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Early 20th Century US. The University of Natal had also become a magnet attracting a number of former black educators, some of the most academically capable members of black society, who had been removed from black colleges by the University Act of The University of Natal also attracted as law and medical students some of the brightest men and women from various parts of the country and from various political traditions.
Their convergence at the University of Natal in the s turned the University into a veritable intellectual hub, characterised by a diverse culture of vibrant political discourse. The University thus became the mainstay of what came to be known as the Durban Moment. At Natal Biko hit the ground running. He was immediately influenced by, and in turn, influenced this dynamic environment.
Although he initially supported multiracial student groupings, principally the National Union of South African Students NUSAS , a number of voices on campus were radically opposed to NUSAS, through which black students had tried for years to have their voices heard but to no avail. This kind of frustration with white liberalism was not altogether unknown to Steve Biko, who had experienced similar disappointment at Lovedale.
A dispute arose at the conference when the host institution prohibited racially mixed accommodation in obedience to the Group Areas Act, one of the laws under apartheid that NUSAS professed to abhor but would not oppose. Instead NUSAS opted to drive on both sides of the road: it condemned Rhodes University officials while cautioning black delegates to act within the limits of the law.
For Biko this was another defining moment that struck a raw nerve in him. This gave rise to what became known as the Best-able debate: Were white liberals the people best able to define the tempo and texture of black resistance?
This debate had a double thrust. On the one hand, it was aimed at disabusing white society of its superiority complex and challenged the liberal establishment to rethink its presumed role as the mouthpiece of the oppressed. The 7th April saw the banning of the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress and the imprisonment of the leadership of the liberation movement had created a culture of apathy. Let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and our brotherhood.
In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible - a more human face. Biko argued that true liberation was possible only when black people were, themselves, agents of change.
In his view, this agency was a function of a new identity and consciousness, which was devoid of the inferiority complex that plagued black society. Only when white and black societies addressed issues of race openly would there be some hope for genuine integration and non-racialism. At the University Christian Movement UCM meeting at Stutterheim in , Biko made further inroads into black student politics by targeting key individuals and harnessing support for an exclusively black movement.
SASO committed itself to the philosophy of black consciousness. Biko was elected president. The idea that blacks could define and organise themselves and determine their own destiny through a new political and cultural identity rooted in black consciousness swept through most black campuses, among those who had experienced the frustrations of years of deference to whites. Successes elsewhere on the continent, which saw a number of countries, achieve independence from their colonial masters also fed into the language of black consciousness.
He was the second son third child of Mzimgayi Biko. Raised and educated in a Christian home, Biko eventually became a student at Wentworth, a White medical school in Durban. Expelled from Wentworth in the stated cause being poor academic performance , Biko devoted his time to activist activities. By his political activities had caused him to be banned from Durban and restricted to his hometown.
Back in King Williamstown, undaunted, he set up a new branch of BCP—only to have it banned there as well. Still, Biko continued to work for black consciousness. This led to repeated detentions and caused him to be placed in security over and over again. Yet he was never charged. In he became honorary president of the Black People's Convention he had founded in His appointment was to be for a period of five years, but nine months later he died of brain damage after being beaten by police officers while in detention.
Biko's short year life was consumed with the development of an acute awareness of the evils of apartheid, the social system under which non-Whites lived in South Africa. Apartheid is based on the idea of institutionalized separate development for blacks and whites.
To paraphrase Biko, he was able to outgrow the things the system had taught him. One of his unique characteristics may be summed up in the title of an edited collection of his writings, I Write What I Like , Aelred Stubbs, ed.
Much of what Biko "liked to write," not surprisingly, dealt with the definition of black consciousness and setting it out as an approach to combatting White racism in South Africa. Indeed the very phrase "I write what I like" was boldly used as a heading to begin many of his political essays.
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