Biko’s teachings and philosophies remain relevant

This week’s events ignited our emotions as we remember our martyr, Steve Bantu Biko, who was killed by the racist apartheid government on September 12 1977. Biko is not only the founding leader of the South African Students’ Organisation (Saso), he was also its honorary president.

Forty-three years since his brutal killing, black people have been grappling to identify leaders with fitting leadership traits to lead them to greater heights. Biko himself, with the assistance of his contemporaries, was able to fill the leadership void that was left by the unceremonious banning of the PAC and ANC.

The two oldest liberation organisations were summarily banned after the anti-pass campaign led by Robert Sobukwe’s PAC, which culminated in the bloody massacre of 69 people while many others sustained permanent injuries. Political activism among black communities was criminalised.

Biko and his contemporaries introduced a new approach in waging a war against white supremacy, an approach that was different from that of the PAC and ANC – a non-violent approach. Biko’s principal aim was to change how the black man or woman saw himself or herself. It had a lot in common with the PAC’s status campaign that was intended to empower black people to see themselves as complete human beings and not as subhuman.

Biko’s teachings and philosophies will remain relevant to the SA setting for as long as the material conditions of the majority of black people remain unchanged. Black people are still subjected to all forms of oppression in the land of their birth. The SA situation is peculiar because we have a government run by the majority, unlike in the US where black people make up less than 15% of the population and their influence on the political economy is not felt.

We need people who will sacrifice their lives for their people the same way that Biko and his contemporaries have done.

“I would like to remind the black ministry, and indeed all black people, that God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people’s problems on earth,” Biko once reminded black people.

Biko’s assertions are true of the current situation in SA (Azania). Merely complaining is not going to bring about real change.

Why on earth do we have a majority government that only serves the minority interests?

We must ask what the ANC has done to change the livelihoods of the black majority in this country? By building shacks for human beings? Is that not demeaning of their status as human beings? Is the ANC not enabling racism to take place?

When we discuss racism, we have to do justice to the debate by also including the economic aspect because racism is a question of the powerful and the powerless. And we should guard against those who want to use this debate for political points scoring. Condemning white supremacy should not be equated to hatred against white people. We are against a system, not a race.

Sobukwe once said: “The Africanists take a view that there is only one race to which we all belong, and that is the human race. In our vocabulary, therefore, the word ‘race’, as applied to man, has no plural form.”

Mokgatlhe is a One South Africa (OSA) activist