PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness

Leketi Makalela

Stephen Bantu Biko, the father of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, may have died in the hands of the brutal system of Apartheid, but his intellectual legacy remains a living treasure for the Black people both in South Africa and across the globe. However, Biko remains a less-known figure among the youth and does not significantly feature in the intellectual circles in South Africa where he should ideally be an icon that guides the country in dismantling the shackles of menticide, which ruined the Black nation for over 300 years of colonization and 46 years of systematic Apartheid. This essay provides a review of Biko’s last public statement--a political testament--showing how his words, particularly his philosophy of “Black consciousness,” are relevant today after South Africa’s recent years of physical liberation.

Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa is an edited collection of Biko’s last public statements in the court proceedings that were carried out 16 months before his detention without trial (Terrorism Act, Section 6) and murder by the secret police on September 12, 1977. The collection has 360 pages, which are preceded by an introduction written by Millard Arnold, the editor. It has five sets of cross-examinations between the state lawyers, Mr. Soggot and Advocate Atwell, on the one hand, and Steve Biko, on the other hand. The court sessions began on May 3, 1976 and ended on May 7, 1976. A detailed introduction by the editor (pp. xiv-xxvi), the appendix with Biko’s famous “I Write What I Like,” written under the pseudonym Frank Talk (pp. 331-338), and the report on the inquest into Biko’s death by Dean Louis H. Pollak (pp. 339-360) present a complete picture of Biko, the man, his ideas and the sacrifice he made for the sake of Black people’s emancipation from mental repression. In the words of the editor, Biko vehemently stood for Black Consciousness:

. . . a liberation movement of the mind, a psychological revolution aimed at forging Black thought and feeling into an amalgam of Black pride and ultimately Black unity (xiv).

This philosophy is clearly spelt out right on the first day of the court proceedings where Biko was prompted to explain the evolution of the South African Student Organization (SASO) from a White-dominated National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). His testimony shows that the latter organization took Black students for granted and wanted them to accept things of a second-class nature (p. 9). Consequently, a decision to form a Black-oriented organization was taken during a meeting held at the University of the North in July of 1969. Besides the demeaning attitudes of White students who did not share Black aspirations for desegregation, Biko affirms that Black students had much more philosophical issues that concerned the Black society as a whole. To this end, the embrace of Black Consciousness by SASO was perceived as a part of the solution to what Black people were faced with in an overtly racist society.

Whereas the cross-examinations were intended to intimidate and humiliate Biko as well as the 9 accused, they instead accorded him an opportunity to forcefully present a case for Black Consciousness as follows:

Black Consciousness refers to the Black man and to his situation and I think a Black man is subjected to two forces in this country. He is first of all oppressed by the external world through institutionalized machinery, through laws that restrict him from doing certain things, through very difficult living conditions, through poor education--these are all external to him; and secondly, this we regard as the most important, the Black man in himself has developed a certain state of alienation. He rejects himself, precisely because he attaches the meaning White to all that is good; in other words, he associates White . . . with good (p. 22, italics mine).

The sense of inferiority implied in the statement above was reiterated on the second day of the trial where Biko was wrestling in a tug of words with Advocate Atwell (p. 120). Regarding the accusation that SASO fueled racial hostility, Biko makes it clear that Black Consciousness is nothing but a battle of the mind that is waged in the subconsciousness with the purpose of eradicating the low self-esteem deeply ingrained in the Black people’s minds. In order to liberate the subconsciousness, Black students were called upon to get involved in community projects and in what Biko systematically referred to as the conscientization process. This process is sharply articulated:

. . . a process whereby individuals or groups living within a given social and political setting are made aware of their situation. The operative attitude here is not so much awareness of the physical sense of their situation, but much more their ability to assess and improve their own influences over themselves and their environment (p. 140-141).

Part of the conscientization process is a practical plan of action. SASO saw it fitting to adopt the slogan “Black is beautiful,” and to popularize it among Black people. The rationale for this slogan, among other reasons, was found in Black women’s practice of using skin-lightening creams and hair-straightening devices. The practice was perceived as a sign of negation of their true states. In this connection, the slogan would help these women and Black folk in general to realize: “man, you are okay as you are; begin to look upon yourself as a human being” (p. 25). This explains why Black Consciousness was so appealing to the ordinary Blacks in the street. The student uprising in June 1976, which weakened some of the Apartheid laws, may largely be attributed to the process of conscientization. Clearly, then, the movement contributed to the liberation of Black people in practical and concrete ways.

For the best part of the proceedings (Days 2 and 3), Biko’s testimony concentrated on the educational plight of Black kids orchestrated by the notorious Bantu Education Act and the language-in-education policy. First, Biko states categorically that this Bantu Education (that was put in place since 1953) was designed not to train Black kids for independent existence, but rather it is was a subtle propaganda that was meant to enslave the kids as dependents of White folk (p. 106). To illustrate this point, Biko cites history as a school subject that glorifies White folk and Bantustan1 homeland leaders like Gatsha Buthelezi, Mangope and Mantanzima. In other words, a Black kid was taught to accept that the Apartheid policy of “separate development” according to racial and ethnic groupings was fine and good for the country. These factors, taken together, justified Black Consciousness as a force to liberate Black kids from the mental enclaves deliberately built up by the White man and his story of the past.

As for the language policy of Apartheid South Africa, it is unambiguous from the testimony that the indigenous African languages were undermined by the policy that recognized Afrikaans and English as the only official languages of the country. Here, Biko took a soft stance on Afrikaans when giving the impression that Afrikaans would be better than English when used by Blacks because the degree of ‘foreignness’ is far greater in English than it is in Afrikaans. Both Afrikaans and English have retained the morpho-syntactic features of Germanic languages and would, in my view, be equally foreign, save in the lexeme. However, the bottom line is that adoption of foreign languages is a further psychological onslaught against Black kids as they start to be “more inward looking” (p. 27) and develop a negative attitude toward their own languages and their identities in a White chauvinistic world. In the post-Apartheid era, it is not uncommon to hear Black parents claiming that African languages are not important and that they cannot be used as media of learning and teaching. Indeed, English is still the only medium of teaching and learning from Grade 5 in Black schools despite the constitution’s commitment to eleven (11) official languages. Using Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness as a lens to reflect on the current language practice, there is a valid reason for the war of consciousness to break the psychological chains on the minds of Black people.

The next issue that assumes a center stage in Biko’s testimony is the role of Black Consciousness on South Africa’s economic development. Biko is questioned on the role of foreign investment and the African economic model called communalism or African socialism. On foreign investment, he critiques foreign investors for implicitly supporting the Apartheid economy with which they collaborate (p. 38-39). More directly, they “siphon off profits . . . and these go to societies other than our own . . . ” (p. 39). Furthermore, Biko views capitalism as the worst form of an economic model to be transplanted in an African society because it “locks up the wealth of a country in a few hands at the top” (p. 63). The alternative, deeply rooted in African society, is communalism (also called ubuntu in Nguni languages of South Africa) which advocates sharing of goods and products. Biko explains the alternative model for Blacks when contending: “We are Black communalist[s] in approach or we are African socialists or we believe in sharing” (p. 63). When asked if communalism means abolition of private property, Biko is so quick and to eloquently state his case: “. . . my relationship with my property is not so highly individualistic that seeks to destroy others. I use it to build others” (p. 64). Black Consciousness would raise awareness in Black people’s minds that they can have their own self-sustainable economy without necessarily depending heavily on capitalism and foreign investment. The key here is that Blacks should be self-reliant.

The fear factor is another major theme throughout the five days of cross- examinations. There are two types of fear. The first one is the fear had by Black people that succeeded in enabling the majority to be governed by the minority for more than 300 years. Biko presents the case that “Black people are steeped in fear. We want them away from this” (p. 71). He gives an example of this through a Black man who worked on Radio Bantu. This man advocated for propaganda in public but he privately admitted that he didn’t like what he was saying. The second type of fear is the White man’s fear of “Black power.” In “I Write What I Like” (pp. 331-338), Biko argues that a White man is grabbed by fear that forms a basis for police brutality. In fact, being the minority in the world has been cited elsewhere as the factor that accounts for hostile White prejudice toward Blacks (Ani 1994; Carruthers 1999; Diop 1987). In summary, Blacks fear White brutality whereas Whites fear the possibility of being governed by Blacks, who are the majority on earth along with other people of color. What a vicious circle of fear. The Black Consciousness perspective would be that Black people should be liberated from this grasp of fear.

The last two days of the proceedings mainly concentrated on Advocate Atwell’s attempt to link ANC and PAC (liberation movements that were banned under the infamous Terrorism Act) to SASO. Black Consciousness was perceived as an incitement of racial hostility as the advocate quotes heavily from SASO speeches. It was understood that Black pride would eventually deprive Whites of the benefits of having docile Black servants and ultimately destroy the thought-control system that effectively kept Black people colonized. It is this fear of Black Consciousness that saw Biko’s untimely death under the worst form of police brutality in prison (i.e., brain damage).

In conclusion, Biko hit the right target in the Black struggle for emancipation both in Africa and in the diaspora. I contend that Black Consciousness is more relevant indeed today than it used to be because racism and international Apartheid have taken a new dimension that Biko foresaw a long time ago in the realm of thought-control. The book is a timeless masterpiece that every Black person across the globe should acquire to learn the wisdom of survival in our struggle against White-supremacy and its mental subjugation. In his own words, Biko says: “people [need] to readjust their own thinking, not to regard themselves anymore as slaves, not to regard themselves as unimportant—they are very important” (p. 327). African intellectuals, in particular, are challenged to pick up on Biko’s rich legacy and engage in the conscientization process, which will ultimately dismantle White-supremacy that has infected the Black minds. The beginning of the conscientization journey begins with a pick of Steve Biko’s last words of wisdom in this collection.

References

Ani, Marimba. 1994. Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior. New Jersey: Africa World Press.

Carruthers, Jacob. 1999. Intellectual Warfare. Chicago: Third World Press.

Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1987. Precolonial Black Africa. New York: Lawrence Hill Books.

Notes