In 1977 a young man about 30 years old stood up to insist that his being African does not make him less of a human-being.
He refused to succumb to accepting the imposition of the status of inferiority to his people despite the threat posed by a bunch of strong hostile white men probably with weapons in a small room in a building in Port Elizabeth.
He refused to succumb to an acceptance of a status of inferiority of his people, declaring, “I’m going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me but I’m not going to be what you want me to be.”
He had by then engineered the containment of fear that was imposed by imprisonment and banning of those that had dared to challenge the oppression of African people in South Africa in the early 1960s.
He had taken the trouble to analyse his people and realised that, “It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality.
“The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”
Through the founding of the South African Students Organisation (Saso) that sired the Black Consciousness philosophy of which he was chief architect describing it as, “an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time”.
He had prioritised the upliftment of his people over his personal ambition to be a medical doctor, for which he got excluded from medical school.
Within three years of the founding of Saso, a student (Onkgopotse Tiro) was able to stand on a public platform (graduation ceremony) and point out the evil of apartheid directly to white officials assigned to run the university.
Five years on people would hold a rally to celebrate the attainment of freedom in Mozambique. The leaders of these rallies were arrested and faced trial as the Saso/BPC 8.
During his life, he had mesmerised a white liberal newspaper editor (Donald Woods) who had interpreted self-actualisation of African people as discrimination against whites.
The young man had also engaged in projects to inculcate self-reliance such as running a clinic (eg Zanempilo Clinic) and home industries.
He bamboozled white judges as a defence witness for those charged with terrorism for only believing in the worth of themselves as black people.
His philosophy had inspired school pupils with sufficient self-confidence to be intolerant of laws being imposed on them without their will hence the 1976 Soweto uprisings. These jerked up the international community to intensify economic strangulation (through sanctions) of apartheid SA with the result that the regime began to dismantle its apartheid laws (separate entrances, property ownership in townships, allowing trade unions, etc). Even the then moribund exiled organisations was inundated with recruits as the 1976 pupils fled into exile.
He had written to US president Jimmy Carter explaining sanctions as the most viable weapon that could bring the apartheid regime to its knees.
Black Consciousness had inspired black people to think of themselves as brothers and sisters, no wonder about 20 000 people attended his funeral despite roadblocks being set up all over the country to prevent people from attending.
British filmmaker Sir David Attenborough made a film about him. Peter Gabriel recorded a song about him. Books got written about him.
What he wrote in his early 20’s as editorial of the Saso newsletter with the pseudonym “Frank Talk} titled I write what I like complied into a book with the title, which has gone into many reprints.
Many have been recorded as “heroes” in our struggle in SA but short of being told about them serving time on Robben Island or going into exile there is very little about how they rocked the regime, their actions and the impact/effectiveness thereof is not very clear. There appears little to compare the bravery and the impact of this man who died on September 12 1977.
He is Steve Bantu Biko. We remember him.
- Mosalakae is a medical doctor concerned with societal issues
- Visit SW YouTube Channel for our video content
