The group was formed when Biko and the black students realized that “as long as the white liberals are our spokespersons, there will be no black spokesmen” (Woods 1978, p. 96). Black students “began to realize that blacks themselves had to speak out about the black predicament” (Woods 1978, p. 96). This caused a lot of tension, especially among white liberals found in two groups, one in which Biko was a member before breaking away and forming SASO. These groups were the National Union of South African Students’ (NUSAS) and the University Christian Movement (UCM) led by Basil Moore.
Xolela Mangcu (2012), in Biko: A Biography, shares that the black members of UCM began seeking ways to address the broader political challenges of the day rather than be part of the NUSAS goal of defining their theological identities. In fact, states Mangcu, Biko and his colleagues began to search for a theological framework that spoke to the practical needs of black people (p. 173). Many in NUSAS began to disagree with Biko’s ideology, like “liberal whites who felt that black consciousness was racist and anti-white. These liberals believed that the only way in which apartheid could be opposed was through integration between black and whites” (Price 1992, p. 17).
Biko was clear that there was a need to empower and liberate black people and this goal could not be accomplished by whites alone. Many of the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had been imprisoned and others executed while in police custody. Subsequently, the black social justice front experienced a sustained silence until the Black Consciousness Movement arrived on the scene. In her book Steve Biko: They Fought For Freedom, Linda Price states that the “Black Consciousness Movement was bridging the political vacuum that had existed in South Africa since the government tried to suppress all opposition to apartheid in the 1960s” (Price 1992, p. 14). Additionally, Halisi, in his essay “Biko and Black Consciousness Philosophy: An Interpretation,” similarly stated, “Black Consciousness philosophy openly confronted the pathology of racism in South African society and its impact on both black and white South Africans” (as cited in Hook 2014, p. 167).
Bishop Tutu took a spiritual view, explaining that blacks see themselves through a European lens. He stated:
Black Consciousness was meant to exorcise this demon, to make us realize, as he [Biko] said, we were human and not inferior, just as the white person was human and not superior. I internalized what others had decided was to be my identity, not my God-given utterly precious and unique me. (As cited in Steve Biko Foundation 2009, p. 96).
These views lead to a pivotal component of black theology (BT), which was that neither blacks nor whites are superior or inferior to each other.
Biko “called into question whether the so-called black churches were really black” (du Toit and Maluleke 2008, p. 62). Du Toit and Maluleke (2008), in an essay in The Legacy of Stephen Bantu Biko: Theological Challenges, stated, “Biko was unflinching in his conviction that as long as black people looked for and accepted white leadership in all spheres, including religion, they were not yet ready to take their future in their own hands” (p. 62). Dwight Hopkins sheds further light on Biko’s stance, in stating that “black Christians [according to Biko] could not wholeheartedly fight against the sins of the white church because they, in fact, had accepted and internalized white dogma” (as cited in Pityana 1991, p. 195). This was experienced and evidenced in the monopoly of white leadership in black churches excluding the Dutch Reformed churches. Biko (1978) asserted, “Blacks comprised 70–90 percent of lay persons, while at the same time 70–90 percent of the leadership of these very same churches was white” (p. 195).
Biko, in an interview noted in Donald Woods’s (1978) book, addresses this issue: “Although the social hierarchy within the church was a white/black hierarchy, the sharing of responsibility for church affairs was exclusively white” (p. 96). These problems within the black churches during this time caused young blacks to question the status quo and begin to look for a Christ that had a voice and theology that would lead to liberation for black people. There was a need for a God who could understand, relate to, and fight for the oppressed blacks in South Africa—a God who was in essence “black,” not just in the sense of ethnicity, but could relate to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic situations of those who were oppressed under the white man’s rule.
Shannen Hill (2015), in her book Biko’s Ghost: The Iconography of Black Consciousness, states, “Black theology has been called ‘an important aspect of black consciousness,’ and indeed it is, be it equally so is BC vital to black theology” (p. 42). Hill states that in 1971, Biko argued that it was ‘the duty…of all black priests and ministers of religion to save Christianity’ and Christians from the gross misrepresentation of Africa and Africans in the hands of colonial clergy” (p. 42). Hill further states that Biko, in an interview, made a profound statement “that we as blacks cannot forget the fact that Christianity in Africa is tied up with the entire colonial process. This meant that Christians came here with a form of culture which they called Christian but which in effect was Western, and which expressed itself as an imperial culture as far as Africa was concerned” (p. 96).
Furthermore, according to Hill (2015), Biko explains in the same interview the importance of black theology, specifically its role in black consciousness as a means to empower blacks and improve their self-image or self-identity. He states:
When an African became Christian, as a rule he or she was expected to drop traditional garb and dress like a Westerner…same with many customs dear to blacks…The question they ask is whether the necessary decolonization of Africa also requires the de-Christianization of Africa. The most positive facet of this questioning is the development of ‘black’ theology in the context of black consciousness. For black theology does not challenge Christianity itself but its Western package, in order to discover what the Christian faith means for our continent. (pp. 96–97)
Daniel Magaziner (2010), in his book The Law and the Prophets, argues that “Black theology was about politics, but it was not just about a nation; it was about an approach to God, but it was not only about religion…[although one can only argue that]. Black theology was deeply Christian because its adherents were but even more so because they consciously turned to Christ’s revelation in scripture to plot their own way forward” (p. 121). Different scholars took note of Biko’s stark view of the racial differences inherent in Christian teachings and practices in South Africa.
Clearly, Biko defined two types of Christianity at work: black and white. Dwight Hopkins, in Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness, describes and compares Biko’s contention with them by stating that the problem with black churches was that they “uncritically swallowed the racist doctrines of white Christian missionaries. In particular, black churches embraced a false notion of sin as primarily drinking, smoking, stealing, etc.…by directing attention…to these petty sins” (Hopkins 1989).
Other researchers explained that “white theology prevented them [black Christians] from comprehending a larger perspective on sin…a system of evil, a structural matrix in which whites lorded themselves above the black majority” (Pityana 1991, p. 195). They further expounded that black Christians’ failure to see the trickery made them susceptible and supportive of the apartheid system. Biko’s willingness to fight against this evil system at any cost was apparent in a letter to Bishop David Russell in 1974, published in The Essential Steve Biko. In this letter, Biko explained that his willingness to fight was in effect being obedient to God.
Biko stated:
It is a call to men of conscience to offer themselves and sometimes their lives for the eradication of an evil. To a revolutionary, state evil is a major evil, for out of it flow countless other subsidiary evils that engulf the lives of both the oppressors and the oppressed. The revolutionary sees his task all too often as liberator not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor…The revolutionary seeks to restore faith in life amongst all citizens of his country, to