I
finished reading my 1st
biography of Steve Biko in less than 12 hours. I turned after the
last page to the sad realisation that I was actually done. What an
insightful, intelligent young man who died too soon (at the age of
30). A great leader who not only believed and took pride in being
black, but believed and took pride in other black fellows, both male
and female. I have always heard of people speaking about Steve Biko
on T.V. and I had read a sentence or two about him. In print, I most
read passages where people were quoting him or speaking of his
leadership and maybe about the ‘Black Consciousness Movement’. I
knew that he had something to do with fighting for freedom but never
really knew what he was, who he was and what he stood for. After
reading Asanda Magaqa’s blog titled “Ndathi
ukuze ndiziqonde, ndasabela kuBantu Stephen Biko”
dated September
27, 2012
something in me said yide
ufunde
ngalomntu (read
about this person already). I noticed that there’s something about
the way people speak about Steve Biko that sets what he stood for
apart. There are many struggle heroes that died back in the days that
people write and talk about today but there is just something about
Steve Biko that, somehow, inspires them. So, I decided I am not going
to let my mind wonder any longer.
Bantu
Stephen Biko had an “innate curiosity and fascination with the
human condition, with humanity, with what being human truly is,
particularly in Africa” (Wilson, 2011. Page 17). In my reading the
“Steve Biko: A Jacana Biography” by Lindy Wilson (2011) I
realised that this is a man I have a lot in common with, such an
inspiration to anyone who has self identity issues, especially
someone who is a South African and has experienced feeling inferior
in the presence of another race other than her own. Steve Biko, like
many other struggle heroes, believed that every human being on the
living planet is equal despite the colour of their skin. As I read on
I soon realised what set him apart from other struggle heroes I have
read about; he was primarily concerned with the motivation of the
black man. To make him believe that being black does not mean he is
stupid or inferior to white. Being black means just that, being
black. The blood is the same, the way you breath and what you breath.
Steve
Biko was born on 18 December 1946 and died on the 12th
of September 1977. “According to evidence given to the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission led by Det.-Sgt. Gideon Nieuwoudt at his
amnesty hearing in 1998, Biko sat down on a chair facing his
interrogator, Capt. Daantjie Siebert, who immediately ordered him to
stand. Later, when Biko sat down again, Siebert grabbed him by the
chest and yanked him to his feet. Nieuwoudt asserts that ‘Biko
pushed the chair forward and lunged with his fist.’ Five men then
assaulted him simultaneously, ‘Blows were aimed backwards and
forwards’, which also flung him against the walls of the narrow
room. Nieuwoudt thrashed him with a reinforced hosepipe. ‘In the
momentum’, he said, ‘Mr Biko hit his head, fell, seemed confused
and dazed... Siebert then told me to chain him to the [horizontal]
bars of the security gate with arms outstretched [at shoulder
height]... two sets of hand-cuffs and leg irons also attached –
standing.’ He was left in this crucifying position for six hours,
only able to move his head. Three to four hours later, when Biko
asked for water his words were incoherent as if ‘under the
influence of liquor’, Nieuwoudt went on to testify. That night Biko
was left lying on a urine-wet mat, still shackled by leg-irons on his
feet which were locked onto the walls. Although Lt.-Col. P.J. Goosen,
Officer Commanding, Eastern Cape Security Police, spoke at the
inquest into Biko’s death about his suspicion at the time that Biko
had ‘suffered a stroke’ and said he had called in a doctor,
Nieuwoudt reported at the TRC hearing that the first doctor only
appeared 24 hours after the injury and to no effect, leaving Biko
shackled in leg-irons and handcuffs for another night. On 11
September, though the specialist evidence indicated brain damage,
medical approval was given for him to be driven (naked) in the back
of a Landrover hundreds of kilometres to Pretoria, where he died from
head injuries he had earlier sustained” (Wilson, 2011. Page 13).
This
is very sad. It touches the very core of your being. It makes one
wonder what is one doing with one’s life when someone died at such
a prime time in his life, fighting for his country. Steve Biko was a
man who believed in himself and his abilities as a human being and,
as a result, instilled in others these same values- that they must
‘discover and empower themselves with their own resources’
(Wilson, 2011. Page 14). In the book, the most dominant of his
quotes: “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed” with which he wanted to challenge the blacks not to be a
part of their own oppression shows how he believed and “defined
Black
Consciousness as ‘an inward-looking process’ to ‘infuse people
with pride and dignity’ and that ‘We have set out on a quest for
a true humanity.’ (Wilson, 2011. Page 14)
In
the book it states that in 1966 Biko went to UNNE at Wentworth in
Durban to study medicine where he entered the university keen for
debate and participation in student politics. It is said that in his
first year he went as an observer to the July congress of the
National Union of South African Students (Nusas), in spite of the
many black student groups who disagreed with this decision and with
his view of the non-racial approach. “In the following year, 1967,
he went as a delegate to the congress held at Rhodes University,
Grahamstown. Biko immediately challenged Nusas to take active stance
against the segregated residential facilities Rhodes University had
imposed on the congress: those classified as ‘Indians’ and
‘Coloureds’ were to stay in the town whilst Africans were
required to stay some distance away in a church hall in the
‘location’; whites, on the other hand, could stay in the
university residences. At the outset of the conference the executive
of Nusas dealt with this by bringing in a resolution condemning the
Rhodes University Council for not allowing blacks into the
residences. Biko then moved a private motion proposing that the
conference adjourn until they could find a ‘non-racist venue’”
(Wilson, 2011. Page 30). I am in awe as I read on. I come to the
realisation of my own inhibitions, inhibitions of the mind.
Inhibitions that have always made me feel inferior because I am
black. Reading this book helped me realise that I no longer have to
be ashamed of being black when I am amongst other races. I no longer
have to speak ‘better English’ than my black counter parts when
we are amongst other races so that they (other races) can see I am
the better, more intelligent and smarter black so that they can
accept me and regard me as one of their own.
See,
this is what happens when you grew up amongst people that always made
you doubt yourself. When you are small and English is not your mother
tongue you are at a disadvantage. If you don’t read anything at
all, I feel, you are at (some kind of) a disadvantage too because, I
believe, that people that read have a kind of knowledge that
non-readers do not have. Their imaginations and intellectuality is
more challenged and therefore more exercised than non-readers. After
reading this book I realised that being black is enough. It is not a
curse, doom or condemnation that one
must
die or regard oneself as stupid or inferior to other races. One of
the things that inspired me in the book was when he was still at the
Rhodes visit when he realised “that for a long time I had been
holding onto the whole dogma of non-racism almost like a religion,
feeling that it was sacrilegious to question it... I began to feel
there was a lot of lacking in the proponents of the non-racist
idea... They had this problem, you know, of superiority, and they
tended to take us for granted and wanted us to accept things that
were second-class.” Also in the book it goes to show that
‘there
was also an assumption that all affairs were conducted in English.
This gave an immediate disadvantage to those for whom English was not
their mother tongue. It was an extraordinary experience for blacks to
listen to their own lives being articulated by whites, who had had an
infinitely superior education, yet had had no experience of the
reality of being black.” Biko recalls the effect: “You are forced
into a subservient role of having to say ‘yes’ to what they are
saying because you cannot express it so well.’’ (Wilson, 2011.
Page 31). Being around whites and not knowing how to speak English
(well) makes you feel inadequate. Their accent makes you feel they
are the smartest beings alive. When you see white you see educated,
money (or wealth) and smart and you feel so small and immobile like
all of a sudden you can’t move or do anything. All in all you feel
inferior. Generally black people think white people are more
intelligent than them. So by Black Consciousness Steve Biko wanted to
erase all this. I, too, hate succumbing to this idea so I will not
anymore. I have experienced, at first hand, feeling inferior to a
white person more than once. This was not due to how smart they were
or their bank balance. It was not because of what they had said or
did to me or anybody else. It was due to the idea I had in my head.
Steve
Biko stirred within a germ of an idea that conscieted black people
into analysing their socio-political condition by recognising that
they could be their own liberators by resisting their oppressor with
a different mental attitude (Black Conciousness). This attitude came
as motivation to inspire and make black people see that they were
actually not the opposite of inferior. He wanted blacks to be
confident in themselves. For example, non-white is a negation of
being. According to the biography, it indicates a desire to become
white eventually. It implied that “whiteness” was the norm to
which one attached all other people whose own culture and identity
had been negated. So non-white was soon removed from Saso’s
vocabulary
(Wilson, 2011. Page 42). [SASO stands for South African Student
Organisation of which Biko was its first president]. It is not nice
to black people being referred to as if they’re retarded or
non-existent. A lot of people like to refer to black people as if
they are not around, like they’re not watching. Most people in
power or those who think they’re better (or superior, if I may say)
like to talk about (the majority) blacks as if they do not have any
sense of responsibility about who they are and the things they do,
their destiny and society, their values and where they come from. So
being called non-white is like being called something that is
non-existent. Non-something. Not there. And so Saso named themselves
black.
Also,
because Biko believed that nobody should be cast in a mould, he only
became president of Saso for a year (1969-1970). He wanted everybody
to be given a fair chance to shine, to be on top, educative and
question authority with respect and good intent. And so in July 1970
Barney Pityana became the 2nd
president of Saso and Biko the editor of the Saso newsletter. In
August that year he began the column “I write what I like” and
always signed it “Frank Talk”. Throughout the following two
years this column enabled the evolution of the philosophy of Black
Consciousness to be recorded and expressed.
There
is clearly something evident about Steve Biko; he was a force to be
reckoned with. Whether he is dead or alive, that does not make a
difference to me. His mark in South African politics is one that will
always be fixed and one thing that is for sure is that he was an
inspiration, not only to black South Africans but to people of the
world too. He instilled in black people confidence and self-belief
about themselves that no form of any kind of discrimination could
ever defy, quite frankly.
Asanda
Mcoyana
Ref:
Lindy
Wilson.2011.Steve Biko: A Jacana Pocket Biography.Jacana Media.
Auckland Park, South Africa.
