Cape Town - Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid activist who spearheaded the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, would have seen the Afrophobic attacks that gripped the country, as a “betrayal”.
This was the view of a group of academics, politicians and political commentators interviewed on Thursday to mark 42 years since Biko died from injuries he sustained in police custody.
Shingai Mutizwa-Mangiza, of UWC’s department of political studies, said, “If Biko were alive today, I think he would lament the current state of affairs. If you look at the history of the anti-apartheid Struggle and then see that today we are fighting among ourselves for scarce resources, it would make him sad. He’d be upset and remind people that the Struggle is against the system, not the people.”
Mutizwa-Mangiza blamed the current spate of Afrophobia on the legacy of apartheid and colonialism that taught Africans to despise themselves and each other. He decried the fact that the spirit of self-reliance among people of colour that existed in the apartheid years, and which Biko championed, had been lost and people now relied on the state for everything.
Speaking on SABC’s Morning Live show, Thando Sipuye, programme officer at the Steve Biko Foundation, said: “We have not used the philosophy of black consciousness, or even pan-Africanism, in terms of policy and informing our policy in this country.
“We have not used Biko’s ideas to try to deal with some of the crucial challenges facing our nation.”
EFF provincial chairperson Melikhaya Xego said: “The xenophobic attacks taking place in South Africa betray the Struggle that black consciousness stood for as an ideology, and what it sought to achieve as a movement. Africans should do away with defining themselves in terms of ethnicity and borders.
“In Steve Biko’s words, black consciousness represented the realisation of one’s worth in life, and self-love, among others. It was a reminder that black people must stick together, love themselves and one another first, and then strive to achieve common goals together.
“The black consciousness ideology was not based on black people hating whites to feel better about themselves, or hating anyone, for that matter.”
Political commentator Kenneth Mokgatlhe said: “Biko must be turning in his grave; his Struggle seems to have been in vain.”
@MwangiGithahu