It is now 41 years since that fateful day when Bantu Stephen Biko was
made to breathe his last by the action of his tormentors in the
interrogation chambers of the apartheid repressive machinery. In much of
the commentary on the significance of the Biko episode in South
Africa’s body politic, little has been said about his quest for a truly
non-racial and more equitable society; and how that quest continues to
haunt if not challenge us in the present day. In a rather obscure way we
might with hindsight say that this man’s “fault” might well have been
to threaten the apart-heid (apart-ness) power structure as a prophet for
a non-racial society. Also, his views on the pastoral approach of the
church against the reality of the sub-cultural tendencies of communities
in poverty remain of moment today.
As we mark the 41st anniversary of his tragic demise, we look at
three areas of his messaging, and their relevance for our apostolate
today if we are to Reimagine, Redesign and Reorganise the South African
experience of life.
1. On Non-Racialism and Racial Integration: Lest we
forget, Biko’s first act of public political activism was to challenge
the conference of the multiracial National Union of South African
Students (NUSAS) meeting in Makanda (formerly Grahamstown), to adjourn
until they could find a non-racist venue. This instead of going ahead
with the unsatisfactory segregated accommodations with blacks in a
township church hall and whites in the university residences. A
resolution to condemn the Rhodes University Council was not enough for
Biko, there had to be a cost for the principle of a non-racial rather
than a multi-racial order.
Biko was to be known to champion Black Consciousness, which was about
awakening black people to the self-recognition of their worth and their
inalienable right to human dignity against the denigration of the
dehumanising disposition of colonialism and apartheid. As he said,
“consciousness is essentially an inward-looking process.” For Biko,
Black Consciousness was a necessary ingredient, which in turn would
engender and meet with White Consciousness for a positive national
consciousness. Blacks had to recognise and conscientise each other of
their human worth and stand up for it and shake off the fear and
inferiority complex that shackled them. This is Black Consciousness.
Whites had to recognise and persuade others to recognise their misplaced
superiority complex, the inordinate privileges and benefits they enjoy
out of the oppression of their black compatriots. This is white
consciousness, a consciousness with which people like Horst Kleinschmidt
identified in their anti-apartheid campaigns. The combined totality of
this consciousness would amount to a healthy National Consciousness of
mutuality.
In a memorandum to U.S. Senator Dick Clark who came to visit South
Africa in 1976, Biko said: “We are looking forward to a non-racial, just
and egalitarian society in which colour, creed and race shall form no
point of reference.” And in 1971 he had written, “If South Africa is to
be a land where black and white live together in harmony without fear of
group exploitation, it is only when these two opposites have
interplayed and produced a viable synthesis of ideas and modus vivendi.”
It is this modus vivendi that we have to seek to facilitate as the contribution of the churches and people of goodwill, to the re-imagination of “The South Africa We Pray For!” – a just, reconciled, peaceful society, free of racism, tribalism, xenophobia and gender prejudices…
To this end we have to ask questions like: “What will it take to
develop a common overarching South African identity, over and above our
individual family, ethnic and race identities?”.
Biko would say to us, “out of mutual respect for each other (as
different races) and complete freedom of self-determination there will
obviously arise a genuine fusion of the life-styles of the various
groups. This, he would conclude “is true integration.” Are we even at
this time, promoting such genuine fusion of our society? It can be
argued that as the churches of South Africa and our ecumenical
commitment, we have a greater emphasis on reflecting on the demands of
the High Priestly Prayer that instructs our unity – which we can barely
approximate; than commit to the New Commandment to love “one another”,
where love has meaningful social and institutional impacts in the
ordering of our physical lives. In the last third of the way for the
National Convention of South Africa Process, we seek to respond to Biko
by focusing on the values necessary to emphasise, such as our
Constitution lays out in the preamble, instructing that we “heal the
divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic
values, social justice and fundamental human rights.” We are to specify
what actually needs to be done socially across our society to meet the
standards necessary to sustain, not only the principles of the
Constitution, but to be true to the spirit of the New Commandment in a
society that is more than 70% Christian, and where our Lord’s injunction
is:
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even
sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are
good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if
you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to
you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But
love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting
to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be
children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and
wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:32-36,
NIV)
2. On The Case for Economic Transformation: Steve
Biko believed that national reconciliation must needs be related to the
re-ordering of the economic fortunes to right the wrongs of the past.
Steve Biko said: “There is no running away from the fact that now in
South Africa there is such an ill-distribution of wealth that any form
of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of
wealth will be meaningless. The whites have locked up within a small
minority of themselves the greater proportion of the country’s wealth.
If we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is
likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you
will see a few blacks filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie.
Our society will be run always as of yesterday. So for meaningful
change to appear there needs to be an attempt at reorganizing the whole
economic pattern and economic policies within this country.” This has
remained the major unresolved aspect of our democratic order,
destabilising the prospects of a “just, reconciled, peaceful, equitable
and sustainable society” that is the promise of the post-apartheid South
Africa, and “The South Africa We Pray For!” One of the four
themes of the National Convention Process is Economic Transformation, to
address in earnest economic reordering and the matters of poverty,
inequality, spatial reorganisation that includes land reform, and
regional economic integration – SADC and Africa.
3. On the Socio-economic Contextualisation of Pastoral Messaging:
There is something to be said about the contextual conditioning of
socialisation; or the socialisation into contextual habits, practices
and even sub-cultures. Sociologists talk of the culture of poverty, by
which they mean the prevalent ways of living conditioned by poverty.
These might include the necessity to lie, steal, and even murder for
survival. The reality of life in a dense and overcrowded location of
families in single-roomed shacks without the luxury of functional
privacy must have an impact on the growing children who might be
invariably exposed to adult practices ahead of their development pace.
Shall it be said that poor communities are necessarily more sinful than
wealthy neighbourhoods because of the different socio-economic
conditions in which they are variously socialised? This is the case of
the contextual conditioning of socialisation, to which Biko was speaking
when he addressed a conference of clergy in 1972. He lamented:
“Stern-faced ministers stand on pulpits every Sunday to heap loads of
blame on black people in townships for their stealing, stabbing,
murdering, adultery etc. No-one ever attempts to relate all these vices
to poverty, unemployment, over-crowding, lack of schooling and migratory
labour. No one wants to completely condone abhorrent behaviour, but it
frequently is necessary for us to analyse situations a little bit deeper
than the surface suggests.”
Do we have any evidence of a better analysis of our pastoral context,
41 years after Steve Biko’s death, and 46 years since he expressed this
lament to our clergy? How more evangelical might it be for us to
practically adopt the direct messaging of Jesus to “proclaim good news
to the poor” (Luke 4: 16-20); “that they may life, and have it
abundantly” (John 10:10), and meet the standard of the Lord when he
says:
‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the
kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was
hungry and you gave me something to eat,… whatever you did for one of
the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
(Matthew 25: 34 – 40, NIV)
As we initially use the Electoral Integrity 2019 campaign right now,
we are actually seeking to build a functional infrastructure of local
churches working together in an organised way to collectively witness to
the love of Christ in public ministry for public good – on poverty, on
economic transformation, on health, education support, and the promotion
of public values for a reimagined social reality – that the church may,
in the humility of Daniel, be truly be the salt and the light of our
society.
Biko continues to speak to us today; but oh, why didn’t we listen
earlier? Indeed one wonders where South Africa might have been today had
Biko’s quite prophetic messaging on race, economic transformation and
pastoral sensitivity to the gospel of Christ over people in need, found
fertile soil in our church and society. Can the praxis of the Church
make Biko’s sentiments come alive today?