BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT

Black Consciousness Movement

Introduction

South Africa in the 1970s witnessed a phenomenon that was unique in many ways. The Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko, combined empowerment, education and community building with the introduction of a novel, inclusive use of the term “BIack”. In doing so, Biko was able to bring into question fundamental assumptions about the significance of race while also altering the political landscape in a way that was to the advantage of antiapartheid forces. The use of overtly existentialist language to define Black Consciousnes suggests another element of this developing philosophy. Before the term Black Consciousness itself had emerged, the SASO Newsletter argued that "négritude" meant black identity, but that "black identity is not a political movement. It is an attitude towards life." Blackness was about an individual's identity in a political situation; consciousness was self-realization and self-awareness and thus the force that made black rebels move. Recall Biko's "modern black culture," which responded to a situation of oppression; so too did consciousness call identity — ways of being — to struggle, if not to a movement per se. The appropriate "attitude of mind" meant translating with Khoapa and Biko to turn calls for a future of concrete economic and political change in some contexts into calls to live in a certain way in the South African one (Budiender, 228-237).

In this way Black Consciousness thinkers set the conditions for more overt political protest. From the vantage point of the early 1970s they urged a calm probing of, not a hasty rush towards, the political future. The ramifications of this are multiple, especially — to step out of history for a moment — considering questions about what has and what has not changed since 1994. We measure historical change in movements, programs and processes, in events that take a tangible shape. But early 1970s Black Consciousness measured change in an intangible way, for which it is quite difficult to account. It was about self-awareness and the rejection of inferiority complexes; it was measured in individual selves accepting that their blackness was an existential reality and that consciousness demanded that they move towards the future (Honneth).

Discussion

The critical political moves that Biko formulated in the founding ideology of the Black Consciousness Movement are twofold. First, “black” is redefined to include not only those whom the apartheid government had named Africans, but LISO those the government had named colored and Indians. In Biko's address as the newly elected president of SASO in 1969, he refers to the group of colored, Indians and Africans as “nomwhites” In a letter from the following year; Biko begins to define positively this identity group as “blacks”. Secondly, “black” is made to describe a new set of positive characteristics: assertiveness, self r1iance, and independence. The identification of these traits with “black” was fostered through community development programs meant to empower blacks at the grassroots level.

In 1973, Biko was “banned” under the Suppression of Communism Act and forbidden from participating in political events and meeting with ...