Remembering the quotable Steve Bantu Biko: introspection and theoretical epistemological analysis of apartheid murder.
Boaduo, Nana Adu-Pipim
Introduction
Even though Steve Bantu Biko came into prominence in the South
African political struggle scene in the 1970s, apart from the massive
contribution by the honourable first black President of South Africa,
Dr. Rholihlahla Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned for a very long time,
Biko was the most feared by the apartheid government in terms of his
creative political ideological model, especially his political theory of
Black Consciousness. As identified and glorified by Archbishop Desmond
Tutu in these words "Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was surely
of God. I describe apartheid as almost the ultimate blasphemy."
This observation is supported by many Black South African religious
communities.
The Skeleton That Frightened and Haunted the Apartheid Leaders
The political ideology, call it political philosophy, in all its
fullness sought to awaken in Black South Africans in particular and
Blacks worldwide, a sense of their innate infinite value and worth
independent of biological relevance such as ethnicity, skin colour or
race. Black Consciousness, according to Steve Bantu Biko is a philosophy
which "....sought to help to exorcize the horrible demons of
self-hatred and self-contempt that made all black South Africans suck up
to whites while treating their fellow blacks as scum they thought
themselves to be" (Biko, 1978: ix).
What the apartheid leaders feared about the BCM was the ideological
content knowledge and teachings that helped to aroused in all black
South Africans a shared knowledge and understanding of their
responsibilities to free themselves from apartheid bondage.
Some of Biko's utterances which encapsulated undeniable fear
in the hearts of the apartheid leaders include what I have selected from
his book "I write what I like" which I believe are important
to augment my presentation. In his article titled "We Blacks"
published under the pseudonym Frank Talk, he closed the article with
this statement:
"To take part in the African revolution, it is not enough to
write a revolutionary song, you must fashion the revolution with the
people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by
themselves and of themselves ". Biko finished this article with
this excerpt: "In order to achieve real action you must yourself be
a living part of Africa and of her thought; you must be an element of
that popular energy which is entirely called forth for the freeing, the
progress and the happiness of Africa. There is no place outside that
fight for the artist or for the intellectual who is not himself
concerned with, and completely at one with the people in the great
battle of Africa and of suffering humanity" (Biko, 1978:35).
Having identified with the necessity to be part of the struggle in
order to make a contribution towards bringing it to its need for the
achievement of Black South African emancipation from the apartheid
clutches Biko addressed this in his article titled "Some African
Cultural Concepts", Biko wrote by quoting Dr. Kaunda that:
"The Westerner has an aggressive mentality. When he sees a
problem he will not rest until he has formulated some solution to it. He
cannot live with contradictory ideas in his mind; he must settle for one
or the other or else evolve a third idea in his mind which harmonises or
reconciles the other two. And he is vigorously scientific in rejecting
solutions for which there is no basis in logic. He draws a sharp line
between the natural and the supernatural, the rational and non-rational,
and more often than not, he dismisses the supernatural and non-rational
as superstitions ...
Africans being a pre-scientific people do not recognise any
conceptual cleavage between the natural and supernatural. They
experience a situation rather than face a problem. By this I mean they
allow both the rational and non-rational elements to make an impact upon
them, and any action they may take could be described more as a response
of the total personality to the situation than the result of some mental
exercise".
Biko finished this quote with a concluding paragraph, stating:
"This I find a most apt analysis of the essential difference
in the approach to life of these two groups (that is the Westerner and
the African). We as a community are prepared to accept that nature will
have its enigmas which are beyond our powers to solve. Many people have
interpreted this attitude as lack of initiative and drive yet in spite
of my belief in the strong need for scientific experimentation I cannot
help feeling that more time also should be spent in teaching man and man
to live together and that perhaps the African personality with its
attitude of laying less stress on power and more stress on man as well
on the way to solving our confrontation problems" (Biko, 1978: 48).
What scared the apartheid government was the infinite explanation
that Steve Bantu Biko attached to the BCM. Hence, before touching on
this definition, he provided some epistemological explanations in his
introduction under the heading of his article "The Definition of
Black Consciousness", stating:
"Being black is not a matter of pigmentation--being black is a
reflection of a mental attitude. Merely by describing yourself as black
you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed
yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as
a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being" (Biko, 1978:
52).
After providing this introduction, Biko succinctly outlined what he
meant by Black Consciousness, thus:
"Black Consciousness is in essence the realisation by the
black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the
cause of their operation--the blackness of their skin and to operate as
a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to
perpetual servitude. It seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an
aberration from the 'normal' which is white. It is a
manifestation of a new realisation that by seeking to run away from
themselves and to emulate the white man, blacks are insulting the
intelligence of whoever created them black. Black Consciousness
therefore, takes cognisance of the deliberateness of God's plan in
creating black people black. It seeks to infuse the black community with
a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems,
their culture, their religion and their outlook to life", (Biko,
1978: 53).
What alerted the apartheid government was not in the definition of
Black Consciousness political philosophy but the utterances which Biko
attached to the definition in terms of the interrelationship between the
consciousness of the self and the emancipatory programmes he proposed.
Thus, he succinctly indicated that Blacks no longer sought to reform the
apartheid system because by so doing, it would imply acceptance of the
major points around which the system revolved. For this reason, Biko
affirmed that Blacks should all go out completely and transform the
apartheid system and to make of it what they wished. And such major
undertaking could only be realised in an atmosphere where people are
conceived with the truth inherent in their stand. To Biko, liberation
was of paramount importance in the philosophical niceties of Black
Consciousness, and therefore he concluded that
".... for we cannot be conscious of ourselves and yet remain
in bondage. We want to attain the envisioned self, which is a free
self," (Biko, 1978: 53).
He further indicated that the Black Consciousness philosophy
recognised the existence of a major force in the South Africa
environment, which was White racism. He indicated that:
"... a solid black unity to counterbalance the scale" was
the only solution and indicated further that "... What Black
Consciousness seeks to do is to produce at the output end of the process
real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white
society" (Biko, 1978: 55).
Before leaving the definition of Black Consciousness political
philosophy, Biko also warned that what Black South Africans should the
reality of their situation, stating that:
"... We are all oppressed to varying degrees is a deliberate
design to stratify us not only socially but also in terms of
aspirations. Therefore it is to be expected that in terms of the
enemy's plan there must be this suspicion and that if we are
committed to the problem of emancipation to the same degree it is part
of our duty to bring to the attention of the black people the
deliberateness of the enemy's subjugation scheme. That we should go
on with our programme, attracting to it only committed people and not
just those eager to see an equitable distribution of groups amongst our
ranks. This is a game common amongst liberals. The one criterion that
must govern all our action is commitment", (Biko, 1978: 57).
As an analogy, Black Consciousness inevitably expressed group pride
and the determination by Blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self.
And at the heart of this kind of thinking was the realisation by Blacks
that:
"... the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is
the mind of the oppressed. Once the latter has been so effectively
manipulated and controlled by the oppressor as to make the oppressed
believe that he is a liability to the white man, then there will be
nothing the oppressed can do that will really scare the powerful
masters", (Biko, 1978: 74).
Accordingly, Biko emphasised that thinking along the lines of Black
Consciousness makes Black people see the full humanity of self, and
thus, not as an extension of a broom or additional leverage to some
machine, and consequently:
"... Once this happens, we shall know that the real man in the
black person is beginning to shine through", (Biko, 1978: 74).
Quoting Fanon to make his point clear Biko also indicated that:
"Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in
its grip and emptying the Native's brain of all form and content by
a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people
and distorts, disfigures and destroys it", (Biko, 1978: 76).
Biko buttressed Fanon's observation, Biko suggest that:
"It is through the evolution of our genuine culture that our
identity can be fully rediscovered", (Biko, 1978: 77).
Frightening Apartheid
In his article titled "Let's Talk about Bantustans"
Biko revealed to world that the White press knew that they had an
advantage in how to misdirect the attention of Black people. Second,
while the White press knew too well the limitations of the Bantustan
theory, it was a far cry from what Blacks wanted, which went on to build
the image of Matanzima and Buthelezi in order to harness them to a path
they had already chosen and to make the non-analytic masses believe that
a great victory was just about to be achieved. Therefore, it became
apparently clear that whatever one did in the context of the Bantustans,
it was likely to be exploited for self-aggrandisement, by the White
world.
Furthermore, when one agreed with the apartheid government, they
were an extremely exemplary native who saw value in being led by Whites.
And for Biko, he went on to analyse and intoned that the South African
information bureaux throughout the world carried long coverage of
activities and pronouncements by Bantustan leaders to highlight the
degree of open-mindedness and fair play to be found in South Africa. As
a result, Biko responded with a big "No!" and indicated that
Black people must learn to refuse to be pawns in a White man's
game. To him such politics called upon all Blacks to provide their own
initiative and to act at their own pace, and thus not the pace created
for them by the racist apartheid system. Biko was of the view that no
Bantustan leader could tell blacks that they were acting at their own
initiative when they enter the realms of Bantustan politics, and warned
that Blacks could not have had their struggle ethicized through the
creation of Zulu, Xhosa and Tswana politicians by the apartheid system.
To Biko the Bantustans were nothing else but sophisticated concentration
camps where Black people were allowed to suffer "peacefully".
And he subsequently concluded some changes had to be made in the
Bantustan quandary, arguing that:
"... we black people should all the time keep in mind that
South Africa is our country and that all of it belongs to us. The
arrogance that makes white people travel all the way from Holland to
come and balkanise our country and shift us around has to be destroyed.
Our kindness has been misused and our hospitality turned against us.
Whereas whites were mere guests to us on their arrival in this country
they have now pushed us out to a 13% corner of the land and are acting
as bad hosts in the rest of the country. This we must put right. Down
with Bantustan!!!", (Biko, 1978: 94).
Conclusion
In conclusion, if Biko was allowed to live and espouse his Black
Consciousness political ideology, I argue that there was going to be a
mass ideological resuscitation of the consciousness of Black people of
South Africa, which could have led to a violent revolution against the
apartheid government. Thus, the result of such a massive mobilization of
a revolutionary cadre of the South African youth to remove the apartheid
government by any means possible wherein the White minority were not
ready and prepared to succumb would have led to a replica of
Hitler's genocide. Therefore, it was incumbent upon the apartheid
government to see to the immediate ending of this "ideological
notoriety of Biko's BCM which enormously threatened the very
existence of apartheid hegemony. Thus, in fear, the apartheid government
planned and implemented the immediate execution of Steve Bantu Biko.
Reference
Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like, Steve Biko: A Selection of His
Writings. Johannesburg: Picador Africa (original 1978), 2004.
Dr. Nana Adu-Pipim Boaduo FRC
pipimboaduo@live.co.za; nboaduo@wsu.ac.za; pipimboaduo@yahoo.co.uk
Senior Lecturer: Faculty of Education, Department of Continuing
Professional Teacher Development, Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha
Campus & Affiliated Researcher: Faculty of Economics and Management
Sciences, Centre for Development Support, Free State University,
Bloemfontein Campus: South Africa
