‘I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalise them for not being able to stand up under the weight.”
This politically charged comment by American civil rights leader Malcom X may be controversial in our current era. With the current 30 years’ celebration of democracy in South Africa fizzling out amidst the persistent triple developmental challenges of inequality, poverty and unemployment, could there be some truth in his words?
Having recently attended a primary school’s award ceremony, I was taken aback when the pupils were ushered into the hall with Gaudeamus igitur, a tune performed at most academic processions. It was intriguing to ponder whether we continue to align academic achievement with Latin standards.
Did the pupils comprehend the celebratory music, or did it merely serve as a melody to highlight their academic achievements? If the latter was the case, are we then not continuing to uphold Western norms in education within an African setting?
Malcom X’s statement brings into remembrance that an incorrect diagnosis can lead to incorrect treatment. His words are relevant today because our country’s history mirrors that of the American civil rights movement in that the quest for human rights was a tandem exercise between the two nations.
While America was contending with Jim Crow laws, our country was gradually normali-sing the principle of apartheid and enforcing the dominance of the black population, which, in contrast to the American experience, was the majority.
Little is known about America’s influence on prominent South African apartheid leaders, who crossed the Atlantic for a benchmarking exercise to handle the so-called “native problem”, later termed “die swart gevaar” by state leaders. This reveals that the existence of blackness posed a challenge to white dominance, prompting them to address it with a combination of knowledge and strategic approaches.
Emerging from America’s silent trenches of domination, the black power movement was a response to Jim Crow and other oppressive laws that limited the rights of the African American population. In a similar vein, the South African oppressive laws acted as a catalyst for the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM).
A glance at literature reveals that BCM was a product of the South African Student Movement (Saso), which, as the name suggests, was an organisation started by university students in 1968.
After electing Steve Biko as the first president, this group solidified and spread the message of black consciousness (BC) throughout South Africa, thus bringing it into the public eye.
The strategic seam of apartheid in the tapestry of our country’s history means that some of its effects in this present era may go unnoticed. We may not attribute factors such as a decline in the integrity of the township economy to apartheid, or the rise in the selective change of skin colour in the black community to apartheid’s influence. However, if we take a closer look at our history, we might begin to see apartheid in full colour, and perhaps, begin to correctly diagnose the black experience.
Aligning with Malcom X’s words, we should correct the tale of our history by introducing BC in our institutions of learning, churches, communities and within the comfort of our homes from an early age. Otherwise, we risk the possibility of perpetually crushing our people while simultaneously penalising them for failing to stand up under the weight of generational silencing, oppression and misidentification.
Black consciousness is an antidote to the mental damage wrought on the black society. It is a necessary tool to break past beliefs while also reconstructing a decolonial and liberated mindset. This is not to say we need to return to the mentality of seeing the world in black and white. Absolutely not!
Bringing BC into the public eye is a call to look back at mainstream history and prove it wrong. The National Development Plan 2030 lists “uniting South Africans of all races and classes around a common programme to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality” as one of its outcomes, but there can be no unity without justice.
It is incumbent on all of us to restore the thinking and corrupted self-beliefs in our country’s black citizenry so that we can all rise to the position of greatness without the weight of presupposed irrelevance imprinted in our tools of learning, media and communities.
We need to introduce African authors and African achievements as course material to enforce positive representation to the African looking for a place of belonging in the world.
Furthermore, there is a need to choose South African music to lead academic processions, so that our pupils can celebrate their accomplishments in a language they understand. By doing so, we will dispel the myth that knowledge is an outsourced attribute exclusive to Western civilisations.
- Leshilo is a communicator, writer and researcher
