Defining our being as an African nation
EXCERPT of the address by then President Nelson Mandela at the commemoration in East London on September 12 1997 of the 20th anniversary of Steve Biko’s death:
THE driving thrust of black consciousness was to forge pride and unity among all the oppressed, to foil the strategy of divide-and-rule, to engender pride among the mass of our people and confidence in their ability to throw off their oppression.
And for its part the ANC from the first years of the 1970s welcomed black consciousness as part of the genuine forces of the revolution. It understood that it was helping give organisational form to the popular upsurge of all the oppressed groups of our society. Above all, the liberation movement asserted that, in struggle – in mass action, underground organisation, armed actions and international mobilisation – the people would most readily develop consciousness of their proud being, of their equality with everyone else, of their capacity to make history.
It is both natural and a matter of proud record, that the overwhelm- ing majority of young fighters who cut their teeth and shaped part of their political being in the Black Consciousness Movement are today leaders in their own right in national and provincial government, in the public service, in the judiciary and in the security and intelligence structures of the democratic government. They are to be found in the professions, in business, in the trade union movement and other structures of civil society.
The attitude of mind and way of life that Biko and his comrades called for are needed today in abundance. They are relevant as we define our being as an African nation of the African continent. They are pertinent in our drive to ward off the temptation to become clones of other people.
While Biko espoused, inspired and promoted black pride, he never made blackness a fetish. At the end of the day, as he himself pointed out, accepting one’s blackness is a critical starting point: an important foundation for engaging in struggle. Today, it must be a foundation for reconstruction and development, for a common human effort to end war, poverty, ignorance and disease.
The way of life that Biko called for is needed today