Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa

back >

The
landscape of Black political activity in the 1960s was a very different
one from
that of the previous
decade. The apartheid government
had shattered the Black resistance movements, in particular the African
National Congress. Those Black leaders who were not imprisoned by the
state, fled into exile. A barrage of restrictive legislation, effectively
silenced Black opposition through bannings, arrests, and imprisonment
of leaders. South Africa's economy grew and for White South Africans,
life was good. For Black South Africans, the suffering continued.

Ironically
the seeds of Black resistance in the 60s could be found at the 'bush campuses',
like those at the University of the North and Zululand University.
These institutions, created under
the Extension of University Education Act,
Act 45 of 1959, became the
breeding ground of Black resistance which was to become a force in
the 1970's. Influenced by the
American Black Power movement, the likes of Malcolm X , and closer
to home Frantz Fanon, Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyere and Kwame Nkrumah,
a new framework of student thinking emerged. The White- dominated National
Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was seen as an obstacle rather
than a help to the cause of Black students. In 1968, a group of students,
a decision was made to break away from NUSAS and in 1969, the South
African Students Organisation (SASO) was formed under the leadership
of Steve Biko. The emergence of SASO, arguably, gave
Black political resistance a much needed foundation in the forced-absence
of other liberation organizations.

It
main features were

• That
  race was the source of continuing struggle in SA and for Black people
  a reinterpretation
  of the meaning of blackness,

• The psychological liberation of the black man, in that the most potent
  tool in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed;

• The principle of non-violence. Moral superiority, as opposed to armed
  struggle would bring about change;

• A rejection of White liberalism as even the best intentioned could
  never understand the suffering of Blacks;

• That the history of South Africa needed to be re-written I order for
  Black dignity to be restored;

• The influence of Black Theology as the Black man's faith must
  be retained in order to bolster his resistance to oppression