STEVE BIKO AND THE ROLE OF THE BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA’S FREEDOM STRUGGLE
INTRODUCTION
The role played by Stephen Bantu Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in South Africa’s freedom history is immense. The emergence of this movement that swept across the country like wild fire after the 1970s can best be explained in the context of the events from 1960 onwards. After the Sharpeville massacres in 1960, the National Party (NP) government which was formed in 1947 intensified its repression in light of the widespread civil unrest that ensued. It passed even harsher laws, extending its use of torture, imprisonment and detentions without trial. By the late 1960s, it had jailed, banned or exiled all the known freedom-movement leaders. In response to this intensified wave of tyranny, a new set of organisations emerged. They filled the vacuum created by the government’s suppression of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) after Sharpeville. United loosely around a set of ideas described as “Black Consciousness,” these organisations helped to educate and organise Black people, particularly youths. In fact, the eruption of the Black Consciousness Movement signalled an end to the quiescence that had followed the banning of the black political movements. The BCM urged a defiant rejection of apartheid, especially among Black workers and the youth. The South African Students Organisation (SASO) - an arm of the movement - was founded by Black students who refused to join NUSAS. At the same time, Black workers began to organise trade unions in defiance of anti-strike laws. In 1973, there were strikes throughout the nation. The collapse of Portuguese colonialism and the victories of the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in Mozambique and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in Angola stimulated further activity against apartheid, which culminated in the Soweto Uprising of 1976.
In 1976, student protests against Bantu education in Soweto, the sprawling Johannesburg township reserved for Africans, led to a two-year uprising that spread to Black townships across the country. The protests grew to encompass the full range of Black grievances against the apartheid system, and in that period police killed hundreds of Blacks, including schoolchildren. Hundreds of thousands of workers mobilised to protest police killings of innocent demonstrators. In the following year, boycotts and unrest among students and teachers grew after Steve Biko, a leader of SASO, died in a Pretoria detention cell. He had been detained by the police under the Terrorism Act. It is now known that he was tortured and killed by the South African police. Within a month of Biko’s death, the government had detained scores of people and banned 18 Black Consciousness organisations as well as two newspapers with a wide Black readership.
Clearly, the Black Consciousness Movement is synonymous with its founder, Biko. From the beginning of Biko’s political life till his death he remained one of the indisputable icons of the Black struggle against apartheid. As leader of the movement, he instilled a lot of courage into his counterparts to fight an unjust system under the banner of Black Consciousness. Defining Black Consciousness is no mean task. However, a broad understanding of the concept can be gleaned from Biko’s own speeches and writings including those of his close friends and other writers.
This piece has been written in subsection (chapters).
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Defining of Black Consciousness. " Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the Black
man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause
of their oppression..." The ideology of Black Consciousness which informed Biko and his collegues’ approach represented the deeper strand of Africanism within African nationalism and had a long history which dates back to the 1880s when it was borrowed from foreign writers such as Frantz Fanon, whose banned book about the Algerian war against French settlers was widely read. |
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The Black Consciousness Movement in SA: The formation of SASO and the Black People's Convention In 1969 African students launched a Blacks-only student union, the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) to which Biko was elected president. The union was formed at a meeting at the University of the North near Pietersburg (now Polokwane), however the students of the University of Natal played the leading role in its formation. SASO made clear its common allegiance to the philosophy of Black Consciousness. At the same time, Black Consciousness leaders also formed the Black People’s Convention (BPC – a Black Consciousness outreach organisation), for adults. Through these groups, Black Consciousness became part of the shared frame of reference. |
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The Black Face of Apartheid: Biko was always critical of the 'homeland' (Bantustan) policy. At the height of his influence (i.e. during the demoralised years between 1963 and 1976), Steve Biko called the homelands “the greatest single fraud ever invented by white politicians”. He made it clear that Blacks who said homelands could be exploited to wring concessions from whites “have already sold their souls to the white man” since the “homelands” would only confuse the Black masses. |
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Biko’s imprisonment, death and its aftermath: In the wake of the urban revolt of 1976 and with the prospects of national revolution becoming increasingly real, security police detained Biko, the outspoken student leader, on August 18th. He was thirty years old and was reportedly extremely fit when arrested. He was taken to Port Elizabeth and on 11 September 1977, he was moved to Pretoria, Transvaal (now Gauteng). On 12 September, he died in detention - the 20th person to have died in detention in the preceding eighteen months. |
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Steve
Biko addressing the second general students' council of the South African
Students' Organisation (SASO) at University of Natal, July 1971 (Photo:
Mayibuye Centre)
