The founding father of the Black Consciousness movement, Steve Biko, famously said: The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
This week, on the 12th of September 39 years ago, Steve Biko was killed in a Pretoria detention cell, while in police custody. He died for his principles, his ideals, something the apartheid government feared greatly because he was so reasonable, because his arguments were so coherent.
The fundamental tenet of his Black Consciousness philosophy was that being black is not a matter of pigmentation but rather a reflection of a mental attitude. That was why, he said, liberation was of paramount importance in the concept of Black Consciousness.
It wasn’t about being above or below, but equal to absolutely everything and everyone.
Like Nelson Mandela, he wanted a society in which all South Africans, black, brown and white, lived side by side in harmony.
I was in my first year at Rhodes University in 1977, an innocent learning the craft of journalism, trying to fit my brown skin into a white environment.
I was trying, but mostly failing to embrace Steve Biko’s philosophy: that being black (brown) is not a matter of pigmentation but rather a reflection of a mental attitude.
It’s hard for every first year student, away from home, alone and afraid in a world in which mummy and daddy are not within shouting distance should they be needed.
For me, one of the first darkie students at Rhodes (altogether we numbered three) at what back then was an all white university, it WAS all about pigmentation and a poor mental attitude. Well at least that’s what it felt like.
Not because anyone was unkind to me, or discriminatory in any way — at least on the campus. It was me.
I was terrified I didn’t fit in; I didn’t speak White. My Indian accent was broad, I shortened my long vowels and lengthened my short ones — so God became Gord or Gawd.
My drama teachers, Joan Osborne and Beth Dickerson took me on as their Pygmalion Project, determined to strip away my accent and replace it with received pronunciation, to make me BBC presenter (circa 1977) ready. My tight tongue had to go, so I spent months with small pebbles under my tongue, speaking into a small Dictaphone then playing it back to myself, endlessly remodelling myself into a more acceptable version of myself. Though I’m not sure acceptable to whom. (Actually I must admit to being grateful for having been taught to speak unaccented English.)
Eight months into year one at Rhodes, Steve Biko, a son of the Eastern Cape, died. Death in detention, it was called. Though murder in detention would have been more appropriate.
This reasonable, gentle man was dead.
And a group of us, largely white militants and brown me, went by bus to his funeral in King William's Town on the 25 of September 1977.
It was the first big political funeral in South Africa and buses loaded with mourners converged on the small town from all over the country. It was a 20 000 strong crowd, surging and shoving and singing and swaying rhythmically as they did.
As our bus drove towards the stadium, we passed through streets lined with young black men with clenched fists raised in the air. We raised our fists too.
It was a festival of fists — a large fist had been carved into the coffin that was being carried aloft by dozens of men and women, singing and chanting freedom songs.
We heard that Helen Suzman was there. We saw dozens of international representatives seated in the area cordoned off for important guests.
We stood in the hot sun for five hours while long and short eulogies were delivered over a crackly sound system. We heard too that busloads of mourners had been stopped to have their “passes” checked and then turned back.
Steve Biko stood for something. He had the love and respect of the people. He wanted respect from all South Africans for each other. He wanted good governance, for honesty, humility.
When I look around me at the way this country is being governed, I can barely hold my head up, let alone up high.
I can’t help thinking that Steve Biko would have been so ashamed of us, of what we’ve become. He’d have been bitterly disappointed by how we have broken just about every one of the principles he died fighting for.
Biko’s steadfast beliefs stand out in stark relief in this time of economic uncertainty, made worse by a selfish, thoughtless president and his team of selfish thoughtless — amoral even — accolytes.
Even good things turn into bad things in this country.
As ordered by the Constitutional Court, President Zuma is finally paying back the money, his R7 814 155 Nkandla bill. That’s a good thing, right?
But even this supposed act of compliance with the law is shrouded in a cloud of controversy. The bank he’s getting the loan from apparently has the wholly government owned Public Investment Corporation as a 25% shareholder. Now people want a forensic audit of the payment to prove that it’s “clean money”. Opposition parties want proof that he’s actually paid back the money. All trust has been broken.
But there’s another thing that Steve Biko would have disapproved of: something that needs to keep the #paybackthemoney theme going.
The City of Johannesburg, Africa’s capital city, is owed R16-billion. Ekurhuleni, R11.7-billion; Tshwane, R7.6-billion; Cape town R7.3-billion.
We’re not paying our municipal bills. If we expect accountability from those in power, we have to come to the party and be accountable ourselves.
If we want potholes repaired, water pipes refurbished, park lawns mowed, our garbage collected… if we want things that affect our daily lives, things that we demand from a well-run municipality, then we have to pay our bills.
And its not just householders who are at fault; businesses and government departments, it seems, are the biggest transgressors.
This is not the South Africa Biko envisaged. He saw a system that would transform this country into a just and fraternal society with socioeconomic justice for all.
If we want that, then we — all of us — have to come to the party and do our bit.
It’s our moral obligation.
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