Defeat inferiority complex

THE laying of wreaths at Steve Biko’s prison cell and grave by our political leaders, means very little, if it means anything. To me it’s just sheer political opportunism. Had Biko’s ideas of black consciousness been infused into our education system by these attention-seeking leaders, we would have been a different people by now, altogether. The inferiority that Biko highlighted is today rendering blacks more impoverished.

We are all complaining about white monopoly capital, but our government is doing nothing to change the psychological inferiority syndrome of the black masses and this will not automatically vanish from people’s minds.

What the government needs to do now – and do fast – is to build Biko’s black consciousness philosophy into the school curriculum and create a huge black consciousness national programme, so that black people can begin to value themselves as the equals of whites. We blacks still consider any product made by us inferior. That is why we cannot support one another, even today.

We have the buying power. The question is, why are we still swimming in the pool of poverty?

The answer is, the psychological inferiority complex that Biko complained of – is one that we have not been able to defeat. The apartheid system was a well thought out brainwashing system and it was driven by the state, that is why I am calling on our state to act and defeat this inferiority scourge among black people. — Zwelibangile Modi, Ezibeleni

RIGHTFULLY the Daily Dispatch is carrying articles on the occasion of the death of Steve Bantu Biko 40 years ago, but sadly the true Biko has still to be written into the history books – as is the case of Thabo Mbeki.

It was interesting to hear the Kenyan academic Patrick Lumumba recently tell South Africans that when the true history of SA is written, South Africans will have to apologise to Thabo Mbeki.

This is also going to be the case with regard to Steve Biko because Steve was far greater than what he is made out to be. The snubbing of the King William’s Town event on September 12 by ANC members may not have been because of confusion, but because Biko did not support the ANC as he did not believe in their policy of violence. When Donald Woods introduced me to Biko as a friend of his, Steve’s reply was: “A friend of Donald Woods is a friend of mine”.

Through that friendship I got to know who Steve really was and have no doubt that had he lived, SA would not be in the mess it is today. — Donald Card, via e-mail