian revolutionary humanism.”
The world espouses the equal and inherent dignity of all human beings, and a concern for humans, an ideal that Azania/South Africa requires.
Jo-Mangaliso Mdhlela is an independent journalist, a social justice activist, a former trade unionist, and an Anglican priest.