Since the research focuses on historical events, the methods used have been qualitative, descriptive, and analytical; and the bulk of the study was sourced from dated biographies, books, speeches, letters, articles, essays, documentaries, and interviews by scholars and persons who were closely associated with the Black Consciousness Movement and Biko’s fight against apartheid. The primary sources were various essays, speeches, and letters Biko wrote, many of which are collected in his book I Write What I Like (1978). All sources aided in providing perspectives on the life, work, and death of Biko in developing a dissertation that seeks to inform the role of Christianity in the development and application of his philosophical black consciousness ideology, which became a pedagogy of the oppressed in the black South African liberation framework.
Chapter 1
Introduction
In one of my graduate courses, I had the opportunity to read a speech by Ngugi wa Thiong’o from a Steve Biko lecture series. Dr. wa Thiong’o’s speech honoring Biko focused on the Black Consciousness Movement, in which Biko was a central figure. He also emphasized the importance of memory and the decolonization of the mind. After reading his speech, I became intrigued with Biko based on the picture that Thiong’o portrayed of him. One quotation in particular significantly affected me to the extent that I knew I wanted to find out more about Biko and his Black Consciousness Movement.
In addressing law enforcement during one of the periods of Biko’s imprisonment in South Africa, wa Thiong’o shared Biko’s words: “Listen, if you guys want to do this your way, you have got to handcuff me and bind my feet together, so that I can’t respond. If you allow me to respond, I’m certainly going to respond. And I’m afraid you may have to kill me in the process even if it’s not your intention” (Biko 1978, p. 153). These words were from a black man who was both courageous and unafraid of death, especially if it meant fighting for his beliefs. This passage compelled me to conduct further research. After reading excerpts from I Write What I Like, I became fascinated with Biko’s writings and even more with his black consciousness message.
Biko’s struggle was relevant and parallel to the struggles between law enforcement and the black community here in the United States; it was as though his words pertaining to police brutality and unjust laws that target blacks were written yesterday. Specifically, there appeared to be striking similarities between the Black Consciousness Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement, particularly in the fight against racial injustice and the need for law enforcement reform within the United States that disproportionately and negatively affects the black community. As a black woman in the United States enduring the current political climate with racial tensions burgeoning, I can personally relate to the experiences with oppression and exploitation of Biko and black South Africans. These experiences are particularly relevant when considering the history of slavery, the Reconstruction Era, Jim Crow, Black Codes, the Antebellum Period, the Civil Rights Movement, and at present, the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Subsequently, I noticed there was another aspect of his writings that captured my attention, namely, his views on theology generally and his references to black theology specifically and whitewashed Christianity. I was interested in how they shaped and influenced social and political beliefs in South African history. The confluence of these belief systems began to come to life for me as I began to understand how culture (black identity), religion, and philosophy, subjects that I had studied during my matriculation at Howard University, were interrelated. I knew what I wanted to conduct research on—the interrelationship of Biko’s radical, holistic, active, and powerful Christian message of black identity and empowerment and how they were proclaimed in the gospel of black consciousness. I wanted to know in depth the message of this “black prophet” to the people of South Africa as proclaimed in the newly developed gospel and how this message instilled and assured hope among black people.
Additionally, I wanted an opportunity to understand and analyze his deeper message to the different sects of society. It was a new way of looking, processing, living, and perceiving life in an oppressed state that had the ability to free and release black minds and souls who were captives to colonization’s institutionalized message of inferiority and subjugation. And it equally had the ability to liberate the consciousness of nonblacks if they were willing to embrace the truth that blacks were made in God’s image too. Mesmerized by Biko’s life, call, and message, I could not ignore the obvious parallels between Biko’s and Jesus’s messages of liberation and their government-led executions. In the movie Cry Freedom, where Denzel Washington portrays Biko, one is able to visualize what Biko endured and embodied as a prophet who was willing to die for what he believed, as well as the freedom of the people to whom he proclaimed this message (Attenborough 2006).
In studying Biko’s life and message, there were many critical events leading up to the rise of this prominent and courageous young black prophet/leader who was catapulted on to the center stage of South African history.
From the late 1960s up to the time of his death on September 12, 1977, Biko was on center stage. The political climate was chaotic in South Africa; it was in great turmoil and peril, especially for blacks, due to colonialism and apartheid. Sharing these major events that led to Biko’s entry onto center stage will help in understanding how critical he was in the fight against apartheid and the gravity of his black consciousness ideology and Christian thought in providing hope for his people.
During the period of apartheid, this legalized system of racism was at the height of oppressing people of color in South Africa. Hill (2015) explains the etymology of the word apartheid as “an Afrikaans word that means ‘separateness,’ indicative of belief in inner (or essence/essential) difference based on the appearance of physical (or external/superficial) features and, with them, sociocultural practices. Built on a racist foundation, apartheid has come to stand for an entire structure of legalized racism rooted in South Africa but evidenced elsewhere in the world” (p. xvi). Hill writes that apartheid systemically oppressed black South Africans through legislation instituted by the National Party, which came to power in 1948. She states, “Although the nation’s history hardly begins in 1948, this is the year that the National Party, a heavy favorite among Afrikaners, won legislative majorities in all branches of governance [Parliament], after which a veritable flood of laws were passed built on the idea that separation of ‘races’ was natural, thus Godly” (p. xvi).
The legislation exploited and segregated the Bantu-speaking people, who represented several ethnicities and languages, by clumping them all into a measly eight ethnicities. This was even more shocking since black South Africans were the majority. After the National Party was able to isolate and marginalize black South Africans through legislation that took away their rights, the new white minority became the power structure, Hill states. Further, the Bantu Self-Government Act ended parliamentary representation for “natives” (Bantu Self-Government Act 1959). Finally, she points out that “this same populace was compelled to become citizens of a prescribed area called Bantustan, and they were stripped of South African citizenship by Bantu Homelands Citizens Act 1970” (p. xvi). This new regime took away not only their rights but also their citizenship, according