In 10 days time, it will be the 30th anniversary of Steve Biko‘s death. What is remarkable when one reads his writings and trial testimony is the lucidity of his thoughts. He uttered these thoughts with such courage and fearlessness it is no wonder the apartheid government felt intense twinges of fear when dealing with him. This month I shall examine Biko’s insights and their relevance to the different spheres of our society today. Biko’s unfolding world-view brought forth incisive thinking on the concept of black consciousness, which he defined as follows: “The philosophy of black consciousness … expresses group pride and determination by blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self.” This assumes that people know what the envisaged self is, which is not necessarily the case. The problem we seem to have today is one of self-definition as a people.
In this country everything is seen through the tinted glasses of race. Ultimately we must transcend race, but to do that we have to see where we are and proceed from that base. Attaining our envisaged selves starts with examining who we are then envisioning who we want to be. The fruit of such self-examination is a realisation by black people that “by seeking to run away from themselves and emulating the white man, they are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black”. The key in Biko’s message ignited the spark in many black people because he diagnosed their condition very aptly and provided guidance on how to achieve full consciousness. His message is chilling even today because it goes beyond race. His remedy is encapsulated in his dream of an integrated society. Biko defined integration as “the free participation by all members of a society, catering for the full expression of the self in a freely changing society as determined by the will of the people”.
He was dead set against the type of integration where there is “a breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into a set of norms and code of behaviour set by whites”. If you change the references to white and black in the last statement, you have a message that is universally applicable and relevant in the workplace today. People want to see their uniqueness, values and norms embraced in whatever environment they are in. Furthermore, Biko was “against the superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes the white the perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual student (and a poor one)”. We still see this happening with some of the skills development programmes of companies where black people are in perpetual training without graduating to put those skills into practice. A balance has to be struck between training and providing opportunities to apply those skills in a meaningful manner that contributes to the bottom line. The ultimate aim of Biko’s philosophy is a non-racial society.
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