The words “black man [woman] you are on your own” have their own significant ring because they are attributable to one of the country’s foremost lights – Steve Biko.
Biko, we need not repeat it, was killed by the “system”, or to the uninitiated, the “special branch” under the instruction of the apartheid principals who were housed in the Union Buildings, Pretoria.
The Union Buildings have a long history of dehumanising black people. Was it not Dr Henrik Verwoerd who said the following: “What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when he cannot use it in practice?”
What kind of question is this, some may ask? What is its objective?
Hurtful and demeaning words to those who first heard them being said by the powers-that-be of the time – and hurtful words to those who read about them today – remain a scourge, and a symbol of injustice.
It is not surprising that such words prompted a protracted liberation struggle waged against the enemy by the liberation movement made up of the ANC, PAC, Azapo, SA Communist Party, religious formations and all South Africans who hated any form of injustice.
More hurtful, Verwoerd described then in the 1950s as the apartheid education minister black people as only good enough “to be hewers of wood and drawers of water”.
Hewers of wood and drawers of water are those who perform menial, unskilled work at the behest of the rich and powerful.
For 46 years between 1948 and 1994, when the National Party illegitimately and undemocratically ran the government, most white people who supported the minority rule were complicit in the oppression of black people. They stayed in beautiful suburbs, with their roads tarred, earning big salaries and wages when blacks earned a pittance.
Where are we going with this?
There was a man who lived among us. His name was Biko. It is he who sacrificed a promising future as a medical student to wage a liberation struggle for the sake of the black community.
He told his disciples – millions of black people – that their salvation was not dependent on others, but that they would have to pull themselves by their own bootstraps to serve their communities. He said the injustices heaped upon black people by the apartheid system would only end if we stopped it by resisting it.
Biko taught about black excellence. He taught that black people did not need the assistance of white people to achieve greatness.
He said we should love ourselves, and not be put off by our black skin, but rather celebrate it.
He taught black people to sing a new song of victory, and that “black is beautiful”, and that black people should not allow themselves to be hewers of wood and drawers of waters – but should aim for the firmaments.
To prove it, in 1975, Biko co-founded the Zimele Trust Fund. Through the Black Community Programmes he established Zanempilo Community Health Care Centre, an entity that provided primary healthcare for black communities in the Eastern Cape. The lesson to be learnt is that as black people we should strive for excellence and not mediocrity in running successful institutions.
But Biko turns in his grave when he sees black failure as manifest in many of our municipalities and metros.
Poor service delivery is the order of the day. The country’s parastatals are on their knees, badly mismanaged by incompetent administrators. However, in the midst of darkness and hopelessness, slivers of black excellence show in several areas of human endeavour.
Black people assert themselves as CEOs of companies they have established, a testimony that “black man [woman] you are on your own”.
We end these words with what the late Father Aelred Stubbs of the Community of Resurrection said about Biko: “Steve died to give unbreakable substance to the hope he had already instilled in our breasts, the hope of freedom in South Africa. That is what he lived for… He was a living embodiment of the hope he proclaimed by word and deed.”
We need more Bikos today to rekindle the hope that he instilled.
- Mdhlela is a freelance journalist, Anglican priest, ex-trade unionist and former publications editor of the SA Human Rights Commission publications
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