History And Ideologies Who Was Steve Biko?

WHO WAS STEVE BIKO?
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Introduction
Ideologically an African socialist and African nationalist, Bantu Stephen Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist, who was always at the vanguard of a proletarian anti-apartheid movement known as the Black Consciousness. While his legacy has largely been contested, he remains an icon of anti-apartheid movement that became successful in decolonizing the people of South Africa. Stephen Biko was born on December 18, 1946 in Kingwilliamstown, Cape Province. He was the third child in his family and the second son born to Mr. and Mrs. Mzimgayi Biko. Biko’s father passed away when he was only four years old. He pursued his primary and secondary education locally prior to joining Lovedale Institution, Alice. After a short stint at Lovedale, which was run by the Bantu Education Department, he later proceeded to the Roman Catholic Mariannhill in Natal where he received his formative higher schooling. Towards the end of 1965, Biko joined the University of Natal to pursue his medical degree. He was active in National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), an anti-apartheid group, but later broke with the union in 1968 to establish South African Student’s Organization (SASO) where he served as the first President in 1969 after elections. His frustrations opposition to the apartheid system of white-minority rule and racial segregation in South Africa led to his parting ways with NUSAS, which was dominated by white liberals. The “apartheid” term is an Afrikaans word to mean separation of the whites from blacks. He served SASO as a Publicity Secretary following his appointment in July 1970. SASO’s official philosophy was Black Consciousness, an ideology developed by Biko and influenced by the African-American Black Power Movement and Frantz Fanon, an influential revolutionary and philosopher.[Michael, Cloete, “Steve Biko: black consciousness and the African other – the struggle for the political, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 24, no.2(2019), p.1014] [Steve, Biko, I write what I Like: A selection of his writings (Johannesburg: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1978), p.1] [Amry, Vandenbosch. South Africa and the world: the foreign policy of apartheid. (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), p.24]
SASO membership was open to “blacks”, a term Biko used to refer not just to Africans who spoke Bantu, but also Indians and people of color. Biko met his wife Miss Nontsikeleo Mashalaba from Umtala and married in December 1970. His interest in political activism sparked in 1971 and in the mid-1972, Wentworth terminated his course. In 1972, Biko and his compatriots founded the Black People’s Convention (BPC) to support ideologies of Black Consciousness among the wider population. In Durban, Biko started working for Black Community Programs (BCP), but by the start of March 1973, Biko and seven leaders of SASO were banned. The government had considered the Black Consciousness a threat and sought to stop Biko’s involvement by placing a banning order on him. Biko was restricted from accessing his hometown and speaking to more than one person at any given time. The government also canceled his membership to all political organizations and stopped the media from using his quotes. He later founded the Eastern Cape Branch of BCP, which he served as the Branch Executive. BCP later included a banning order clause towards the end of 1975, which prohibited him from serving at BCP. He played an active role in founding the Zimele Trust Fund. Biko was detained for 101 days from August to December 1976 under section 6 of the Terrorism Act. After his release without charge, he was again detained on August 18, 1977 under section 6 of the Terrorism Act. Biko was later taken to Port Elizabeth where he was stripped of his clothes and manacled. He died on September 12 1977 in a Pretoria cell in South Africa following several beatings from state security officials.[Biko, p.2]
History and Ideologies of the Black Consciousness
Steve Biko was the founder of the Black Consciousness movement. The racist and oppressive regime of the 1960 in South Africa had outlawed and banned the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the African National Congress (ANC) creating a conspicuous political vacuum in the Black community. This condition resulted in a country having no organized resistance against the oppression of the Black people on a national scale since the PAC and ANC had gone into exile where they had become organizational ends detached from the experienced back at home. The Black Consciousness Movement had built a stronger solidarity among Blacks, the Indians, and the Colored than PAC. While the two had promised to regenerate the consciousness of the Black mases and prepare them in the struggle, they did very little in attaining the very objectives they pledged. Black university students took the mantle and saw themselves as being Black first and students in the second position. The Black university students saw themselves as members of the oppressed Black people prior to becoming students and were first to identify the need to fill the political void in the Black community that had been created with the exit of ANC and PAC. A group of these students, including Steve Biko, Abraham Tiro, Barney Pityana, and many others, established SASO, and it is with the advent of SASO that the philosophy of Black consciousness was born. SASO believed that black consciousness could liberate the Black people from the bondage of apartheid.[Xolela, Mangou. Biko: a life. (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2014), p.15] [Chris Van Wyk, Steve Biko. (Gallo Manor: Awareness Publishing (SA) (Pty) Ltd, 2003), p.17]
Around December 1971, a policy manifesto was written that defined Blacks as those people who are economically, politically, and socially discriminated against by tradition or law as a group in the South African society and identifying themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realization of their aspirations. The definition portrays Biko’s thought that being Black is not an issue of black pigmentation, but a reflection of a mental attitude. Therefore, by describing oneself as Black, it was a major positive step towards emancipation and a commitment to fight against any forces that sought to take advantage of blackness as a stamp marking one as a subservient being. However, from the definition of Black consciousness, the term “black: does not necessarily mean all-inclusive, that is to imply the fact that being all non-white does not make one black. According to the manifesto, black people or real Black people are those capable of holding their heads high in ...