Steve Biko’s tombstone may have been unveiled on Human Right Day, but the event was not about him, writes Mcebisi Ndletyana.
Commemorating March 21st is never without controversy. Apartheid governments barred remembering because it was both indicting and inspirational.
Victims of racism gathered to condemn the state for mowing down 69 unarmed protesters in 1960, a painful ritual that also reinvigorated them to never give up the fight. At times they would even be killed while in the act of remembering the dead. That’s what happened in 1985 KwaLanga, Uitenhage.
The Langa massacre, marked by 28 dead bodies, was yet another entry into a long list of officially sanctioned slaughters.
Just as they remembered those who had fallen earlier at Sharpeville, residents of KwaLanga also became anxious that their fellow residents were not forgotten.
This became the dilemma for the post-apartheid state: how does it remember its dead without suggesting that some are more worthy of recalling than others? The answer was to impose an all-encompassing name: Human Rights Day. That wasn’t difficult to do. While different, the incidents were essentially common.
They signified the relentlessness of black folk to assert their humanity, on the one hand, and the inhumanity of apartheid tyranny, on the other.
Human Rights Day, therefore, is about reaffirming the commonness of humanity so that we become a just and caring society.
The republic, both officialdom and the public, enters into a collective process of remembering and evaluating how far we have gone in becoming a new citizenry and people.
There are still squabbles over sites of commemoration but the homogenising of the various tragedies has lessened unhappiness previously caused by a sense of discrimination.
Folks in Langa, for instance, weren’t happy that King WilliamsTown was the centre of this year’s commemorative event. Officials responded that “King” got to host on account of rotation. And, the event in “King” had an unusual aspect added to it: the honouring of Steve Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement.
The president of the republic, Jacob Zuma, unveiled Biko’s tombstone. I can’t recall Biko ever being remembered on a Human Rights Day. That’s because there are two full events dedicated to Biko’s memory: June 16 and September 12 - one is about the student uprising that Biko inspired and the other is the day of his death. Whilst not an official day, the anniversary of Biko’s death rivals officially sponsored memorials.
My point is that there’s plenty of time to remember Biko. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not complaining. This is a major improvement from, say, ten or so years ago. Then officialdom didn’t really pay much attention to Biko’s memory. His celebration was a casualty of inter-party rivalry.
The 1980s violence between Azapo and the United Democratic Front, for instance, turned the “Charterists”, who became the post-apartheid rulers, against Biko’s commemoration.
Their instinct was to deny him his place in our history, while embellishing the role played by the ANC underground in the 1976 uprising. That changed gradually over time. Not that officialdom had a change of heart. It was to due to Azapo and the Biko Foundation’s tireless efforts. Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki even delivered the annual Biko Lecture. Mbeki went further to declare the Ginsberg-based Biko Leadership Centre a legacy project, which made it eligible to receive state funding enabling it to be completed. Today, that spectacular structure sits beautifully atop a hill just as you enter Ginsberg.
It rates among the best memorial centres in the world. Zuma opened the centre in November 2012. We’ve come a long way, but there’s something odd about Tuesday’s unveiling. Zuma even promised to return later in September for a full-blown commemoration of 40th anniversary of Biko’s death.
Apart from the unusual link, the oddity of Tuesday’s commemorative event becomes even clearer on reading Zuma’s speech.
In his address, Zuma told his audience that Biko was brought into Human Rights Day partly as a celebration in memory of Oliver Tambo, who would have turned 100 years this year if he were still alive.
That’s why the ANC has dubbed this year, “The Year of OR Tambo: Unity in action in advancing human rights”. The occasion, therefore, signified attempts to forge unity but there was very little about Biko in the speech. This is strange because Biko wanted unity among liberation movements.
In the last years of his life, Biko was in communication with both Robert Sobukwe and the exiled ANC with a view to setting up a meeting that would lead towards reintegration of liberation forces.
Zuma could have used this aspect of Biko’s life to stress the importance of unity, mentioning that Biko also wanted unity would have enhanced Zuma’s message. But, he didn’t.
The other glaring omission relates to Biko’s conceptualisation of the curriculum and the role of memory in identity-formation.
The country is grappling with both issues. Biko suggested the concept of a “joint-culture”, a fusion of the best elements in both African and Western cultures, as a way of building a new, post-apartheid identity.
As for education, Biko wrote about how its content was manipulated in order to achieve hegemony for those in power. The idea is to reduce free people into subjects, dependent on their conquerors to a point that they couldn’t imagine life without them.
A complete and rich curriculum, Biko counselled, has an emancipatory value. One not only comes into being, but also becomes a fully functional and a creative person.
My point is that if anyone has to drag Biko’s name into their own gig, then they must share his insight on contemporary issues.
Zuma dragged Biko into his event, but didn’t tell us what Biko stood for. Perhaps I’m overlooking something here. Zuma did say: “In the memory of Steve Biko, let us promote the emancipation of the mind”. A few lines down the speech, he elaborated: “Our country indeed needs liberated minds in order to achieve radical economic transformation”.
Biko’s tombstone may have been unveiled on Tuesday, but the event was not about him. It was about Zuma.
Biko’s memory was simply a packaging that enabled Zuma to introduce his ex-wife’s campaign slogan, “radical economic transformation”.
What we saw on Tuesday was a campaign stunt. That tombstone was not even meant to be unveiled that day. Built by government as part of restoring heritage of past leaders, the tombstone was scheduled for an unveiling later in September.
But, officials insisted on the unveiling so that Zuma could drag Biko’s name into his campaign for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
He’s hoping to generate sufficient frenzy around “radical economic transformation” so that he can hand his supporters Dlamini-Zuma as a continuation of that platform.
Politicians cannot help themselves. Some are even more cynical than others. To these nothing is sacred. Watching the unveiling on Tuesday some among us were possibly infuriated by the sheer hollowness of the commemoration - claiming to remember someone, yet saying very little about him.
The lavish attention on Biko’s memory, however, is gratifying.
It testifies to the permanence of Biko’s ideas.
That’s why today universities are not the same any more. Black folk will never accept that they do not matter!
* Ndletyana is associate professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.