Black Consciousness Defined

The ideals of Black Consciousness put forth by Steve Biko, and supported by his fellow colleagues in the South African Students’ Organization(SASO) was a black response to Afrikaner Nationalist Party white power. Unlike the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) that came before the birth of SASO in 1969, SASO and their view of Black Consciousness sought to make black Africans – students and the majority of the population of Africans have a say in the matters that concerned their living conditions, and the treatment that they received under the apartheid system of government. According to Clive Nettleton, a former NUSAS leader “the formation of SASO[had] disrupted the traditional alignment of the South African student world. / While it is still possible for white and black students to hold joint congresses and seminars, and to meet occasionally at social events, they live in different worlds.” The world that is mentioned here is a world where Steve Biko observed that the black African seemed to be a defeated person, is the “kind of black man who is man only in form”, and has been “reduced to an obliging shell”. Therefore, the idea of Black Consciousnesswas not to institute black racism, or return some aspect of vengeance upon white society, but rather to enforce a sense of solidarity amongst blacks in South Africa where they developed a new-found pride in themselves, their culture, their religion, and their values, and believed that they weren’t an aberration in God’s plan, but had aspects of their way of life to offer, just as much as the South African white society had in terms of science and other technological advances.

However, due the inter-related oppressive, South African society that black South-Africans, Indians, and coloreds lived in, Biko’s Black Consciousness sought to eradicate the already existing stereotypes and inter-group suspicions amongst these groups. According to Biko, these groups were all oppressed by the same system, and were oppressed to varying degrees as a deliberate means by the Afrikaner led government to stratify the South African society, with white society still exercising control over residential areas, voting, education, holidays, and all of the other means of South African existence. Consequently, Biko’s vision of Black Consciousnesssought that there be a harmonious South African society where whites and blacks primarily, but all other groups included as well, live together without the fear of group exploitation and contribute to a democratic system of government where there were no deliberate haves and have-nots.

For more information, visit the following:

The Definition of Black Consciousness

The Relevance of Black Consciousness in the New South Africa