A response to the paper produced by biko for a SASO leadership training course in 1971 AND to his ‘White Skin, Black Souls?’ article.
However, before I begin I want to make mention of the following which was taken from T. Spreelin Macdonald: Steve Biko’s poetics:
“The role of the white liberal in the black man’s history in South Africa is a curious one. Very few black organisations were not under white direction. True to their image, the white liberals always knew what was good for the blacks and told them so. The wonder of it all is that the black people have believed them for so long. (55)”
It is against this background that SASO was born: a black organisation to deal with black issues. Blacks had finally had enough of white interference.
As a dissenting white person, I would not go anywhere NEAR one of these so called ‘white liberal’ organisations. My intuitive gut feeling was always uneasy, disturbed. All I saw was obfuscation. And that could only mean ONE thing: these organisations were set ups. Set-ups to confuse opposition and to subvert resistance. There was NOTHING that I trusted about the apartheid regime. Even my involvement with the End Conscription Campaign which I was ASKED TO JOIN in 1985, was problematic as much as I believed in its importance. I always felt that any ‘white resistance’ movement that was allowed to operate were frames to monitor dissension and to pick out possible subversive trends and militancy in the white population. The small group of whites with whom I associated, had similar misgivings. Fortunately none of us were militant otherwise we would not be around today, that is for sure. However my artistic forays into the streets, theatres and night clubs as the red bull (fear and blindness) and later as the apartheid demon were targeting white, not black consciousness. The fact that I was surrounded with rumour and misinformation – pedophilia and satanism – is testament to my effectiveness. There were many other ‘non aligned’ forms of white resistance to apartheid: the punk band Powerage being one such, the Kalahari Surfers, Psychotic Junkanoo, The Gay Marines, The Dynamics, Via Afrika, The Subtropical Fits, Roger Lucy, Mikhail Peppas, the Scratch collective (Henry, Mario, Jane, Gerry, Anthony) and a lot more…..
I speak therefore, as a sceptical non aligned white dissenter. Or, if you like, as the last white liberal?
thus:
In 1971 apartheid was gathering such oppressive momentum that few would have thought that it could ever be vanquished. While black South Africans were targeted with brutal physical subjugation, white South Africans were targeted psychologically via an intricate system of brainwashing: radio, education, the press, religion, the ever present fear of intimidation. And there were those too – black, white, indian, coloured – who found themselves a niche within that insane system. This aspect of survival mechanisms under extreme duress that caused human beings to contort their reality in order not to be victimised (quite similar to what had happened in Nazi Germany for example) yet still earn a daily living, has not been fully researched. The point that we cannot all be revolutionaries is acknowledged by the fact that many of these people still hold the same jobs, and some are even lauded in post apartheid South Africa. With the existence of the apartheid ‘death squads’, the Askaris and their network of informers, there was a reign of a terrible and despicable ghostly fear. It is accepted that most whites benefited from that system whether they agreed with it or not. But not all whites. And that statement only refers to the material benefits: the truth is that emotionally and spiritually NO whites benefited. Yet, apartheid was undoubtedly a black struggle for power, for dignity. And most whites never realised that apartheid for them was a struggle for conscience, for spirit. Perhaps it is this that Biko was referring to when he stated:
“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.”
Yet looking back, the glaring flaw as with all fascist regimes, was that apartheid was unsustainable. It relied on stagnation. It was a white right favoured movement. It simply could not work, and it was all just a matter of time.
And yet, the devastation. The devastation.
It was vitally important during apartheid for black consciousness to extract itself from white man’s thinking and to find its power. Biko obviously played a vital role in this regard and it is through his unrelenting vision that Biko consciousness and the work of the resistance forces that gave focus to Black Power in South Africa.
However, I think it is crucial to bear in mind that the SASO paper was written at a time of great racial stress and disharmony – and of cultural censorship, disinformation, and bannings. Biko’s writings therefore carry so much more weight in that he had to devise his philosophy by honing his intuition, digging deep into his blackness. This enhanced his charismatic appeal and hence his power as a leader. Biko was not militant – he presented a viable model of a possible way forward. Stupidly the apartheid regime felt threatened and Biko paid the highest price. So without wanting to distract from the greatness AND importance of Biko’s work, when seen in today’s light I see Biko’s direction more a ‘right of passage’ than a doctrine.
Biko himself would not have agreed with this as he stated:
“One must immediately dispel the thought that Black Consciousness is merely a methodology or a means towards an end. 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 the appendages to white society. This truth cannot be reserved.”
While I completely agree with this 1971 statement, I need to point out that it carries a contradiction: “to produce at the output end of the process” IS a means towards an end. However, in 2011, I very seldom, and certainly not in the youth, come across black people who see themselves as ‘appendages to white society’. I say this as an educator who taught at the coal face of change – the classroom – for the past 14 years. That meant that I was interacting with 150 learners every day. And, in some cases I was spending more time with them than their parents. These were ‘first generation’ learners who had access to a real education, unfettered by the indoctrination of the past for the first time in South African history. I relished the privilege of this opportunity as I am not the type of educator that believes in a ‘top down’ approach to education. Sadly as change has swept through the Education System and which has not been implemented correctly, I have witnessed the attitude of that youth recently tip from a respect for education to frustration and a sense of entitlement. Plus the world has changed so radically in the last 40 years. We now have internet, cell phones, FB, Twitter blah blah blah and this needs to be taken cognisance of in terms of information overload that we are experiencing today.
Biko, in this SASO paper, is completely disgruntled with ‘LIBERALS’ – hence I was lead to “White Skin, Black Souls?” (as I researched more information) because here he deals specifically with the ‘white liberal’. The sad thing is that due to the SPIN DOCTORING by the RIGHT WING there has been a determined effort to undermine liberal consciousness and one needs to look deeper into how these mechanisms affected ‘white guilt’ and ‘black racism’. To sew dissension and suspicion has always been a right wing ploy which was never less than two pronged: rumour and mistrust, and if that does not work: physical interference. Simply put: divide and rule.
A lot of the argument that Biko uses in the paper for the SASO leadership course is VERY SIMILAR to the notion of ‘self determination’. This is not foreign to much of the thinking that characterised the rise of black consciousness elsewhere in the world: Fanon, Césaire, DuBois for example. And while this might have been necessary at the time, looking back in today’s perspective, not only is it regressive, it is also out of touch with modern reality. It creates FEAR OF BEING. i.e. it undermines that ‘intuitive’ feeling we instinctively use to gauge our existence and our relationship with our fellow human beings. It causes us to MISTRUST ourselves. To have misgivings about our spontaneity and with whom we find common interests. This is exactly what apartheid did where self determination was nothing short of a rallying cry for the Afrikaner and, via the IFP, for the Zulus. However, if Black Consciousness is to be ‘swallowed up’ by white racism, then ‘self determination’ in accordance with Biko is the only viable option. They exist as polar opposites and in the no longer new South Africa they aid and abet one another across a spectrum of the population that are volatile and undereducated many of whom take this sterile banter literally. Who would have thought that we would have to deal with the likes of Malema and Hoffmeyer in our post apartheid democracy? Much of Biko’s argument had found its fulcrum in the shocking realities of apartheid which was a closed and fearful system of government and an aberration in humanistic terms. Apartheid had a terrible and dark agenda locked into Christian fundamentalism.
Yet it is important to point out we are dealing with TWO WORLDS: the inner world of growth and realisation, and the outer world of our common humanity. Rather than impose our inner world (which is basically our private domain which we may share with family/ancestors etc. and where the imposing of this reality on others seems to be the type of thing fascists do and on which apartheid built an entire system and thereby selectively undermined notions of ‘common humanity’) we should surely be seeking ways to harmonise that inner world with the outer reality.
Biko wrote: “it is only when these two opposites (black and white) have inter played and produced a viable synthesis of ideas and modus vivendi that black and white can live together in harmony without fear of group exploitation.”
This point would further corroborate my view that ‘Biko consciousness’ is a vital ‘rite of passage’ in the maturing process of black power. It is for this reason that I state that Black Consciousness could never be part of a political ideology in a multi party democracy OTHER THAN being a methology or a means towards an end. Otherwise Black Consciousness is in danger of becoming a right wing movement. I am therefore of the opinion that Black Consciousness as Biko knew it, also died the day the entire country went to the polls in 1994. Ostensibly there was now a black government in power. However, I certainly feel a need to question – given the events of post apartheid – to what extent the high moral ground of Black Consciousness was a real consideration of the liberation forces. It seems that the deeper subtleties were lost in the tsunami of post apartheid dash and grab. I see none of this evidenced in the ANC rulers. I see comrades being given jobs, I see Shabir Shaik being pardoned, I see business deals going to friends, I see vested interests, I see expedient twists to moral judgement. Not unlike the previous white oppressors. Would Biko be shaking his head in dismay? And why is it that dictators cling to power well past their sell by date, and never manage to nurture an acceptable successor? Ask Mugabe, or on a more benign level the IFP leader Mr. Buthelezi.
What the last 17 years of democracy has been urging, interfacing with a global PARADIGM shift of consciousness (South Africa being now so interconnected and not a separate entity) is the rapid fast forward track of manifesting the Biko ideal of black/white interaction as a matter of expediency.
However I feel that Biko is historically naive when he states that:
“…nowhere in the world today do we see whites exploiting whites on a scale even remotely similar to what is happening in South Africa.”
It is simplistic to state that whites do not/have not exploited other whites in relation to South Africa. Whites are just as RUTHLESS when it come to controlling other whites – on varying scales of exploitation – even down to the individual where oppression is used to devastating effect – the assassination of Kennedy for example; the beheading of wives because they could not produce sons; Romans and Christians; Hitler and the Jews; America and its suppression of its own people under the blind spot of the ‘American dream’. Anybody with an informed history of Europe would know that whites have exploited each other since time immemorial. So using this argument he states that ‘it is not coincidence that black people are exploited’. YET he states that it is true “that history of weaker nations is shaped by bigger nations”. His neat dismissal of 1971 (at the time) years of Christian domination and devastation bypasses a deeply wrought and fraught history of mankind! And I am not just referring to white history.
‘Whites can only see us from the outside’ is a frustrated statement and reflects Biko’s realisation of a deep flaw in white ethos at that time. Yet it is just as valid today to state that blacks can only see whites from the outside! Or that whites and blacks can only see the Chinese from the outside…etc. etc. Can wives and husbands see each other from the inside? It is important not to mix what is a flaw of human nature/growth/awareness with a political agenda. I might as well take statements from the bible (as so many people do) and try and fit them in to today’s world. We have numerous examples of this type of folly: if we cannot remember the past we are bound to repeat it. In this sense we have a history of ‘misinterpretation’ and ‘misrepresentation’ when looking at the wiles of organised religion which has created expedient prejudices and devastated many lives. Its the age old policy of divide and rule emerging in yet another disguise.
What apartheid had bred and which has taken hold of a large section of the Black population with a daunting fervour is the very Christian fundamentalism that intellectual whites and blacks have long since moved away from.
I find many people do not know how to, or are unable to adjust information from the past and to see it in association with the present. It is vitally important to bear this aspect in mind when reading historical content of any nature. I see this as a glaring failure of our Education System which is only concerned with producing people with a piece of paper that is a passport into the job market. The role of culture, and in particular within our multicultural society, is, for the most part, being left to its own devices. Questions surrounding issues such as farm murders, hijackings, rampant crime, rape and homosexuality, remain glaring unresolved conundrums of the modern South Africa.
What has also emerged and which further makes my point is that in some black circles the word ‘black’ seems to be a dirty word! These circles like to refer to themselves as ‘African’. Well I am African too! And the sooner we all see ourselves as AFRICAN the better. This is yet another strange twist of logic that has emerged in the no-longer-new South Africa.
In referring to “White skin, black souls?” it is interesting to note:
1. The white community was/is NOT basically an homogenous community. It never was and I have always maintained that any truly intellectual person (black or white) could not possibly be racist – racism defies logic. Racists are stupid due to the fact that they find it impossible to apply rational logic to thinking processes, particularly when it comes to issues of race. Whites in particular were subjected to a systematic process of brainwashing via a subject referred to as National Christian Education. South African radio was the most painful contribution to our daily lives and I simply refused to listen to it. Sundays were days more holy than holy. Sewing on a Sunday was seen as ‘pricking the eye of God’. Yet whites who, in spite of this systematic onslaught began to realise there was something deeply amiss with this white world in a black country, were being methodologically targeted for not accepting this fallacy of white supremacy! Bizarrely, there are blacks who think whites were stupid if they did NOT succumb to this ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity! Through Christian Education in schools the apartheid regime stifled ‘free thinking’ by banning certain aspects of education from the classroom – discussion of ‘evolution’ for example was forbidden. White and Black (those blacks that had an education) were thus deprived of a ‘questioning’ ethic as part of their education. The harm thus imposed is immeasurable. However, it is understandable that given a black perspective of what apartheid represented, that there would be the view (propagated by the apartheid regime) that the white community was homogenous. Nothing could be further from the truth and the emergence of the End Conscription Campaign is one proof of this. However seeing the white community as homogenous gives Biko the power to penetrate some core issues relating to ‘white domination’ that enables him to unpack some vexing issues. His scepticism of ‘integration’ following a white model of conscious manoeuvrings is without question, but this is so far removed from the current South African reality where racial barriers have been dismantled.
2. It seems that Biko had never met any genuine white people. Given the confines of apartheid and its mechanism of ‘separate development’ one can see via Biko exactly how effective this mechanism was. Also in 1971 there were NO formal structures through which whites could express their resistance to apartheid. At best there was a remote political party which was no where near able to represent them. Whites that resisted apartheid were referred to as ‘traitors’ and ‘kaffirboeties’ and were ‘ostracised’ and culturally isolated. They certainly would never have been allowed to make their way into politics or into any position ‘of authority’. Their path was therefore fraught with terrors (children being victimised at school for example) that escaped black perception. This reality created an oppressive barrier which caused dissenting whites to contort their ‘resistance’ into a form of ‘disinterest’ for fear of these reprisals. This despicable psychological burden has all but been overlooked yet is no less real. However I do not accept those naive statements from whites who claimed that they ‘didn’t know what was going on’ and were thus blithely oblivious to the suffering around them.
3. I have found many so called ‘white liberals’ to be closet racists in the same way that we have closet homosexuals: they spend most of their lives in denial and do the most amazing contortions of logic to fit the ‘idea’ into the false reality creating much emotional pain along the way. The homosexual closet is driven by guilt – and the racial closet no less. The use of the term ‘white liberal’ is therefore misleading and Biko unwittingly plays into the hands of the white right by denigrating what he refers to as ‘white liberals’. The true white liberal represents a threat to the white right and therefore any confusion in this regard serves their purpose. And, strangely, this aspect of the closet racist only became much clearer to me POST apartheid. What I find embarrassing, is that many blacks have no problem with white racists, claiming that they know where they stand with them. White racists, thus appearing ‘honest’ enveigle their way into appearing to be morally acceptable. Mind numbing! I find this a naive and shocking indictment of an inability of those such inclined to understand nuance and subtlety and to see what is not always that evident without having to have it spelled out to them.
Biko though displays a paranoia regarding the manoeuvrings of the ‘white liberal’ which is understandable, given the prominence with which he encountered such. Yet while the white liberal may have been guilt ridden and driven to ‘do things for blacks’ the true white liberal was just as irritated by these antics! That this effectively created a false resistance is testament to the white right ability to psychologically manipulate the oppositions agenda. And yet I would have thought that Biko would show far more paranoia regarding the manoeuvrings of the white RIGHT rather than be so vehemently side-tracked with the somewhat politically ineffectual ‘white liberal’. The apartheid masterminds must have been chuckling, if sickly, over this one: creating suspicion and mistrust AND a false decoy!
However, Biko redeems his perspective in the closing paragraph of his insights on ‘white skin, black souls?’ in referring to the ‘true liberal’ with an insightful analysis!
Biko: “No true liberal should feel any resentment at the growth of black consciousness. Rather, all true liberals should realise that the place for their fight for justice is within their white society. The liberals must realise that they themselves are oppressed if they are true liberals and therefore they must fight for their own freedom and not that of the nebulous “they” with whom they can hardly claim identification. The liberal must apply himself with absolute dedication to the idea of educating his white brothers that the history of the country may have to be rewritten at some stage and that we may live in “a country where colour will not serve to put a man in a box”. The blacks have heard enough of this.”
However he then states that:
“In other words, the Liberal must serve as a lubricating material so that as we change gears in trying to find a better direction for South Africa, there should be no grinding noises of metal against metal but a free and easy flowing movement which will be characteristic of a well-looked-after vehicle.”
I trust here (although I do not sense it) that ‘liberal’ must surely refer to both white and BLACK or does Biko not associate a liberal consciousness with ‘blackness’? Can Blacks not be liberal in just the same manner that ‘they cannot be racist’? It is in this sense that the ANC have not come up to scratch in feeling that they have had to do very little ‘work’ ON THEMSELVES in order to achieve this desired outcome and thus entrenches the sense of entitlement which has emerged amongst many ANC leaders and much of the youth. The black struggle, caught up in fighting for political liberation, was not particularly concerned about the niceties of the deeper import of Black Power. Yet, being thrust so suddenly into transformation meant a middle ground had to be found with expediency. Many right wing black comrades had to be sidelined.
The statement that ‘blacks cannot be racist’ is a call to summon up the power of political sloganeering to galvanise the black community into claiming a confidence of non subjugation. This statement has the disadvantage of ‘irritating’ whites and thus demeans the very power it purports to strengthen. When seeing this statement from a non poetic stance (i.e. the majority) it displays a convenient twist of logic that is in itself racist. This anoints blacks with a sense of entitlement: that whites ‘owe’ them. As such, are intellectual blacks still not measuring themselves against whiteness? I am not trying to be glib about the atrocities of apartheid. But at some point the ANC has got to switch from being a liberation movement into a mature political party that governs all. “Blacks cannot be racist” is as silly as saying blacks cannot drive cars because cars and driving them was invented by whites. In the same way, and being somewhat cynical the striving for homosexuals for the right to marriage (which I thoroughly endorse) also gives them the right to divorce, so common amongst heterosexuals.
Elsewhere Biko wrote:
“Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life,the most positive call to emanate from
the black world for a long time.”
There is no taunt in this statement. Just a clarion call to ‘wake up’.
There is a seething mass of blackness out there. It is invigorating and is the essence of what makes Africa such an exciting continent. I travelled with it daily for three years to and from work in the black taxis. I had interesting conversations. This blackness does not question its authenticity. It is emerging intuitively, finding its own substance without approval very much along the lines of the Biko ideal. This poverty stricken mass has little time to debate the intricacies of Black Consciousness, likewise the burgeoning black middle class who are quite giddy with materialism. There are groups of black intellectuals who are just as dismayed with the strange antics of the ANC. Sadly, and due to ineffective leadership, the impoverished mass is turning more and more to crime as it attempts to take charge of its destiny in the only way that it can. South Africa is in desperate need for real black leaders. They are there. But a leader is not somebody who can shout his mouth off. The new leaders need to be discovered and nurtured with expediency.
Biko was murdered in police detention on 12 September 1977.
I think it is important to end with this quote by Martin Luther King assassinated on 04 April 1968:
“All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we’re caught in an inescapable network of being mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
Quite clearly South Africa still has a long way to go, and there are many areas of our history that need to be debated and brought to light. Getting a greater perspective on Biko is just one of them.
ref: Steve Biko’s Paradise Lost – an extract from ‘Biko Lives!’ by Jackie Shandu
Steve Biko – Rare TV interview
The influences and representations of Biko and Black Consciousness in poetry in apartheid and post apartheid South Africa/Azania – Mphutlane Wa Bafelo
T. Spreelin Macdonald – Steve Biko’s poetics
T. Spreelin Macdonald – The struggle over Biko’s legacy
The Poetics of Anti-colonialism – Robin D.G. Kelly
