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Psychological Liberation Black Consciousness and Africanism

Although the activities of the ANC continue to dominate press coverage of events in South Africa, the ideals of Black Consciousness and Africanism, represented by the PAC and Azapo, respectively, may well develop into the prevailing black outlook in postapartheid South Africa, as they had been in the early 1960s and again during the Soweto upheavals in 1976. At present the PAC and Azapo have only minority support, but their noncompromising stance may force the ANC into policy positions, which it might not take in the absence of a serious challenge from a left Africanist flank.

INTERNALIZED COLONIALISM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LIBERATION

In the late 1960s the idea of Black Consciousness heralded an era of alternative political awareness in South Africa. A self-empowering, vibrant, reconstructionist world view emphasized the potential role of black initiative and responsibility in articulating the power of the powerless. Between 1968 and 1976 the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was one of the most significant developments in South Africa, not only because of the self-confident protest and rebellion that it unleashed but also "because of the questions it posed about the nature of oppositional politics in South Africa and its relation to the nature of South African society.

Indeed, blacks in South Africa in the 1960s were ready for an ideology of liberation. The oppression of apartheid society was overt and blatant; all opposition had been silenced, and institutionalized racism nourished triumphant. Centuries of exclusionary practices led to what might be described as the inferiorization of blacks: Blacks were portrayed as innately inferior, accustomed to dehumanized living, sexually promiscuous, intellectually limited, and prone to violence; blackness symbolized evil, demise, chaos, corruption, and uncleanliness, in contrast to whiteness, which equaled order, wealth, purity, goodness, cleanliness, and the epitome of beauty.

Inevitably, these racist stereotypes were at least partially internalized by South African blacks, although their self-doubt never matched that prevalent among blacks in the United States, where the official proclamations of equality misled many blacks into blaming them­selves, rather than discrimination, for any miseries they experienced.

But undoubtedly, apartheid society also produced self-hatred. The limited range of opportunities open to blacks gave rise to rationalizations in favor of the status quo, and self-doubts and self-accusations led some blacks to accept their oppression as legitimate. In short, blacks blamed themselves. In addition, the fragmentation of the three black groups through differential privileges and incorporation led to a reinforcement of an intrablack hierarchy.

Thus, Black Consciousness emanated from the differential material and political circumstances in which blacks were situated. Its prime movers in the early phase were relatively privileged medical students, not workers, who served as educated articulators of the plight of the underprivileged and politically excluded. Yet, unlike most medical students elsewhere, many of them came from working-class back­grounds and were not insulated from the harsh conditions of apart­heid society. They were joined by other students on the newly created segregated black campuses, where they operated under severe restric­tions, and had to depend on the white-dominated National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) to speak and act on their behalf— though blacks were prohibited from joining this organization.

Yet even as some blacks at the open universities worked with NUSAS, they experienced the bifurcating effects of academic integration coupled with social separation. Much of their alienation was due to the vast gap between the life circumstances of black and white students. At the University Christian Movement, too, the initial prom­ise of a liberal alternative soon evaporated when black students once more saw themselves reduced to the role of followers. The banning of the ANC in 1960 and the arrests of its leaders meant that blacks had to rely on liberal whites to articulate the case for black rights. Steve Biko, the best-known proponent of Black Consciousness, described how such enforced passivity dulled one's originality and imagination:

it takes a supreme effort to act logically even in order to follow one's beliefs and convictions.

In the editorial introduction to the 1972 annual Black Viewpoint, Biko referred to the absence of black writers in the media:

So many things are said so often to us, about us and for us but very seldom by us.

He deplored the images of dependency created for blacks by the white press and expressed the need to deconstruct the implicit inter­pretive connotations, underlying values, attitudes, and interests of both the financial supporters and the readership of those newspapers. Biko articulated a general insight into conquest: that defeat for the losers has always meant more than physical subjugation. It means, as two historians of the Soviet Union have described in other circumstances, that the conquerors write the history of the wars; the victors take possession of the past, establish their control over the collective memory.

In short, the victors' definition of reality becomes the dominant explanation.

The difficulty of working bilaterally with even the most sincere whites posed a moral dilemma for black students, who were the last to want themselves labeled racist. Yet for Biko and others the need for exclusive black organizations was very clear, something Ben Khoapa referred to as the need for regroupment. Blacks were considered to be an interest group, like workers in a trade union or teachers fighting their own battles. The collective segregation and oppression based on skin color therefore provided an eminently logical basis for self-assertion and independent organization. No longer would blacks allow themselves to be objectified in the negative image of nonwhites— instead they would reconstruct themselves as blacks, as self-defining initiators. Gone were the days when they appealed to whites by seeking to convince them that blacks too had civilized standards. Black Consciousness was about pressuring whites through contesting the self-definitions of their opponents. Accusations that this was a racist act were dismissed on the grounds that one cannot be a racist unless he has the power to subjugate.

Later, when Black Consciousness developed a socialist tinge, cooperation with white liberals was rejected not because of race or privi­lege, but because these would-be compatriots were seen as representing a bourgeois class enemy. Collaboration with representatives of racial capitalism would amount to betrayal. "Black Consciousness," writes George Frederickson, an American historian, "had evolved from an effort to overcome a black sense of inferiority through inde­pendent, nonviolent action into an explosive combination of race and class revolutionism."' Whatever the meaning of the latter phrase, Black Consciousness remained above all an awareness-raising move­ment, rather than an organization that practiced revolutionary vio­lence.

The origins of blacks' disillusionment with nonracial opposition organizations go back to the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 by the Congress of the People, which gave rise to a split between the Charterists (ANC) and those who formed the PAC. The latter's racial definition of African later evolved into a broadly inclusive subjective one, in that it included people of any group who considered them­selves African and who identified with Africa and its people (as op­posed to the exploiting settlers). By contrast, Black Consciousness utilized an objective definition of black to describe all those denied privileges by whites, as well as a subjective definition of those who consciously rejected white domination in all its forms. Even Bantustan leaders fell into the former category and were recognized as such for a while by the South African Students' Organisation (SASO).

What was distinctive about the BCM was "its originality in elaborating an ideology of hope rooted in a theology of liberation which emphasized the solidarity of the oppressed regardless of race." Unlike the PAC, which, despite its stated goal of including all "Africans," is perceived as narrowly Africanist, Black Consciousness as an ideology was genuinely inclusive. From its inception the new movement sought to incorporate Indians and Coloureds. However, while it had its appeal for this "middle group" in expressing political identification, as G. J. Gerwel points out, it failed to provide the psychological identity they needed. In general, the BCM enjoyed greater support from activist Coloureds than Indians, not least because some students and clergy identified with its rejection of the label "Coloured" in favor of an inclusive black category that focused on political oppression. Many Indians, on the other hand, while prominent in the early leadership of SASO, came to feel rejected as insufficiently black enough, and they felt pressured to replace their cultural heritage with African symbols. Indeed, a few gave their children African names as a way of identifying with the movement. However, they were the exceptions— often alienated community members—rather than the precursors of a groundswell of Indian sentiments toward identification as blacks.

The fragile unity among the oppressed groups was frequently ex­posed. The ease with which Indians could be condemned for not identifying sufficiently with the black cause, and even for considering themselves a minority, is evident in a not untypical SASO newsletter article published in 1972, "Ugandan Asians and the Lesson for Us." In addition to exonerating Idi Amin for his treatment of Asian Ugandans, the latter were portrayed stereotypically as "refusing to see themselves as part of the soil of Africa": "middlemen who continually saw themselves as a minority and by their practice of exploitation of the Africans through money lending at inflated interest rates, through the practice of bargaining . . . they contributed to the growth of animosity between themselves and the Africans who saw them as a hostile exploitative minority."" Here the East African model was uncritically transposed to the South African situation, with no atten­tion to the crucial fact that most Indians in South Africa were descend­ants of indentured laborers. Unlike the trading minorities and the colonial civil servants in East Africa, the majority of Indian South Africans are members of the working class. But class analysis was not a tool of the movement at this initial stage.

The categorization of Indians as exploiting traders also ignored the fact that even the minority shopkeepers had to compete with white-owned monopolies in order to corner some of the increasing African consumer market. But because the owners of family stores came into direct contact with African shoppers, unlike the white owners of larger supermarkets and department stores, Indians' and Africans' perceptions of each other frequently focused on unequal exchange relationships. The mutual ambivalence was reinforced by the wide­spread practice in Natal industries for African workers to be super­vised by Indians who, in turn, had to justify to their white employers their preferential treatment. Here, then, the message of black solidar­ity came up against a formidable institutionalized racial hierarchy in employment.

BCM transformed negative attitudes about subordinate "non-whites" into a positive discourse of resistance. It offered psychological support to oppressed groups by providing a model for positive identi­fication, and sought to alleviate the self-contempt often felt by the oppressed. Despite their efforts to provide an alternative to past descriptions, however, movements such as Black Consciousness have been criticized for implicitly accepting the legitimacy of color as a marker. In doing so, it is argued, they also reinforce the accuracy of the dominant discourse of race, by which they have been signified and exteriorized as the other. In rebuttal, Sam Nolutshungu argues that "the character of the state conditions not only the terms of domi­nation and submission but also the ideologies and political behaviour that challenge and reject it." The very role that the state gives to national and racial oppression, Nolutshungu explains, calls forth "alignments among the subject population that are focussed primarily on the terms of political domination rather than those of exploitation."

Notably lacking in the initial stages of the formulation of Black Consciousness was an economic perspective on the nature of exploitation. Conceptualizations of South Africa in class terms remained pe­ripheral and there was no systematic analysis of what was later termed racial capitalism. In part, this disinterest represented the rejection of Marxism as a white ideology and as the tool of the South African Communist Party. However, this indifference also reflected the censorship of Marxist literature at the tribal universities, as well as the students' exposure to existentialism, phenomenology, and phil­osophical psychology—subjects that were popular among some of the European-oriented faculty. Hence the movement's focus on values and essences, while its rejection of capitalism was couched in terms of dehumanization and materialism, not commodity fetishism.

Although there was little of the "black is beautiful" sloganeering that characterized American black protest, the BCM was influenced by trends in the United States. The movement worked to raise consciousness about the extent to which blacks, at great costs, were trying to copy white images of beauty, and the BCM helped to restore blacks' sense of self-appreciation and self-acceptance. Indeed, in the early stages of the movement in Natal, there were reports that some African men had beaten African women who had straightened their hair or lightened the color of their skin. One indicator of the success of Black Consciousness on this issue was the vastly reduced advertis­ing and sale of bleaching creams in South Africa.

Barney Pityana describes the inspiration for the BCM as originating in African religious movements and prophets, in attempts by Africans to regain their land, in the history of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU). Pityana also stresses the significance of both the Africanist and nationalist strands within the traditions of struggle. Philosophically, Black Consciousness was broadly influenced by the writings of Leopold Sedar Senghor, Aime Cesaire, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, and Paulo Freire - each of whom expressed the humiliation as well as the dignity of the colonized and also the power of the powerless. Though the BCM turned to these works on the psychology of oppression and the exorcizing of colonial humiliation, there is little evidence in the Black Consciousness literature that, for example, Fanon's central notion of the cleansing power of anticolonial violence found resonance among South African activists. At the early stage Black Consciousness also maintained a rather skeptical silence about the ANC's "armed struggle."

Unlike Black Power groups in the United States, the BCM had no need to become a revivalist movement, reconstructing a distant past and golden heritage, since African linguistic and cultural traditions had persisted despite apartheid. In the absence of the American trauma of slavery, young black Africans felt no need to search for putative roots. Leaders made a clear distinction between Black Consciousness and Black Power in the United States, where already en­franchised blacks wished to constitute themselves as a pressure group in a white majority society. In South Africa, the BCM was seen as a way of preparing people for equal participation in a transformed society that would reflect the outlook of the black majority." Psychological liberation was sought through a return to African values of communalism, shared decision making, and more personal communication styles, in contrast to the individualism of white consumer society.

Despite the BCM's designation of the black community as communalistic, the division of labor within the BCM followed traditional sexist lines. All five officeholders in the 1972 executive were men. Women for the most part were relegated to taking responsibility for child care, moral education, and socialization in black cultural heritage, for health, nutrition, and the making of clothing. This view permeated the women's own self-definition, as is evident in the pream­ble to the constitution of the allied Black Women's Federation:

1. Black women are basically responsible for the survival and maintenance of their families and largely the socialisation of the youth for the transmission of the Black cultural heritage;

2. They need to present a united front and to redirect the status of mother­hood towards the fulfillment of the Black people's social, cultural, economic and political aspirations.

In contrast, the Institute of Black Studies, formed in 1975, was "to provide a forum where the Black man can express himself. ... a platform where issues facing the country can be analysed and inter­preted."

The repetition of masculine pronouns, which prevailed in the SASO Policy Manifesto of 1971, may well have reflected and reproduced standard English usage of "he" and "man" in what was viewed as their generic sense. But despite the black cultural ideal of an inclusive communalism, the male is constructed as the empowered speaker, and women—even when included as "sisters"—are presented as the other, powerless and voiceless." The ancillary role of women in the leadership of SASO further corroborates this gender-based disparity. Few women were prominent in student representative councils or in campus activities. But structural factors may also have kept women from participating on a more equal basis—one cannot automatically attribute their underrepresentation in the movement solely to exclu­sionary practices.

FORMS OF PROTEST

In its earlier phases, the BCM was characterized by spontaneity and an easy evolution, without any rigid plan or agenda. The style was informal, free of organizational trappings, as exemplified by Biko's I Write What I Like. Politics were consensually based, until the rude awakening caused by Temba Sono's public criticism of the BCM's directions in July 1972. After that, the membership was more carefully screened and the style of speeches became more prescribed.

Consciousness-raising often took the form of light-hearted, satirical, humorous utterances. College campuses during the late 1960s were the base for frequently staged political theater. For a while, it amused even Nationalist-oriented staff members, who seemed to re­joice at the way in which "the natives" entertained themselves, in images derived from "their own lingo." The style of acting and dic­tion was a refreshing change from the previous stilted, imitative, colonial models of the speech and drama genre. Afrikaner faculty at the tribal colleges loved this rejection of the British yoke, and there was a self-congratulatory air about how well these colleges allowed students to express themselves. The National government, however, was not amused at these developments on campuses it had established in order to ethnicize, depoliticize, fragment, and control the opposition. The theatrical performances were among the subversive activities charged by the state at trials of BCM leaders in the 1970s. From the late 1960s until the arrest of its most articulate propo­nents in 1977, Black Consciousness filled the political and cultural vacuum created by the silencing of the ANC and PAC leadership. The main tenets of the BCM permeated the thinking of a generation of students, regardless of political persuasion. The movement's initial analytical focus on culture, identity, and value systems gradually shifted, and the struggle was defined in terms of racism and capitalism. In 1971 the preferred focus was to radicalize the population through direct political criticism of the regime; through infiltration of ruling organizations, including collaborating institutions, and conver­sion from within; and through "orientation politics" that addressed a range of educational, cultural, religious, and economic needs. Under the influence of Julius Nyerere's ideas about self-reliance, various community projects explored ways in which blacks could become more self-supporting.

Black Review 1972 cited black community projects—literacy campaigns, health projects, and home education programs—throughout the country, mainly in rural and semirural areas in the Transvaal, Natal, and Eastern Cape. Popular short-term notions of an immi­nent revolution were replaced by patient, disciplined preparation. The editor of Black Review, B. A. Khoapa, proposed that the philosophy of liberation required a frank appraisal of white institutions and policies and "an advanced programme of economic democracy" in order to expand black interests to universal interests. He called for a broadening of the movement beyond sheltered student politics toward a mobilization of the work force. If Black Consciousness was to effect a major transformation in society, the intellectuals would have to reach workers.

This goal implied not only a modification of language, but also a fundamental shift of concerns: establishing positive self-images seemed peripheral, at best, to people whose lives were heavily burdened by the daily drudgery of earning a living. The new projects, however, were severely hampered by the constraints of student life. Distances between campuses and townships, inadequate financial re­sources for travel and free time, and the need to work with Bantustan authorities inhibited outreach efforts. So, too, did the marginal status of young students, who could hardly hold themselves out as leaders to the workers. All these factors served to identify the need for an adult branch of the growing student movement. What was distinctive about the BCM at this time was its pragmatic willingness to forgo the rhetoric-laden, sterile, noncompromise party lines adopted by other opposition organizations. For a while the BCM even had contacts with adversaries like Gatsha Buthelezi. Indeed, Steve Biko and Buthelezi shared a platform when the BCM brought together an alliance of diverse black groups. Another sign of the BCM's openness was its effort to establish a socialist dispensation, while striving for nationalist liberation.

This unconventional mix of tendencies hampered fundraising. Prospective financial supporters were few, and those willing to fund the nationalist cause balked at supporting a movement marked by socialist sympathies. On the other hand, those who might have supported radical political initiatives would not back an organization that emphasized the significance of color. Faced with the choice between compromising its principles in order to attract funds or being indepen­dent, principled, locally based, and underfinanced, the BCM charac­teristically settled for the latter.

Up through the early 1970s the BCM's relatively modest means and low-key profile provoked little reaction from Pretoria. During this period of tolerance the regime even praised BCM students for their "apartheid-like" thinking, their enthusiasm for the state's program of separatist black education. On the surface the BCM appeared to be using the same symbols as the state, even as it refashioned black identity into a more inclusive category by raising awareness about the structure of oppression. SASO emphasized black content in education and attempted to subvert the authority structure by divulging the relations of power and Eurocentric bias in institutional life. At the SASO banquet of June 1973, for example, Ernest Baartman gave an eloquent address, "Education as an Instrument for Liberation," that demystified the relationship between knowledge, control, and hegemony. Such analyses only highlighted the dialectic of apartheid education for the colonized, as had been predicted. The ruling re­gime now came to understand that the BCM was appropriating the state's idioms in order to challenge its motives and subvert its power.

After a series of industrial strikes throughout Durban during 1973, for which the BCM was blamed but neither claimed nor disclaimed responsibility, the government retaliated by arresting eight SASO organizers, although there was little connection between SASO and the strikes. The last straw, from the government's point of view, was a Durban rally that SASO organized in 1974 to celebrate Mozambique's independence. The " Viva Frelimo " cries of the crowd at the banned meeting were only intended to express black solidarity and strengthen the BCM, but the police violently overreacted. A series of arrests and bannings followed, culminating in a number of deaths in detention.

In response to massive arrests and police intimidation, some stu­dents saw armed struggle as the only alternative. In 1976 the rebellion of Soweto students was primarily headed by members of the South African Students' Movement (SASM), infused with the spirit of Black Consciousness in their rejection of Afrikaans-language instruction as a tool of their subjugation. Large numbers of these students subsequently escaped the country. Many were absorbed into ANC camps, although a Black Consciousness Movement in exile was also set up as a third South African liberation group.

The BCM's platform of education for liberation was in danger of devolving into what some viewed as calls from abroad for liberation before education. The deteriorating conditions in black schools and the unbridgeable rift between children and school authorities under the Department of Education and Training led a group of concerned parents to found the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC). Hoping to get the children to return to schools, the NECC promoted the idea of people's education as an alternative. The detention of most of NECC's active members prevented this initiative from gaining any momentum. Meanwhile, individuals and institutions sympathetic to Black Consciousness continued to conduct research and develop cur­riculum materials and policy perspectives for an alternative South Africa.

In the 1970s the BCM was said to have been cocooned as an intellectual crusade with little grass-roots support, lacking a solid base in organized labor. Some critics said the movement was heavy on moral purity and faced the danger of stagnating at the level of black solidarity, unable to translate its ideas into the "politically possible" for "political action." Others expressed concern about whether the movement was forward-looking enough to prepare itself for a post-apartheid society.

While Black Consciousness has always been weak at best among organized workers, it did spawn its own union during the 1970s. The Black and Allied Workers' Union (Bawu) criticized its stronger Fosatu rival for employing white intellectuals. This practical nonracialism in a fledgling independent union movement contrasted with BCM's "antiracism" under "black leadership." Successor organizations like the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) and the Azanian Confederation of Trade Unions (Azactu) later formed the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), which has kept its organizational and ideological distance from Cosatu to this day, although both feder­ations increasingly cooperate on tactical issues.

In 1978, after the banning of all constituent components of the BCM the previous year, the Azanian People's Organisation (Azapo) was formed. Its leaders incorporated a class analysis into their policy and directed attention toward the political involvement of the black working class. A focus on psychological liberation and blackness gradually gave way to more talk of socialist, anticapitalist alterna­tives. Those speaking on behalf of Azapo refuted charges that theirs was merely an intellectual movement, and they insisted that Azapo enjoyed wide support.

While initially favoring the Black Consciousness tendency, the state as well as liberal institutions in the 1980s began to look more favor­ably at the ANC supporters' nonracial promise. In 1991 Azapo stu­dents at Witwatersrand University, for example, complained about the university's nonrecognition of the BCM on the grounds that the organization was exclusively black and, therefore, violated the univer­sity's nonracial charter. The students argued that exclusively Jewish or Islamic student societies were always recognized, and that student fees were used to subsidize Charterist organizations through the local student representative councils. The vice-president of Azapo, Gomolemo Mokae, listed a series of incidents to argue that 'liberal' universities like "Wits and Natal are guilty of complicity in Stalinistic censorship against non-Charterists" {Frontline, May 1991). His griev­ance reflects Azapo's practice of not distinguishing between legitimate ethnicity (cultural and religious groups) and illegitimate racial catego­ries. In black and white nationalist thinking, ethnicity and race are identical.

Black Consciousness continues to rely on the development of a fictive kinship between all three "nonwhite groups" who have experi­enced the shared indignity of oppression and material deprivation. The psychological appeal of this kinship arouses many in all groups, and the effectiveness of Black Consciousness relies on the moral feel­ings it evokes. But can these feelings be channeled into a sustained movement? One of the major obstacles to a broad coalition is to be found in the differential experience of apartheid. Material rewards co-opt and "whiten," as does feared loss of cultural terrain.

AFRICANISM IN THE POSTAPARTHEID ERA

Analysts of black politics are currently puzzled by the dispute between the two main black groups that oppose negotiations and seem ideo­logically so close together, Azapo and the PAC. At the beginning of the 1990s, both groups have been marginalized by their opposition to the Charterist power-sharing project, and they appear to have es­calated their bickering. According to Patrick Lawrence, a journalist:

"Given the convergence between their ideological positions, including their insistence on black leadership and their commitment to socialism, Azapo and PAC were strongly hostile to one another. Azapo accused the PAC of intolerance, of forcing Azapo members to wear their T-shirts inside out at a Sharpeville Day commemorative service instead of welcoming them as brothers-in-the-struggle, and of belatedly pressing for a constituent assembly, an idea first promoted by Azapo in 1984." Behind the quarreling, however, lies a class difference that often is overlooked.

The PAC speaks on behalf of some of the least-privileged and least-educated members of the oppressed majority. With a reservoir of Africanist sentiment in some rural areas and among recent mi­grants, the social base of the PAC resembles that of Inkatha rather than the more professionally led, urban-oriented ANC. On the other hand, Azapo has always attracted a better-educated elite, being par­ticularly popular among university staff, clergy, journalists, and other professionals. Owing in part to its sprinkling of Indians in prominent leadership positions, Azapo continues to be resented by some Africanists—just as the PAC initially objected to the perceived inordinate influence of Indians and white communists in the ANC. Azapo leader Gomolemo Mokae seems to have succumbed to this anti-Indianism in 1992, when he accused BC of having "molly-cod­dled the Indian component of the black community": "Given that this component has yet to show, across the ideological spectrum of the liberation movements, much passion and willingness to engage in the struggle at grassroots level, is it not incongruous that they command such considerable power within all sections of the libera­tion movement?" he asks in an apartheid-like mode [Work. in Progress 85, October 1992). Although the PAC also has a few prominent non-African members, it offers essentially a very down-to-earth articulation of diverse grass-roots sentiments. To oversimplify: Azapo constitutes a sophisticated intellectual elite in search of a constituency, while the PAC's potentially powerful army has been poorly served by its disorganized, quarreling generals.

The PAC's repeated internecine conflicts and petty ideological disputes stand out especially in comparison with the united ANC. The ANC has also had the advantage of much wider international recognition, diplomatic support, and a sympathetic international press (which has virtually ignored the PAC). Moreover, the ANC has bene­fited from a wider pool of experience and expertise in resistance politics. The popular symbols of resistance—the toyi-toyi dance, songs, and colors—are all associated with the ANC tradition, and they are also used by Inkatha. Contrary to expectations that an Africanist cultural revival would engender strong political emotions, these emotions originated from the internationalist-oriented ANC.

In terms of external support, the Soviet bloc's preference for the ANC far outweighed China's initial support for the PAC in the inter-socialist rivalry. Only in a few China-aligned Frontline States, such as Zimbabwe and Tanzania, did the PAC receive some external support. But this rapidly evaporated after Mandela's release. The PAC's am­biguous stance toward negotiations and the joining of a short-lived "patriotic front" with the ANC in 1991 further illustrates the lack of cohesiveness among its constituency.

In defining who is an African, PAC General Secretary Benny Alex­ander distinguishes "two strains." The first consists of indigenous people "who historically cannot be traced out of Africa." Whites and Asians whose only home and sole allegiance is to Africa constitute the second strain. 29 For the PAC this formula amounts to a nonracial concept that defines the nation. It accepts self-declarations of alle­giance, so that those who define themselves as non-African do so by choice. "Settlers" applies only to those whites who oppress indige­nous people.

Oscar Dhlomo has rightly stressed that the PAC's position that anyone can be an African by choice, regardless of color, "will only become meaningful the moment the movement begins to admit non-black members" {Sunday Times, September 1, 1991). At present, the absence of whites in the PAC implies that this group does not identify with its own commendable nonracial postulate about Africans.

Another contradiction lies in the PAC's insistence on armed strug­gle even as it enters negotiations with the government. The PAC's policy is to attack security forces only, and it has not renounced armed struggle as the principal method to bring about liberation. The Azanian People's Liberation Army (Apla), the armed wing of the PAC, has generally concentrated on the assassinations of policemen. The few Apia guerrillas convicted in South African courts, even after the suspension of armed struggle by the ANC, had mostly received training in Tanzania and Libya. According to estimates by the Inter­national Institute for Strategic Studies, the PAC commands about 350 trained operatives. The ANC and PAC ridicule each other's claims of military confrontations with the enemy as fantasies, with the PAC pointing to the "random terror" of the ANC. The PAC does not disclose any information about incidents involving its combatants unless it loses people.

Benny Alexander also claims that at the end of 1990 "our member­ship was bigger than theirs [ANC's]" and that the PAC has "the support of most of the oppressed intelligentsia." Few would view these claims as accurate in the light of attendance figures at rallies and surveys that generally indicate three to four times greater support for the ANC. However, if negotiations fail or turn out to be too compro­mising, the PAC and Azapo could potentially regain mass support and again eclipse the ANC. Yet by beginning to negotiate with the govern­ment in 1992, the PAC has lost its radical image and adopted a posture closer to that of the ANC. This leaves Azapo as the sole proponent of the purist stance.

Azapo now portrays itself as the vanguard for the struggle for socialism in "occupied Azania." The SACP is viewed as having be­trayed the struggle for socialism "by riding the ANC towards a nego­tiated settlement of compromise with the de Klerk regime, which has the potential to set back socialist transformation by many decades" {Work in Progress 73, March-April 1991). Both Azapo and the PAC are vague when pressed to describe their vision of "scientific socialism" more concretely. A forty-one-page official booklet published by the PAC, "Towards a Democratic Economic Order," concludes that the "political and economic mission shall be: redistributive, development, reproductive, accumulative, restorative, entrepreneurial-supportive, human needs' oriented and equi-beneficial." If the ANC needs to strengthen and update its economic research capacities, the other anti-apartheid movements are in even weaker positions. In 1991 Azapo made a tactical error that undermined its influence and public profile. It withdrew from the Patriotic Front that it initially convened together with the ANC and PAC. The contentious issue was the participation of fourteen homeland parties in the tricameral parliament that, together with seventy other organizations, was invited to form a united front for the forthcoming constitutional negotiations. Two weeks before the conference, Azapo General Secretary Don Nkadimeng unilaterally wrote to the homeland parties demanding that they resign from "system-oriented structures" before they "sit with patriots." With the ANC eager to have the widest possible representation, including particularly the Democratic Party, it could hardly give in to the unrealistic Azapo demand. Azapo thereby missed the chance to present itself with twenty delegates as equal to the ANC and PAC at the founding conference. ANC-oriented observers com­mented that "it was a suicidal move by an organisation which has been steadily losing influence for the past 15 years" (South Scan, October 25, 1991). However, Azapo can claim that it had never engaged in false compromises in the interests of controversial negotiations.

In conclusion, in the 1990s the BCM and the PAC-aligned Africanists, though outmaneuvered by the ANC, continue to spread their message through community development programs, health aware­ness projects, and women's organizations. These groups have left an indelible mark on the discourse in black politics, although they have been overshadowed by the publicity, diplomatic success, and organizational clout of the ANC. Compared to the ANC, Azapo remains primarily an intellectual force. Supported by a number of influential opinion-makers in the universities, as well as by some clerics and trade union leaders, Black Consciousness endures, though more as an alternative vision than an active political movement. Its success and failure lie in the extent to which its ideas have shaped the attitudes of political actors and some of the organizational rivalries—physical clashes between ANC and Azapo supporters notwithstanding.

The historic highpoint of the BCM, the 1976 Soweto uprising, and that of the PAC in 1960 were eclipsed by the subsequent rise of the Charterist hegemony, in which many of the exiled Africanists and Black Consciousness supporters were absorbed. Although the BCM continued as a third exiled liberation movement, separate from the ANC and PAC and without the sponsorship of a major world power, many of its members found their home abroad in the ANC, which in turn benefited from the influx of committed students. Without this infusion of a new generation of young radicals, the subsequent rise and renewal of the Charterist tradition would have been inconceivable. In shedding both the internalized colonial mentality and liberal tutelage. Black Consciousness laid the ground for a self-confident challenge of the apartheid state, whether through negotiations or refusals of co-optation.

A number of observers have stressed the transitional character of the movement; David Hirschmann concludes that the BCM was "ultimately a victim of its own success." To be sure, many of its promoters found their home in the ANC and the current numerical support for Azapo's strategies remains small, according to all surveys. However, the situation might change if the ANC is perceived as too moderate and accommodating. The continued significance of Black Consciousness as well as Africanism lies in their potential. That the ANC leadership feels obliged to use strident language and ultimatums in the negotiations testifies to the latent impact of the more radical alterna­tive.

Source

Adam, H. and Moodley, K. (1993). The Negotiated Revolution Society and Politics in Post – Apartheid South Africa. Jonathan Ball Publishers: Johannesburg.

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