The commemoration of the death of Stephen Bantu Biko throughout the country is timely. It is a victory against those who had sought to deny Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement a significant place in the history of struggle. The commemorations point to the enduring legacy and continued relevance of the Black Consciousness philosophy. The commemoration coincides with the receding from public discourse of the intoxicating but ill defined notion of African Renaissance. Not so long ago, it appeared obligatory for every politician and academic to end their speeches with reference to African Renaissance.

While the commemorations are welcome, Biko and BC philosophy risk being reduced to a neatly packaged annual ritual whose relevance are a mere historical curiosity. BC is a philosophy of life. It should influence and shape how we conduct our daily affairs. Marketing and commercializing Biko can easily dilute what he stood for.

Biko grappled with the notion of blackness. Being black was a state of mind. Being black means aligning yourself with the challenges of transformation. This distinction is relevant today. Given Biko’s emphasis on self-reliance, it is reasonable to assume that he would have great discomfort with affirmative action and the current form of BEE. The success of both requires an uneasy accommodation and assimilation into white economy. Some amongst us exploit their blackness to secure appointments with no interests beyond themselves. They want to win as blacks without engaging themselves in the struggle for transformation.

The question on where Stephen Bantu Biko would have stood has since become a preoccupation of those given to speculation. It arises as part of an ongoing contest to claim ownership of Biko. But it is nothing short of a convenient diversion from raising some of the tenets, principles and ideas that Biko stood for. Often the question is raised as a form of justification for political location. Former adherents of BC who are in government would make us believe that Biko would have done the same. Those outside government equally claim that Biko would have been in their midst.

When faced with insurmountable odds and challenges, human beings look to the past achievements for models of cultural and intellectual inspirations – not to repeat them without alteration, but to learn from them with the aim of emulating, rivaling and even surpassing these models. In this context we need to ask; what lessons can we draw from the Black Consciousness Movement? A study of the Black Consciousness Movement’s engagement with the apartheid system should provide a philosophical and analytical framework through which Africa tackles the global apartheid and the globalization of apartheid.

The critical impulse behind Black Consciousness philosophy revolved around the basic question of continuing black submission to apartheid. This resignation to racial domination, Biko argued, was rooted in self-hatred. It encouraged a dependence on white leadership and made it possible for dubious leaders to become spokespersons of the oppressed masses. By openly confronting white racism, Black Consciousness instilled in black people a heightened sense of racial awareness, and in the process provided an alternative to their psychological complicity to racial oppression. Blacks were able to challenge their own inferiority, and rejected the negative notions that whiteness imposed on them. By inducing pride and dignity in black people, Black Consciousness Movement demanded of black people to become their own liberators, thus expediting the subjective prerequisite for liberation.

An important aspect of Black Consciousness Movement was its location of the possibility of change within the black community. This aspect seems to be lost in today’s leadership which seems preoccupied with condemning white people. For Biko this smacks of intellectual naivety.

He observed; “My premise has always been that black people should not at any one stage be surprised at some of the atrocities committed by the government. This to me follows logically after their initial assumption that they, being a settler minority, can have the right to be supreme masters…then anything else they do to the same black people becomes logical in terms of the initial cruelty, to expect justice from them at any stage is to be naive.”

To underscore this Biko went further; “While it may be relevant now to talk about black in relation to white, we must not make this our preoccupation, for it can be a negative exercise. As we proceed further towards the achievements of our goals let us talk more about ourselves and our struggle and less about whites.”

Unfortunately this lesson seems to have escaped the newly converted champions of Biko’s legacy.
Perhaps one of the most penetrating contributions penned by Biko is his essay Fear - an important determinant in South African politics. Biko observed that fear erode the souls of black people. “It is a fear so basic in the considered actions of black people as to make it impossible for them to behave like people-let alone free people. From the attitude of a servant to his employer, to that of a black man being served by a white attendant at a shop one sees this fear clearly showing through. How can people be prepared to put up a resistance against their overall oppression if in their individual situations, they cannot insist on the observance of their manhood?”

The fear, coupled with self-interest is enduring to this day. Many of the so-called tried and tested leaders are not prepared to risk the loss of their newly acquired status by raising their voices against corruption, incompetence and abuse of office. The scramble for political office, with beady eyes on material benefits, has replaced political idealism.

Biko would have found the present educated class embarrassing. While this group routinely extols the virtues and ideals for which he stood, it lacks the requisite intellectual and moral courage to speak truth to power. This group has mastered the art of silence and ingratiation to power. Personal comfort takes precedence over concerns of people Biko died for.

Except for Professor Makgoba, the leading lights in higher education were nowhere to be seen during the now infamous HIV/Aids debate. Government’s refusal to provide anti-retroviral drugs led to premature death of tens of thousands of babies. Political acceptance was preferred to defending scholarship. Instead moral courage has come from the workers, the supposedly unsophisticated masses, and social movements such as the Treatment Action Campaign.

Elaborating on the BC philosophy, Biko remarked; “Black Consciousness is an attitude of mind and a way of life... It is based on a self-examination, which has ultimately led them to believe that by seeking to run away from themselves and emulate the white man, they are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black…The philosophy of Black Consciousness therefore expresses group pride and the determination of the black to rise and attain the envisaged self.”

Unfortunately, many aspects of this legacy have waned with the years. The victim mentality has crept in, and the element of self-respect and pride has largely disappeared. Today, political tolerance, an important feature of the Black Consciousness Movement has effectively disappeared. We have since failed to sustain the tradition of robust intellectual engagement and with it the legacy of reason.

Almost in anticipation to whether BC would be relevant today, Biko provided the answer when he observed that the "Black Consciousness" approach would be irrelevant in a colourless and non-exploitative egalitarian society. We are no near achieving this reality. A few lessons can be drawn regarding Biko and BC.

Biko and the BC movement he helped to found appreciated the centrality of ideas in addressing human affairs and challenges. For Biko, intellectual work was necessary to provide clarity and to guide thinking. It was a gesture of political activism in that it challenged the existing ways of seeing or of being. In this regard, Edward Said’s observation is apt that “there has been no major revolution in modern history without intellectuals”. The BC philosophy captured the historical moment, and became a decisive ingredient that galvanized the already cowed black population into action.

As we engage the globalization of apartheid, we need to ask whether those we have entrusted with responsibility have the willingness to learn from this important chapter in the history of our struggle. Or will they choose to become junior partners in structures and institutions that have brought mayhem to the oppressed in developing countries?