Dumisane Simelane Calls for Black Consciousness

Politically, the decade from 1960 to 1970 was a period of deafening silence among black South Africans. The freedom movements of the 1950s had been banned and their leaders imprisoned. In the late 1960s, new young leaders arose, bringing a fresh concept for organizing called “black consciousness.” Foremost among these activists was Steve Biko. As a university student, Biko had been involved with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), a multiracial civil rights organization. Later, Biko began to rethink the role that racial identity should play in anti-apartheid activism. In 1968, he co-founded the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO). This new student organization, unlike NUSAS, was open to the three groups identified as black—native Africans, “coloureds,” and Asians—but it was not open to whites. The philosophical core of SASO was black consciousness: an assertive affirmation of black identity. Sympathetic whites were encouraged to form their own organizations to fight apartheid, but Biko and other leaders believed that it was important for black South Africans to take control of their own destinies, rather than relying on white support to bring their freedom. A core idea within the Black Consciousness Movement was the need for blacks to change their mentality and free their minds from the ideas of inferiority that apartheid had long encouraged.

In the selection below, from a speech Biko gave in 1971 at a nationwide multiracial student conference, he articulates his understanding of the connection between white racism and black consciousness. He saw the power that could come from organizing as blacks. Black Consciousness spread widely among youth and was a major spark igniting the 1976 Soweto uprising and leading to a resurgence in the national freedom movement. On June 16, 1976, in the segregated township of Soweto, thousands of black students walked out of their schools and marched defiantly through the streets, demanding an end to their second-class status in education and beyond. Students in other cities responded with similar demonstrations. Across the country, the paramilitary police came out in force, killing hundreds of teenagers and imprisoning thousands. The following year, in 1977, Steve Biko was imprisoned, tortured, and left to die. Yet thousands of others continued this struggle.

White Racism and Black Consciousness

We now come to the group that has longest enjoyed confidence from the black world—the [white] liberal establishment, including radical and leftist groups. The biggest mistake the black world ever made was to assume that whoever opposed apartheid was an ally. . . .

How many white people fighting for their version of a change in South Africa are really motivated by genuine concern and not by guilt? . . .

[A white person] possesses the natural passport to the exclusive pool of white privileges . . . . Yet at the back of his mind is a constant reminder that he is quite comfortable as things stand and therefore should not bother about change. . . .

I am not sneering at the liberals and their involvement. Neither am I suggesting that they are the most to blame for the black man’s plight. Rather I am illustrating the fundamental fact that total identification [by white liberals] with an oppressed group [blacks] in a system that forces one group to enjoy privilege and to live on the sweat of another, is impossible. . . .

The liberal must fight on his own and for himself. If they are true liberals they must realise that they themselves are oppressed, and that they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous “they” [blacks] with whom they can hardly claim identification. . . .

. . . [I]n South Africa political power has always rested with white society. Not only have the whites been guilty of being on the offensive but, by some skillful manoeuvres, they have managed to control the responses of the blacks to the provocation. Not only have they kicked the black but they have also told him how to react to the kick. . . . [H]e is now beginning to show signs that it is his right and duty to respond to the kick in the way he sees fit. . . .