SBF Frank Talk

The role played by Bantu Stephen Biko & Black Consciousness in the South African liberation struggle.

2012-02-29T10:59:00.000+02:00

The Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation and Baxter Theatre Centre invite you to;
An exploration of the role played by Bantu Stephen Biko & Black Consciousness in the South African liberation struggle.

Date: Friday 9 March 2012
Time: 11h00 - 13h00
Venue: Golden Arrow Studio

The life and ideas of young activist Steve Biko inspired many black people and continue to do so in the contemporary society throughout the world. His ideas and writings on black consciousness empowered people with a new sense of self-worth, self-motivation and an attitude of activism. His contribution to the South African Liberation struggle took over two decades to be noticed and celebrated, and now 20 years after his death we began to see symbols in his memory, such as:
• The Steve Biko Monument in Ginsberg Township
• The renaming of John Vorster Bridge in East London to the Steve Biko Bridge.
• The renaming of the Ginsberg Community Cemetery into The Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance by former President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

In ensuring that we fully support the curriculum and keep Biko’s legacy alive for this generation and the generations to follow, the The Steve Biko Centre has resolved to undertake a program targeting youth and teach about Steve Biko and the philosophy of Black Consciousness under the program entitled Steve Biko Legacy Lectures. This is an important collaboration to organize schools to attend this lecture taking place on 9 March 2012. This will also be an important lecture in preparing for the First Paper for Grade 12 History Learners which will be written around September and October 2012 under the chapter The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement.

The lecture will be presented by Mr. Jongi Hoza from The Steve Biko Centre.

For bookings you may contact Sharon Ward on 021 680 3962 or Carmen Kearns on 021 680 3993 during office hours.

The Inaugural Sisonke Community Theatre and Dance Festival to be held at Promusica in April.

2012-02-27T09:56:00.000+02:00

To all theatre and dance companies in the following areas:
• Newlands
• Westbury
• Roodepoort
• Sophiatown
• Kagiso
• Dobsonvile and all other areas around Jo’burg.

Promusica Theatre in Roodepoort is currently working on holding auditions in all these areas as part of selecting groups to participate in the inaugural Sisonke Community Theatre and Dance Festival to be held at Promusica in April.
E-mail Mpho Molepo at mphojmolepo@ gmail.com with your company name, profile area, contact person and details to take part in this initiative.

Reclaiming Stolen Memories in Content and Aesthetics with regard to performance making: A talk by Mandla Mbothwe.

2012-02-21T11:56:00.000+02:00

The Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, and Magnet Theatre:INVITE YOU TO

Reclaiming Stolen Memories in Content and Aesthetics with regard to performance making: A talk by Mandla Mbothwe.
(Artistic Director Steve Biko Centre, King William's Town)

Mandla Mbothwe, acclaimed director and theatre maker, will be presenting a talk at Magnet Theatre on the work of the Steve Biko Centre as well as Reclaiming Stolen Memories. The talk will be followed by a questions and answers session.

Date: 8 March 2012
Time: 10h00 for 10h30
Place: Magnet Theatre, Unit 1, Old Match Factory, corner Lower Main andSt Michaels Road, Observatory, Cape Town.

Please RSVP to Margie by 2 March 2012 on 021 448 3435 or margie@magnettheatre.co.za.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Equitable employment integral to Steve Biko Foundation

2012-02-14T13:54:00.001+02:00

Anthony Kambi Masha’s letter of January 30th refers. In it Masha accuses the Steve Biko Foundation (SBF) of depriving applicants without internet access employment opportunities because the advertisements he refers to request e-mailed submissions.

The first flaw in Masha’s argument is assuming that hiring can ever be absolutely fair. While desirable, this is impossible. When an institution looks for particular qualifications and years of experience; places adverts in one medium over another; and the position is in one area and not another; it has chosen a complex set of parameters, which will affect some people’s chances over others. Realistically the best that can be achieved is substantial fairness rather than absolute fairness.

It is also simplistic to assume that a fax number and post box would have ensured absolute fairness. The Post Office’s 2010 annual report enumerates 1 539 postal branches and 927 agencies to serve all of South Africa. So the majority of the communities Masha is concerned about are as challenged to access a post office or fax as they are the internet.

Masha will have seen that SBF’s adverts are for employment at the Steve Biko Centre, currently under construction. SBF has taken great care to achieve substantial fairness in its hiring practices. In partnership with the community, SBF established a consultation forum to encourage anyone who desires to work to register on a database from which candidates would be drawn during construction and operational phases. The contractor was required to source employees from here first and then, beyond if such skills are not within the database.

A total of 1 122 candidates registered, many assisted in the process by SBF’s own human resources and infrastructure. According to the project’s latest social impact report, generated by an independent party, 604 people have been employed during construction. Of that number 76% are from BCM and 78% are from the Eastern Cape. All in all 97% are previously disadvantaged individuals, what Masha refers to as “ordinary” people. Further, the initiative will provide 89 permanent positions. Indirectly there are opportunities in the area of homestays, transportation, tour guides, etc.

The adverts referenced by Masha are part of this broad empowerment initiative. They are explicit on several requirements including e-mailed submissions; however, they do not prohibit other methods. Where this is the case, companies usually make it an unequivocal condition. In fact, a number of candidates have faxed or dropped off their responses at SBF.

SBF’s history demonstrates a commitment to empowerment in ways that can be empirically substantiated. Our documents in this regard remain open to Masha should he wish to undertake an objective appraisal. If Masha’s intention was to engage SBF he should rest assured that we are willing to participate in a discourse on job provision of a general nature or of a nature specific to SBF’s practices.

S. Dibuseng Kolisang
Communications Officer
The Steve Biko Foundation

This letter was first published in the Daily Dispatch on February 3rd, 2012.

Zuma's State of the Nation address

2012-02-10T09:20:00.000+02:00

Zuma's State of the Nation address: Read President Jacob Zuma's full state of the nation address here.

Nkosinathi Biko on how South Africa can move on at CBC.ca | The Current | Interview Panel

2012-02-03T11:35:00.000+02:00

CBC.ca | The Current | Interview Panel

SBF: FrankTalk Journal Issue #3

2012-02-02T11:03:00.000+02:00

In the third issue of the FrankTalk Journal entitled Biko's Legacy Today, we revisit the contemporary relevance of this South African freedom fighter. The journal is available on our website.

Visit our website at www.sbf.org.za and be a part of the discussion.

As always, we welcome your comments, responses and feedback here on our blog page or through Facebook or Twitter.

Steve Biko Centre and Jazzart Dance Theatre Company Join Forces

2012-01-31T14:34:00.000+02:00

The Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, has launched its collaboration with the Jazzart Dance Theatre Company of Cape Town. The joint venture is part of the many scheduled projects running in the Arts and Culture programme of the Centre. This collaboration started with a week long workshop running from the 23rd to 27th January 2012. These workshops finished with a strong performance from local dancers. Below are some pictures from the event.

SBF: FrankTalk Journal Issue #2

2012-01-26T08:38:00.001+02:00

The Second Issue of the FrankTalk Journal entitled Quest for a True Humanity: Achieving the Vision, is now available on our website.

Visit our website at www.sbf.org.za and be a part of the discussion of the state of the nation. As always, we welcome your comments, responses and feedback here on our blog page or through Facebook or Twitter.

What's made the ANC survive for a 100 years? - Jacob Zuma

2012-01-09T08:46:00.000+02:00

Statement by the ANC president on the organisation's centenary, January 8 2012

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT JACOB ZUMA ON THE OCCASION OF THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ANC

MANGAUNG 8 January 2012

Your Excellencies Heads of States and Government,

Former Presidents of the ANC, Isithwalandwe Nelson Mandela at home and Comrade Thabo Mbeki,

Former Heads of State and Eminent Persons,

The Presidents and NEC Members of the ANC Women's League, ANC Youth League and the ANC Veterans League and the leadership of Mkhonto Wesizwe Military Veterans Association,

The Leadership of the SACP, COSATU and SANCO,

Our friends from all over Africa and the world,

Comrades and Compatriots,

The African National Congress, the oldest liberation movement on the African continent, turns 100 years old today!

We have come from all corners of South Africa, Africa and the world, to celebrate this historical milestone.

It is not only a celebration for the African National Congress and its members only. It is a joyous celebration for all the people of South Africa, who, with the support of the continent and the world, destroyed colonial oppression and apartheid, and are building in its ruins, a free, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa together.

It is truly an emotional and yet very exciting and moving occasion, which fills us with great pride and joy.

We extend a special welcome to all Heads of State and Government, Eminent Persons and all our friends from the anti-apartheid movement worldwide, who have joined us for this event.

We have the pleasure to release our comprehensive January 8 statement today, which outlines our history.

I will, in this address, provide highlights of this journey of 100 years of selfless struggle.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

Allow me to begin by paying tribute to my predecessors, the past presidents of the African National Congress, John Langalibalele Dube, Sefako Makgatho, Zac Mahabane, Josiah Gumede, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, AB Xuma, JS Moroka, Albert Mvumbi Luthuli, Oliver Reginald Tambo, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and comrades,

It has been a long road since 1652 when settlers arrived in our country.

It has also been a long road since that meeting of European powers in Berlin in 1884, where they carved up the African continent, and shared the pieces among themselves as colonies and dependencies.

As a race, virtually all Africans had been reduced to subjects.

Many years later, in October 1911, Pixley ka Isaka Seme made a clarion call for the unity of the African people.

He said MZulu, mXhosa, mSuthu hlanganani, calling upon the African people to bury the demon of racism and tribalism and face the challenge before them.

The following year, the people of Southern Africa responded to the call by dispatching delegates to Bloemfontein.

The delegates included esteemed traditional leaders such as Solomon ka Dinizulu, Montsioa of the Barolong, Lewanika of the Lozi of Zambia, Letsie II of Lesotho, Labotsibeni from Swaziland, Dalindyebo of the abaThembu, Sekhukhuni of the baPedi and Khama from Botswana.

King Dalindyebo provided 115 cattle for the occasion in 1912. This time, abaThembu following in that tradition, have provided 50 cattle for the centenary.

The Congress of the Traditional Leaders of South Africa added two cows. King Letsie III of Lesotho, the grand-grandson of King Letsie II who attended the founding congress, provided the cow that was used for the cleansing ceremony yesterday.

On the 8th of January 1912, the South African Native National Congress was then founded at the Waaihoek church here in Bloemfontein. Later called the African National Congress, it grew to become a custodian of basic democratic values, principles and practice in our country.

The principle on which the ANC and the rest of the democratic movement have consistently stood, is stated unequivocally in the preamble of the Freedom Charter:

"... South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people''.

The ANC set out to achieve that goal of founding a South Africa that was free, just and which belonged to all.

One year after its formation, the ANC confronted one of its biggest challenges when the Native Land Act of 1913 was enacted. It stripped the African people of their homeland by racist statute, a move that could be called ethnic cleansing in current terminology.

This indicated the challenges that the movement would have to deal with.

The ANC mobilized the South African people across the racial, gender and class divides. The ANC, a disciplined force of the left with a bias towards the poor, is also a broad church that is home to all.

Its membership and support base comprises nationalists, Marxists, Africanists, workers, capitalists, women, men, youth, rural, urban, rich and poor. This has become one of the biggest strengths of this glorious movement.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

The movement prides itself on having a strong historical relationship with the working class.

The South African Communist Party was formed in 1921 and had engaged itself in issues affecting workers and the working class.

Already then, the seeds of a unique Alliance were germinating when the ANC and the Communist Party of South Africa resolved to work together in 1929.

Meanwhile, the relationship with the trade union movement can be traced back to the first major trade union of Africans, the Industrial Workers Union, which was formed in Bloemfontein in 1920 and also through the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), and later the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

President-General, Chief Albert Luthuli referred to this relationship through an analogy that said the ANC was the shield and the South African Congress of Trade Unions the spear.

Comrade Oliver Tambo eloquently articulated the importance of the Alliance as follows;

"Ours is not merely a paper alliance, created at conference tables and formalised through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement of leaders. Our alliance is a living organism that has grown out of struggle. We have built it out of our separate and common experiences."

President Nelson Mandela, addressing an SACP congress in 1995, said about the relationship of the ANC and the SACP;

''It is a relationship that has detractors in abundance; a relationship that has its prolific obituary scribes. But it is a relationship that always disappoints these experts. Because it was tempered in struggle. It is written in the blood of many martyrs''.

This revolutionary partnership became invaluable in advancing the struggle for freedom.

As we celebrate the centenary today, we pay a special tribute to generations of working class leaders who have made an impact in the history of our struggle.

Among them are Elijah Barayi, Chris Dlamini, John Gomomo, Jay Naidoo, Oscar Mpetha, Ray Simons, Moses Mabhida, Moses Kotane, Raymond Mhlaba, Govan Mbeki, Joe Slovo, Harry Gwala, Edwin Mofutsanyane, Dan Tloome, Curnick Ndlovu, Steven Dlamini, John Nkadimeng, Billy Nair, and many others who served everyone of our revolutionary organs with distinction.

In addition, the historic Congress Alliance during the 1950s brought together the ANC, the Congress of Democrats and the South African Indian Congress, Coloured People's Congress, South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).

The Congress Alliance played an important role in the development of the Freedom Charter, which arose from an idea by ANC intellectual ZK Matthews.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

Today we also salute women and recognise the pivotal role they have played in the life and growth of the ANC from the Bantu Women's League in 1931 to the ANC Women's League in 1948.

We also recall the Federation of South African Women which united women across the colour lines in the struggle against apartheid.

Women had also been part of earlier campaigns. As early as 1913, women right here in Bloemfontein, marched against dompasses. Many years later, women undertook that historic march against dompasses to the Union Buildings in 1956.

We honour the many women who have played key leadership roles in our struggle. Amongst them are Lillian Ngoyi, Bertha Gxowa, Adelaide Tambo, Albertina Sisulu, Dorothy Nyembe, Nomzamo Winnie Mandela, Margaret Gazo, Florence Mkhize, Ruth Mompati, Gertrude Shope, Florence Mophosho, Ruth First, Ray Alexander, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, Sophie de Bruyn and many more!

Excellencies,

Compatriots and Friends,

Today we also remember the contribution of the youth to the advancement of our struggle.

The ANC Youth League has produced outstanding leaders of our movement since its establishment in 1944, such as Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, the youth of the 50s and 60s who played a leadership role in joining Umkhonto Wesizwe up to Peter Mokaba.

The Youth League played a pivotal role in energising the ANC during the 1940s, and produced a programme of action that was adopted by the movement in 1949, influencing the mass action that characterised the Defiance Campaign.

We recognise the militant youth of the June 1976 Soweto uprising, led by Tsietsi Mashinini and others, who challenged the myth about the might of the apartheid state.

We acknowledge the Class of 1994 which contributed to the demise of apartheid by strengthening the ANC, and contributed to its overwhelming electoral victory, which led to the birth of a non-racial, non-sexist and South Africa.

The present generation of youth continues to defend the democratic gains of our struggle, through mobilising for a better life and organising masses of youth into the ANC.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

Recognising the important role of veterans in our movement, the ANC created the Veterans League in 2008, to enable these cadres to play a role in the movement and share their experience and wisdom.

Excellencies,

Comrades and friends,

Today we also celebrate the fact that for many generations, the ANC has promoted unity of purpose and action among the oppressed.

One such example is the three Doctors Pact that was concluded between the Presidents of the ANC, the Transvaal Indian Congress and the Natal Indian Congress in 1947.

This Pact was meant to unite Indians and Africans and forge cooperation on the promotion of equal economic and industrial rights, removal of land restrictions, housing, education, full franchise, freedom of movement, abolition of pass laws and the removal of discriminatory and oppressive legislation from statute books.

Compatriots,

It is remarkable that our country was able to produce a non-racial struggle, despite institutionalized racism.

The ANC has always and shall continue to cherish the contribution of a small, but courageous contingent of White democrats, who committed themselves completely and selflessly, to the realisation of democratic change.

This unity across all these divides have strengthened the ANC and brought us to this phase of celebrating 100 years of selfless struggle.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

The promotion of human rights for all has always been a key feature of the ANC since its formation.

The ANC human rights blueprints preceded the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. This makes our movement one of the pioneers in the development of a human rights culture in the world.

The ANC adopted its first Bill of Rights at the 1923 ANC conference, and later, at the 1943 ANC conference, the movement adopted the historic African Claims document which included a Bill of Rights.

In another demonstration of commitment to human rights, the ANC signed the Geneva Convention of 1949, which regulates the conduct of armed conflicts and the protection of prisoners of war and civilians.

That is why when the ANC came back from exile, it came back with its prisoners of war in compliance with the Geneva Convention.

this human rights culture is enshrined in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution of a post-apartheid South Africa. It is one of the traits of the ANC that we are celebrating today.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

The Defiance campaign was one of the outstanding landmarks in our struggle.

It redefined ANC cadreship as it led to the development of a volunteer corps. The volunteers played a key role in the life of the movement. They were disciplined and participated in the organising of various campaigns. We salute President Mandela who was our first Volunteer-in-Chief.

Responding to the repression of the Defiance Campaign period, the ANC leadership called on Nelson Mandela, the Volunteer in Chief, to prepare a strategy document to restructure the movement, to enable it to adapt to rapidly changing conditions of struggle.

He produced an impressive plan. Named the "M Plan", the document proposed that the ANC should be reconstituted from an organisation based on geographically conceived branches to one built on smaller, more intimate cells, that were vertically structured like a pyramid, thus permitting the rapid transmission of information and directives between higher and subordinate structures.

The move was well timed, because as the resistance mounted, the regime escalated its repression. On the 21st of March 1960, police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in Sharpeville, killing 69 people.

The ANC and the PAC were banned on the 31st of March 1960 and the ANC began to operate underground.

Due to increasing intransigence of the apartheid regime, the ANC deeply deliberated and took a difficult but historic and important decision to adopt the armed struggle. It established uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) as the nucleus of a national liberation army.

MK announced its existence with a number of nationally coordinated sabotage actions on government installations on 16th December 1961.

Nelson Mandela was its first commander-in-chief.

In response to this, the regime passed laws to make death, the penalty for sabotage. It also introduced laws that allowed 90 days of detention without trial and arrested members of the MK leadership in 1963.

Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg were charged, found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The majority of them served it on Robben Island.

The Robben Island prison was turned into a political school by the ANC. The struggle continued inside prison.

Amongst the shocking acts of abuse of power, the apartheid regime instituted the Sobukwe Clause, to extend his stay. For him to be in a prison environment, they sent him to Robben Island.

Comrades and friends,

There can be no better occasion than this ANC centenary, to celebrate the bravery, determination and selflessness of all the detachments of MK -the Luthuli, June 16, Moncada, Madinoga and the Young lions Detachments.

We salute MK's illustrious commanders Joe Modise, Chris Hani, Joe Slovo, Vuyisile Mini and other leading members of MK, Solomon Mahlangu, Marcus Motaung, Telle Mogoerane, Jerry Mosolodi, Mduduzi Guma, Montsi "Obadi'' Mogabudi and Monty Motloung.

We salute the first MK cadres and commanders who conducted sabotage actions from December 16, 1961 and the following immediate period.

We acknowledge as well those who fought in Zimbabwe in 1967 and 1968 in the Wankie-Sipolilo campaign, those who conducted operations inside the country throughout the armed struggle, those who joined forces with Frelimo fighters in Mozambique, and those who fought alongside the MPLA in Angola during the 1970s and 1980s.

We honour Flag Boshielo who had distinguished himself in struggle since the Defiance Campaign and Faldon Mziwonke, a seasoned peasant fighter, whose track record stretches back to the 1940s.

We also pay a special tribute to the people of Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and Mozambique who died during the apartheid army cross-border raids in search of MK bases.

We also highlight women who were sentenced to jail such as Thandi Modise, Dorothy Nyembe, Helene Passtoors, Greta Apelgren, Theresa Ramashamola, Amina Desai, Barbara Hogan and Marion Sparg.

Comrades and friends,

This occasion also enables us to pay our respects to the 134 South African patriots, most of them MK soldiers such as Solomon Mahlangu, who paid the ultimate price for freedom when they were executed by the apartheid regime in Pretoria.

Our freedom was definitely not free. It was achieved through the blood, sweat and tears of many selfless revolutionaries and cadres of our movement.

Excellencies

Compatriots and friends,

The ANC owes a great deal of gratitude to its President Oliver Tambo who worked tirelessly to establish friendships and solidarity across the world and helped to mobilise the world against the apartheid regime.

Building on the initial contact made by Moses Kotane who had worked hard to deepen the relationship between the former Soviet Union and the Communist Party of South Africa, President Tambo visited Moscow in April 1963 and developed strong relations between the Soviet Union and the ANC.

The ANC also acknowledges the support we received from socialist countries. We are also indebted to countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark for their support.

The people of Zambia, through their independence movement and mass organisations, received and assisted our movement even prior to their independence.

We acknowledge the presence of our father, President Kenneth Kaunda in these celebrations.

Angola, under the leadership of Agostinho Neto, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and the MPLA, served as a secure rear base for our army and its personnel until 1988.

We welcome the Neto family to this celebration.

We single out Cuba for her unwavering solidarity politically and militarily. The epic battle in Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, between January and March 1988, forced the apartheid forces to retreat, guaranteeing the sovereignty of Angola, paving the way for the liberation of Namibia and leading eventually to our own freedom. It indeed changed the political landscape of Southern Africa.

Tanzania became our second home. We established settlements and were given land to build the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College. We extend our deepest gratitude to Chama Cha Mapinduzi and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere for this solidarity. We welcome the Nyerere family who have joined us for these celebrations.

Botswana played a very important role in our struggle when it was, at one time, the only exit and entry point for our cadres and leaders. As a result of its role, it was subjected to many attacks and raids by the apartheid regime. We will forever be grateful for the contribution it made.

We are grateful to Uganda, which provided political support and bases for MK in 1989, when we had to leave Angola following the passing of UN Resolution 435 for the independence of Namibia.

We thank our immediate neighbours, Swaziland and Lesotho where many of our cadres stayed and from where we ran some of our operations.

We thank FRELIMO and the people of Mozambique for solidarity that cost them dearly economically, politically and also when the apartheid army conducted cross border raids, leading to loss of life. This country also lost its President Samora Machel on South African soil.

We highlight most of Africa - Zimbabwe, Algeria, Guinea (Conakry), Ethiopia, Benin, Nigeria and others who provided all kinds of support.

We thank the Organisation of African Unity and the United Nations which accepted the ANC and PAC as legitimate representatives of the South African people instead of the apartheid regime.

We also register our gratitude to the Anti-Apartheid Movement which played an enormous role in bringing apartheid atrocities to the attention of people in Western democracies.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

We pay tribute to comrades inside the country who enhanced the political activities from the underground and influenced political activity in the country.

Special mention can be made of comrades like Joe Gqabi, Winnie Mandela, Harry Gwala, Zoli Malindi, Mme Lesia, Dorothy Myembe, Lawrence and Rita Ndzanga, Samson Ndou, Albertina Sisulu, Helen Joseph, Bertha Gxowa and others, who continued the link with the ANC in exile.

In Soweto community leaders such as Dr Nthato Motlana and others assisted students during the Soweto uprising.

The leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko, played an important role in conscientising many black South Africans that they were their own liberators.

His brutal murder in police custody on 12 September 1977 led to a local and international outcry and robbed the country of an energetic and committed patriot.

The year 1979 was declared the Year of the Spear, named after the centenary of the Battle of Isandlwana, and the ANC went on the offensive.

The movement had attained maximum political and organisational unity. The armed actions which we had resumed in 1977 were having the political impact we desired.

The ANC was beginning to determine the political agenda of the day rather than reacting to what the enemy was doing.

Culture continued to be an arena of struggle. We acknowledge the role of artists such as Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Julian Bahula, Caiphus Semenya, Letta Mbulu, Dorothy Masuka, Harry Belafonte and the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, the MK cultural group and others who kept the spirit of the struggle alive around the world.

Comrades,

By the early 1980s, the regime had banned all our peoples' organisations and gatherings. To discuss our oppression was virtually impossible.

People survived by gathering in women's, students, workers and issue-based organisations. These organisations multiplied throughout the country.

In August 1983, history was made when more than 400 organisations gathered in Mitchell's Plain in Cape Town and founded the United Democratic Front.

Formations such as the South African National Civics Organisation, student organizations, traditional, religious, community organizations and those representing academics, lawyers, workers, sport and others played a key role in the activities of the UDF.

The role of the church was also more pronounced. The ANC has had a strong relationship with the church since its inception.

The World Council of Churches and the South African Council of Churches worked tirelessly in the promotion of justice and the fight against apartheid, mobilizing the church around the world.

We acknowledge the critical role of church leaders such as Father Trevor Huddleston, the Reverend Beyers Naude, Archbishop Denis Hurley, Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Reverend Alan Boesak, Sister Bernard Ncube and a host of others in fighting for a free and democratic South Africa.

The emergence of mass based organizations during the 80s under the banner of the UDF, made it possible for President OR Tambo to call for South Africa to be made ungovernable and apartheid unworkable.

An atmosphere of mass insurrection prevailed in many townships and rural towns across the country during 1985 and 1986.

The ANC worked to open up rural areas to allow operatives to work from these areas. While some Bantustans were hostile to the ANC, the movement established critical contact with structures and individuals such as Enos Mabuza and General Bantu Holomisa in the Transkei, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele and others. The plan was to work within the homelands and change them.

An important achievement during this period was the formation of CONTRALESA, which organised traditional leaders into the ANC, assisting the movement to make further inroads in rural areas.

The regime unleashed terror in communities around the country during this period.

We pay our respects to the families of many who were killed in state-sponsored violence in KwaZulu-Natal and the now Gauteng area during the 80s.

We also remember other comrades who died in other tragic killings such as the Trojan Horse massacre in Cape Town, Griffiths and Victoria Mxenge, the PEBCO 3, Cradock 4, Dulcie September, Ruth First and other comrades who were killed by hitsquads inside and outside the country.

When the ANC and other organisations were unbanned in February 1990, freedom had come at a great price.

Leaders were released from jails across the country, underground activists began to operate openly, and others began returning home from exile.

The ANC began to establish legitimate branch and regional structures of the movement inside the country.

Nelson Mandela was elected President and Oliver Tambo as National Chairperson at the 1991 ANC National Conference, the first inside the country after the unbanning.

The ANC was committed to ending apartheid through a series of negotiations and participated fully in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA).

The ANC played a leading role in shaping the nature, form, process and content of CODESA and its outcome.

The Boipatong massacre and the tragic assassination of Comrade Chris Hani threatened to derail the talks. President Mandela provided matured leadership, together with the leadership of the ANC, saved the situation and enabled us to focus on the goals at hand.

We are proud of the fact that the negotiations took place on South African soil, managed by South Africans themselves. The ANC, as always, promoted unity by bringing together negotiating parties under its wing as a united front.

On 27 April 1994, millions of South Africans - black and white - voted in the first democratic elections.

The leadership of the ANC, under the guidance of President Mandela united the nation behind the goal of reconciliation and nation building.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to deal with the mysteries and painful atrocities of the past.

We congratulate South Africans for the mature handling of this difficult transitional processes.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

The first seventeen years of freedom have been successful. The ANC has laid a sound foundation for socio-economic development, although challenges remain.

The vision for the first two decades of freedom are encapsulated in the following pillars:

" The building of a united, democratic, non-racial and non-sexist society.

" Deepening our democracy, the culture of human rights and people´s participation in changing?their lives for the better.

" Meeting basic needs and developing human resources.

" Building the economy and creating jobs.

" Combating crime and corruption.

" Transforming the state.

" Building a better Africa and a better world.

The first few years after the end of apartheid was about putting in place the correct legal framework and mechanisms. The second phase was about executing our plans and programmes.

We have succeeded in addressing the many challenges facing South Africa. We have moved some way to ensure access to basic services in areas such as health care, social security, housing, electricity, water and sanitation, education and others.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

Today we ask ourselves, what has made the ANC survive for 100 years.

It was established by a nation as a response to a national challenge. It is not an organisation of a few, it is guided by the interests of the nation. It is a people's organisation. That is why its founders called it the parliament of the people.

It takes the trouble to clarify its policies, strategies and tactics, which are continuously reviewed so that they reflect the changing situation in the land. That is why the ANC during every term organises a national policy conference which helps to keep the policies relevant and focused.

The ANC has well-built organisational structures that make it change with the times, and adapt to new conditions. It adheres to serious discipline in general and political discipline in particular, and emphasises respect. It has strong internal democratic processes.

It empowers its cadres politically. It has a culture of open and democratic debate on any matter.

It has grown not just to be a national or regional or continental organisation, it is an international organisation.

It has a culture of working with progressive organisations of all types. It is an organisation that is prepared to learn and also it is conscious of its position as a leader in society.

The ANC always humbles itself, it is not arrogant.

This is what has made the ANC to live and lead.

Compatriots and friends,

As we mark the ANC Centenary, this is the right moment to pause and ponder the future of South Africa and of the ANC over the next one hundred years.

We must ask and answer the difficult questions about the future of our country.

During this year, 2012, our nation must renew our determination to build a South Africa founded on the principles of the Freedom Charter and our democratic Constitution.

We must bring new energy and new ideas into the kind of society we want to build over the next few decades.

As the ANC prepares for its Policy Conference in June and its 53rd National Conference in December 2012, we call on all South Africans to join a national dialogue on the future of the country.

This debate should be based on our common commitment to build a caring society that is truly non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, prosperous and united in its diversity.

With regards to the way forward, we have identified the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality as needing attention.

Principally, Africans, women and youth continue to carry a disproportionate burden of the challenges.

Over the next decade, both the ANC and all organs of state, shall pay a single-minded and undivided attention in order to overcome these triple challenges.

Our education and training system should be the cornerstone of all efforts to radically transform South Africa and build a truly non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united and prosperous society.

as we move into the future, we shall invest hugely in, and elevate the importance of theoretical and ideological work, as well as a scientific approach to analysing and solving society's problems.

To join the ANC should, among other things, mean a commitment to lifelong learning through theory and practice.

The ANC has led our people well during the struggle against colonialism and apartheid because it had a distinct capacity to produce a galaxy of leaders of exceptional qualities and talents.

Two of its Presidents, President-General Luthuli and President Mandela were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This affirmed the quality of leadership that the ANC produces.

This unique character has enabled the ANC to produce some of Africa's finest revolutionaries - men and women of courage and conviction, vision and humility, intellect and integrity, selfless service and loyalty to the people of our country and continent.

As we move into the future, the ANC will renew its internal systems and processes in order to prepare and produce new generations of leadership for our country, whose integrity and passion to serve our country is unquestionable.

The ANC has always been able to attract into its ranks all South Africans, who have distinct abilities and capabilities necessary to push the revolution forward.

As we move forward, the ANC will intensify its programme to recruit and train young people who show tremendous potential, skills and talents in all fields of human endeavour.

We are determined to move to the second centenary with a more rejuvenated organisation that is strategically positioned to continue to lead the people of our country and continent in their tireless and ceaseless quest for a better life, in a just and more humane world.

In this regard, the most urgent task facing us is to speed up the building of a national democratic society, wherein all South Africans enjoy an improved quality of life, especially the working class and the poor.

During its second century of existence, the ANC will undoubtedly require new organisational capacities and strategic capabilities to give political, moral and intellectual leadership and serve our nation in all the five pillars of social transformation.

These are the organisation, the state, the economy, the international arena work and the ideological terrain.

In 2012:

" We will take urgent and practical steps to revitalise the grassroots structures of the movement.

" We will take urgent and practical steps to once again place the ANC at the forefront of the progressive forces for change.

" We will take urgent and practical steps to fast-track the development of cadres - new and old.

" We will take urgent and practical steps to ensure that our programme of transforming our country is accelerated and taken to new heights.

" We will take urgent and practical steps to restore the core values, stamp out factionalism and promote political discipline.

" We will take urgent and practical steps to place education and skills development at the centre of our transformation and development agenda.

We will take urgent and practical steps to deepen our contribution to the renewal of the African continent and the progressive forces in the world.

" We will take urgent and practical steps to professionalise and modernise the operations of the ANC.

Excellencies,

Compatriots and friends,

The 1942 ANC conference passed a resolution that the ANC should have a million members by the time it celebrated its centenary.

It is my pleasure to announce that we have achieved this goal.

The total number of ANC members is 1 027 389 members in good standing. KwaZulu-Natal leads with 244 900, followed by the Eastern Cape with 225 597.

Gauteng 121 223, Limpopo 114 385, Mpumalanga 98 892, Free State 76 334, North West 60 319, Western Cape 43 397 and Northern Cape has 42 342.

The figures are much higher if we include members who are not in good standing.

We congratulate all members for working hard to enable us to meet this target.

Comrades,

It is now my pleasure to announce the winners of the ANC Annual Achievement Awards for our centenary year.

They are as follows;

" The Sol Plaatje Award, conferred on the best performing ANC branch, goes to the Sondelani Branch, Bohlabela Region, Mpumalanga.

" The Charlotte Maxeke Award, conferred on the best performing ANC Women's League branch, goes to the Sipho Mgijima Branch, Frances Baard Region, Kimberley.

" The Anton Lembede Award, conferred on the best performing ANC Youth League branch, goes to the Madiba Branch, Mookgophong Sub-region, Limpopo.

" The ZK Matthews Award, conferred on the best performing group of ANC councillors goes to the ANC councillors of the Hibiscus Coast Council, Lower South Coast, KwaZulu-Natal.

We congratulate all the winners who prove that there is excellence in the ANC.

Comrades,

The ANC salutes all the comrades who passed away during 2011, who sadly departed before this centenary. May their souls rest in peace.

On this, January 8 2012, we make a clarion call to all South Africans to work with us to make the dream of a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa a reality in our lifetime.

We call on all the progressive forces in our continent to work tirelessly for the regeneration, renewal and renaissance of Africa in our lifetime.

We call on all progressive people in the world to spare no energy and effort in fighting for a better Africa and more humane world.

These ideals we shall fight for, side by side, throughout our lives until we realise our goals.

"The ANC is a child of Bloemfontein. The child conceived here in 1912, returns to its mother, older, stronger and wiser'', so said Comrade President Nelson Mandela in February 1990 at an ANC anniversary rally here in Bloemfontein.

Comrades,

THE NEC DECLARES 2012 THE YEAR OF UNITY IN DIVERSITY!

Amandla!

Issued by the African National Congress, January 8 2012

Nkosinathi Biko on South Africa's new struggle

2011-12-09T10:38:00.000+02:00

Article by Mandy De Waal of the Daily Maverick.

South Africa needs a new national consciousness, a national time out to define and talk about the important issues. Steve Biko’s eldest and the man charged with continuing his legacy says we’ve spent more than enough time developing policies. We already have a Constitution that is rated the best in the world.
“The Constitution is very poetic in its promises. But those rights and privileges are not enjoyed by many people. The majority still operate on the periphery of our economy,” says Biko.
“I think there are enough things – poverty, education and the challenge of HIV/Aids – that should define a new national agenda. The second part of this new struggle, this new national agenda is the role of the citizen in stepping up to the plate.”
It’s been a long, long time since South Africans were engaged in a national debate that “allowed” them to envisage a new country. In 2011 the public discourse was almost entirely swallowed up by political posturing and a backstabbing body politic. The voice of the ordinary man and woman could hardly be heard above the shrill din. The only interregnum in the deafening spiel, the occasional flames of service delivery protests and the sound of tear gas, rubber bullets and occasionally live rounds being fired to keep dissenters subdued.
In a time before South African business became cowards, there was a series of high profile dialogues of top thinkers called the Dinokeng Scenarios which was organised by the private sector and civil society. Built on the premise that an engaged citizenry could strengthen democracy, the series saw leaders coming together to engage in open but strategic conversations on possible futures for this country. These leaders included Mamphela Ramphele, Jay Naidoo, Graça Machel, Cheryl Carolus and Biko, among others.
“We came out with three possibilities. The first was a ‘walk behind scenario’, the second was a ‘walk ahead’ scenario,” says Biko, explaining “walk behind” describes a situation where you have a strong state and an impoverished citizenry. “This is unhealthy because the state dictates the future of the country which may have nothing to do with the needs of the citizenry,” Biko says.
“The opposite is equally unacceptable where you have a weak state and an overly strong citizenry because it can lead to a situation of chaos. The scenario generally preferred for this country is the ‘walk together’ scenario where you have a strong state as well as a very strong and engaged citizenry,” he says.
Watch an interview with Steve Biko on YouTube:
South Africa has caught glimpses of what a “walk together” future could look like, where civil society is powerfully organised and where the citizenry is actively involved in shaping the country’s outlook. A case in point is the state’s disastrous response to the HIV/Aids pandemic during the Mbeki years. A drastic turnaround in policy was crucial and this was spearheaded, not by political parties, but by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). By mobilising, lobbying, protesting and demanding change, the impossible became probable, and government policies on HIV/Aids altered to become more compassionate and sane.
“One of the best examples of how citizens can come to the party is what you see from the church. The church is very successful, even in the poorest communities, in reaching out to get contributions to build repaint and people in these poor communities contribute. But if we had to ask ourselves how many clinics or schools are built like this, the answer would probably be none,” says Biko. “The expectation is that the state will provide.”
“We didn’t think this or refrain in the past. If there was going to be a march or a protest, people took it upon themselves to be present. To be a part of history and of the making of history. I think in 1994 we deferred to our leadership, perhaps even more than we should have. After all now politicians talk about the two centres of power, the Union Buildings and Luthuli House. But the default power is with us, with the citizens because we go to the elections to vote. But what we have done is to disengage,” he says.
Biko says when he thinks of inaction, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s words ring strong in his ears. And he also thinks of his father Steve Biko, who at an early age was civically involved in impoverished areas. “I keep on going back to Tutu’s statement and his thought that we have to make this country work, but that this responsibility lies with all of us. It is not something that can only be done from the Union Buildings or even Luthuli House.”
“Steve Biko’s teachings have a lot to contribute. His notions of self-reliance (are) over and above the PAC or even ANC. One of the major successes of the Black Consciousness Movement was to take these ideas and give them practical expression through projects based on the notion of self-reliance.”
Listen to an interview with Steve Biko on Black Consciousness:
In the seventies when Steve Biko was in his twenties, activists would cluster people in terms of economic activity. The recognition here being that even if people didn’t earn enough as individuals, collectively they had immense buying power and the wherewithal to direct local economies and demand better prices. “My father built a clinic with people like Mamphela Ramphele, which is still in existence today. At the time they were about 26 and they built this clinic in a rural community without any government support. What is the responsibility of a South African who lives in a democracy? This is the culture difference that I am talking about,” Biko says.
“Black Consciousness taught people about a positive sense of self and then tried to link that positive sense of self to an emancipation programme. We need programmes that will rekindle the consciousness of the citizenry in this country. We need a reawakening of the national consciousness.” DM

This Article was retreived from the Daily Maverick on the 9th of December 2011

”Black Women in Performing Arts: A Conference on Identity & Representation”

2011-12-06T08:42:00.000+02:00

On the 9th and 10th of December, the Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, will present a conference entitled, “Black Women in Performing Arts: Identity and Representation”, in partnership with The British Council of South Africa and the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council.

This two-day interactive conference will provide a platform for authentic reflections on the roles of black women in performing arts, and the challenges they encounter, while developing strategies to advance their participation in the sector. Focusing on testimonies and autobiographies of three dynamic, self motivated and successful performing arts practitioners, the conference will feature: playwright and poet Fatima Dike; choreographer and dancer Mamela Nyamza; and actress Warona Seane.

Led by Siphokazi Petshwa and Nomalungisa Mjo, the conference will include over 35 community-based practitioners from performing arts organizations in the Eastern Cape. All participants seek to motivate up and coming artists to explore their own understandings of what it means to be a black woman in the industry and what contribution they can make.

For more information on the Steve Biko Foundation and the Steve Biko Centre, please visit www.sbf.org.za.

ENDS

For further information please contact the Steve Biko Foundation on 043-642 1177 or via email at jongi@sbf.org.za

2011 COMMUNITY GAMES: 4TH ANNUAL STEVE BIKO BIRTHDAY INVITATIONAL

2011-11-16T11:10:00.002+02:00

Call for Submissions: The Contemporary Relevance of Steve Biko

2011-11-15T13:53:00.000+02:00

Opportunity Closing Date: Monday, November 28, 2011
Opportunity Type: Call for Submissions

December 18, 2011 marks Bantu Stephen Biko’s 65th birthday. In celebration, the Steve Biko Foundation is calling for reflections on the legacy of this South African freedom fighter. The topic is The Contemporary Relevance of Steve Biko. Submissions may focus on any field that was impacted by Biko, but of particular interest are:

 The Arts
 Culture
 Education
 Economic Development
 Identity
 Health

Submissions will be published in the December issue of the Steve Biko Foundation’s FrankTalk Journal as well as on the FrankTalk Blog.

The length of the submission should be between 800 and 1500 words in MS Word.

Papers should be submitted to Dibuseng Kolisang at dibuseng@sbf.org.za. Alternatively, papers may be faxed to + (27.11) 403. 8835.

For more information email Dibuseng or call + (27.11) 403. 0310.

Malema suspended

2011-11-10T13:12:00.000+02:00

ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was suspended from the ruling party for two years today.This sanction was suspended for three years.

ANCYL autonomy ‘qualified’
The ANC Youth League’s autonomy was “qualified”, the chairman of the ruling party’s national disciplinary committee, Derek Hanekom, said today.

He said the argument that the ANC Youth League was independent of the ANC was incorrect.

The youth league enjoyed a “degree of organisational autonomy”, but was not independent of the ANC.

The youth league existed for the sole benefit of the ANC.

The youth league’s Constitution should not be in conflict with the ANC’s Constitution, Hanekom said ahead of an announcement about youth league president Julius Malema, who is charged alongside five others with bringing the party into disrepute.

- SAPA

This article was retrieved on the 10th of November, 2011 from City Press Online: http://www.citypress.co.za/Politics/News/Malema-suspended-20111110#

Paediatric Ethical & Legal Topics Seminar: PELT

2011-11-04T16:20:00.000+02:00

On November 12, 2011, the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics at Wits University will host a Paediatric Ethical and Legal Seminar.

To Book: Please RSVP with Lebo on Lebogang.Ngwatle@wits.ac.za / 011 484 9642/ 071 607 6405

Date : 12 November 2011
Venue : Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital
: Area 154
Time : 09:30 – 13:30 (with Lunch)
Cost : R200 Paediatricians
: R100 – Registrars, Nurses, General Practitioners and others
CPD : 4 points

Topics to be covered: Chaired by Prof. Adriano Duse

• Evidence-based Medicine AND over-servicing in the private sector (presented by a paediatrician, Prof. Keith Bolton)
• Paediatrician Under Threat (presented by the Medical Protection Society, Dr. Liz Meyer)
• Court Etiquette – Doctors in court (presented by Eversheds; Candice Pillay )
• The Role of Advocacy and Activism for the Doctor (presented by Mark Heywood; Section 27)

Proceeds from this Seminar will go in aid of the Wits Paediatric Fund:

The Wits Paediatric Fund is a fundraising non-profit-organisation that operates under the trust deed of the Wits Foundation. The fund seeks to raise funds to support the paediatric and neonatal units at three Wits University teaching hospitals – Chris Hani Baragwanath, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg, and Rahima Moosa Mother & Child hospitals.

BPO registration number: 18/11/13/3902
www.witspaediatricfund.org.za
Enquiries: Lebo Ngwatle, Lebogang.Ngwatle@wits.ac.za 011 484 9642

FranTalk Dialogue Session 9

2011-11-04T12:44:00.001+02:00

On Monday September 26, the Steve Biko Foundation held the ninth FrankTalk series. The topic for discussion was Arts and Culture as Tools for Socio-Economic Development. In this discussion, we revisited the role that Arts, Culture and Heritage can play in advancing socio-economic development in South Africa. The contributing panellists were Mr. Thembinkosi Goniwe and Ms. Roundy Nini.

Biko and the Quest for a True Humanity: A Public Seminar on the State of the Nation

2011-11-04T11:05:00.000+02:00

On Friday the 23rd, September 2011, the Steve Biko Foundation, in partnership with The Umtapo Centre and the Durban University of Technology, hosted the Biko Seminar titled The Quest for True Humanity at the DUT Hotel School Conference Centre. The contributing panellists included Ms. Liepollo Lebohang Pheko, Mrs. Asha Moodley and Professor Neville Alexander.

Evil Under The Sun: The Death Of Steve Biko

2011-09-13T15:03:00.005+02:00

COPYRIGHT - Sir Sydney Kentridge and Steve Biko Foundation - 12 September 2011. All rights reserved

Today is the 34th anniversary of the death of Stephen Bantu Biko. He was 30 years of age. I read of his death in the newspaper the following day. I had never met him. Many, perhaps most, white people in South African had never heard of him. I at least had heard of him as a militant young black leader who espoused The Black Consciousness philosophy. And I had heard
reports from some of my colleagues at the Bar that as a witness for the defence at the trial in Pretoria of some young black activists he had made a strong impression on an initially unsympathetic judge. That was all. So I admit to having been astonished at the extraordinary reaction to the news of his death.
The bare facts, as they first come out were that he had been arrested for breach of a banning order confining him to the district of King Williamstown, that he had been in the custody of the Security Branch of the South African Police at Port Elizabeth, had become “unwell”, had been sent to Pretoria and had died there in a prison cell. I have said the reaction was extraordinary. Steve Biko was not the first man to have died while in the custody of the Security Branch. He was, as far as these things were known, the 44th. But this death was reported internationally. In Washington the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee called the death an outrage. In the United Nations it was described as tragic.
In South Africa thousands of black students demonstrated, with the usual hundreds of arrests. Desmond Tutu, then Bishop of Lesotho, expressed the sense of loss felt within and beyond the black community, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi said “only a country as mad as South Africa can waste such talent”. The sense of outrage was hardly dampened by the first
response of the South African government, The Minister of Police, Mr. Jimmy Kruger, speaking in the congenial atmosphere of the Transvaal Congress of the Nationalist Party stated that Biko had been on a hunger strike. One of the delegates to the great amusement of his fellows congratulated Mr. Kruger for being so democratic that those who wanted to starve themselves to death were allowed by him to do so. Mr. Kruger then made his never-to be-forgotten statement “I am not pleased nor am I sorry. Biko’s death leaves me cold.”
There was of course no truth at all in the story of a hunger strike.
The wave of protest and condemnation did not die down. International pressure forced the Prime Minister, Mr. Vorster to promise a full enquiry. It took the form of an inquest which opened two months later in Pretoria in the Old Synagogue – a deconsecrated building converted into a courtroom some years before especially to accommodate major political trials.
The Chief Magistrate of Pretoria presided at the inquest. There were several sets of advocates engaged - for the police, for the district surgeons who had attended Steven Biko, for the prisons department and, representing government interests generally, the Attorney General. There were three of us representing the widow and the mother of Steve Biko – myself, George Bizos and Ernie Wentzel. Our instructing attorney was the lively and efficient Shun Chetty. We were given all of the many affidavits made by members of the Port Elizabeth Security Branch who had had custody of Steve Biko and by the district surgeons who had seen him. The Chief Magistrate did not restrict our cross-examination of the police or the doctors. Further, the government pathologist had agreed that two pathologists who had been engaged on behalf of the family could observer and participate in the autopsy which was carried out on the day after Steve Biko’s death. The two pathologists were Dr. Jonathan Gluckman and Professor Neville Proctor, an internationally known neuropathologist.
The inquest began on the 14th November 1977 and ran for two weeks. I do not propose to tell the full story of the inquest. George Bizos has given a masterly account of it in his book, “No One To Blame”, I shall try to give the essentials of what came to light at the inquest.
Steve Biko who, as I have said, was confined by ministerial order to the King Williamstown District, was arrested at a road block outside that area on the 18th August together with his friend Peter Jones. It is believed that they had been to Cape Town to visit political supporters of their movement. Steve Biko was taken to a Port Elizabeth prison and kept there until 6th September. On that day he was transferred to the headquarters of the Security Branch of the police, which were in a Port Elizabeth office building. He was held there under the statute which permitted a police officer to detain indefinitely for interrogation any person whom he believed had committed an offence under the Terrorism Act or had knowledge of such an offence. There had been some inflammatory leaflets distributed in the Eastern Province and the Security Police presumably believed that he was responsible for them. In any event they were anxious to induce him to admit some connection with them. No such connection was ever proved and those who knew Steve Biko best have always disputed it. At all events, on the 6th September he did not tell the police anything they wanted to hear. On that day he was a fit and healthy man. On the morning of the 7th he was seriously ill. He was seen on that and subsequent days by two district surgeons and a private consultant. He showed obvious signs of neurological damage, but he was never hospitalised. On the night of the 12th September he was sent to a Pretoria prison. By the next morning he was dead. There was never any doubt even before the inquest began of the true cause of death. The story of a hunger strike was a clumsy fabrication. The cause of death was extensive brain injury caused by blows to the head. The pathologists, those employed by the State and those engaged by the Biko family, all agreed on this. What then were the real issues at the inquest? First, the police throughout denied that Biko had been assaulted. Consequently, much of the police evidence was directed to finding a cause for his brain injuries which did not incriminate them. The second issue was the manner in which Steve Biko was treated throughout his detention. On the first issue, there was a story to which all the officers who were present on the morning of the 7th September adhered. On that morning Biko was taken from the mat on which he had lain all night under guard and in shackles and was taken to the interrogation room. There he was seated on a chair. When the Major, who was in charge of the interrogation, began to question him he sprang up and attacked the Major with such fury that it took the Captain who was also present and three other officers to subdue him. In the course of that violent struggle, so it was said, he had bumped his head on the wall and fallen to the floor, fighting furiously throughout. After he was brought under control he was taken back to his mat where he was again placed in leg irons. That bump against the wall was the cause of the brain injuries found post mortem, so the police maintained. The incident was referred to as a scuffle.
Before the inquest affidavits had been sworn by every person who had had any contact with Biko during his detention. Unfortunately for the police none of these affidavits, 28 of them in all, had made any mention of the alleged bump of his head against the wall. Nor, it transpired from the evidence, had the three doctors who had examined Biko while he was in detention ever been told of any bump on the head. The Security Police Colonel in command in Port Elizabeth had never mentioned either to the doctors or in his five affidavits that Biko had suffered a bump on his head. This Major who had been in charge of the interrogation was hardly a star witness. He was naturally asked by the advocate for the police if he could give any reason for Biko’s wild outburst. He said that what had provoked Biko’s fury was that he, the Major, had shown him sworn statements made by the friend who had been arrested with him at the roadblock, that these statements had seriously inculpated him, and that that was what had enraged him. The police advocate then asked him to produce those statements to the court. He did so. But we at once saw what the Major and his counsel had overlooked. All of the statements were dated after Biko’s death.
Further, the bump on the wall version was utterly destroyed by the expert medical evidence. Professor Proctor and Dr. Gluckman had expressed the firm opinion that the brain injuries suffered by Biko must have resulted in a period of unconsciousness of at least 10 to 20 minutes. They were supported in their view by Professor Simson, head of the department of anatomical pathology at the University of Pretoria. The state pathologist Professor Laubser, did not dispute this. Yet the evidence of all the officers was that Biko fought, as one of them put it, like a wild animal throughout. Their evidence under cross-examination eliminated even the shortest period of unconsciousness. Looking a these facts from what I hope is an objective distance, I have no doubt that between the evening of the 6th and the early morning of the 7th September Steve Biko suffered a number of heavy blows to the head, inflicted by one or more of the Security Branch officers who had charge of him. This assault was probably carried out with some instrument which left no external injury such as – and here I guess – a sandbag or loaded length of hosepipe. The latter object was known from later evidence to have been used on other occasions by the Security Branch in Port Elizabeth.
Many years later the Major made an application for Amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was a strange application (ultimately rejected) because he did not admit to any misdeed. But he did describe the instructions given to him by his superiors regarding Biko. “We should break him down in order to obtain information from him”. Steve Biko was hardly an easy man to break down. This was not his first experience of detention. One of his earlier spells of Security Branch detention had lasted 101 days during which he had not yielded an inch to his interrogators. So the blows which caused his death were doubtless somebody’s idea of breaking him down.
How was Steve Biko treated after he had received his injuries? He was stripped naked, his legs shackled and fixed to a grille, handcuffed for most of the time. He staggered, mumbled unintelligibly, did not take food or water, did not ask to go to the toilet, and was left lying on his urine-soaked blanket. The shackling and the nakedness were ordered by the Colonel. When asked why he had given such orders he replied that it was to prevent escape. When asked why, for decency’s sake this shackled man should not have been allowed to wear a pair of underpants he replied that it was to prevent him from using them to commit suicide. This ludicrous answer was typical both of this officer’s disregard for the truth and of his contempt for the most basic human rights of any person unfortunate enough to fall into his power. It was obvious to this Colonel that there was something seriously wrong with Biko. He therefore later on the 7th September sent for the District Surgeon. The District Surgeon arrived and after an examination wrote out a certificate for the Colonel. This doctor said in his evidence that he had noticed Biko’s slurred speech and staggering gait. He had also noticed a swollen lip with a cut in it. The possibility of a head injury had occurred to him, he said, but he asked no questions of either Biko, or the Colonel. The certificate he wrote out for the Colonel stated simply that he could find no evidence of any abnormality or pathology on Mr. Biko. He left him as he found him.
Why should an experienced district surgeon have been prepared to give such a misleading certificate? The answer became clear. The Colonel had decided to take the line that Biko’s slurred speech, his staggering, his incontinence were shammed, to avoid interrogation, and he firmly turned the doctors’ minds in that direction. He persisted even when the Senior District Surgeon, who was called in to examine Biko the next day, found a clinical sign that pointed strongly in the direction of neurological damage. The Colonel still insisted that Biko was shamming even after the
consulting physician who had been called in by the Senior District Surgeon, carried out a lumbar puncture which showed blood cells in the spinal fluid. This pretence was kept up to the end. The physician recommended that Biko be kept under close observation in a hospital. The Colonel refused to allow this. Instead Biko was sent to the sick bay in a local prison, under the care of a medical orderly.
On the afternoon of the 11th September he was found lying on the floor with froth on his mouth. He was described by the Colonel himself as being in a semi-coma. At this late stage panic set in. The Colonel remained unwilling to send him to a local hospital – for reasons which are not hard to guess, so it was decided to send him at once to Pretoria Central Prison. As no air ambulance was available he was sent by road. Steve Biko was placed on mats in the back of a Land Rover from which the rear seats had been removed. The Captain whom I have already mentioned was in charge. The Land Rover was driven 700 miles through the night. There was no medical orderly with them. Biko was kept naked throughout the journey. According to the Captain that was to make it harder for him to escape. No medical reports were brought to Pretoria. Instead the Pretoria officials were told falsely that the Port Elizabeth doctors had found nothing wrong with Mr. Biko and that he was probably shamming. Yet the medical orderly at the Pretoria prison at once saw that he was seriously ill, and feared for his life. That afternoon, the 12th September, Steve Biko died, lying on
a mat in the Pretoria Prison Hospital. At the inquest we described it without, I think, any rhetorical exaggeration as a miserable and lonely death.
At an early stage of the inquest the Chief Magistrate had told Counsel that he expected that by reason of the many issues in the case it would take him some time to prepare a reasoned verdict. In fact the verdict came on the morning after the inquest had ended, and contained no reasons. It took at most three minutes to deliver. The Chief Magistrate found that Stephen Bantu Biko had suffered extensive brain injuries probably sustained during a scuffle with police officers on the morning of the 7th September: and that the evidence did not prove that the death was brought about by any act involving or amounting to an offence on the part of any person. So once again nobody was to blame. Given the history of previous inquests into deaths of detainees the verdict, perverse as it was, was by no means a surprise to us. To quote Ecclesiastes again “If thou seest the oppression of the poor and the violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter.” But many did marvel. The verdict caused outrage in South Africa and beyond. It flew in the face of all the evidence. Its formal result was to exonerate all the officers. They were not disciplined or even reprimanded for the manner in which they had treated Biko after he had sustained his injuries. On the contrary the Colonel was promoted to Brigadier and so in due course was the Captain. In our closing address in the inquest court we said this: “Any verdict which can be seen as an exoneration of the Port Elizabeth Security Police will unfortunately be interpreted as a licence to abuse helpless people with impunity.”
Unfortunately we were right. Over the following ten years more than 30 people died while in detention by the Security Branch or having passed through their hands. So what do we take from this lamentable tale? Above all the tragedy of the loss of a man of courage, and of talents, a man of
promise who might have become a man of destiny. What of the inquest itself? It had at least exposed to the world and, more important, to many in South Africa whose eyes, ears and hearts had been closed, the cruelty and inhumanity inseparable from the regime of apartheid. It was a practical
demonstration that apartheid was not a social experiment which might or might not succeed but was an exercise of power based only on force. The attitude of those who exercised that power was summed up in the comment of the Minister on Biko’s death and by the equally cold-hearted statements of the Major and the Colonel at the inquest. The Major said that he felt bad about Biko’s death because “he was worth much more to us alive than dead”. The Colonel said that he was upset when he learnt of Biko’s death because “it was a disaster for us that he could not be brought before a court and unmasked.” The present South African Constitution has as its foundation the concept of “ubuntu”. This word has been translated as “a
feeling of common humanity”. If a concept may be defined by its opposite, the feelings expressed by the Minister, the Major and the Colonel are the exact opposite of ubuntu. These events are, in the words of the poet, “old unhappy far off things, and battles long ago”. Apartheid is gone forever. Under the new Constitution of South Africa such things, we trust, cannot
happen. But it may still be worth considering how they could have happened under the old dispensation. The conduct which brought about the death of Steve Biko was of course completely unlawful. No statute permitted murder, assault or deliberate medical neglect. There were laws which punished such things, there were courts and lawyers. So how could such things have been done and done with impunity?If a simple answer is to be given it is the Terrorism Act of 1967, an act ostensibly designed to combat terrorism, but terrorism so widely defined as to catch nearly all meaningful black political activity. Existing statutes had given Ministers huge and draconian powers over individuals and communities. But the difference in the Terrorism Act was that it put absolute power directly into the hands
of the police. Section 6 of that Act authorised the police without judicial warrant to arrest and detain any person whom any senior police officer had reason to believe either had committed an offence under the act or had any knowledge of such offence. The object of the detention was interrogation, and there was no limit to the period of detention. The act expressly provided that no court could pronounce on the validity of a detention under the act, or order the release of a detainee. So habeas corpus was excluded. Moreover, a detainee was held incommunicado. He could not see or even write to a lawyer, a doctor of his own choice or members of
his own family. Sometimes reports of assaults on detainees leaked out, and applications for interdicts to stop abuse occasionally reached the courts. But the independence of the judiciary had been undermined by a policy of political appointments to the Bench. In all too many cases executive-minded judges sympathetic to the objectives of the government refused to intervene in cases concerning detainees, anxious only to ensure that court
proceedings should not interfere with the interrogation process. Officers of the Security Branch who abused detainees knew that they had nothing to fear from their superiors, and little from legal proceedings.
That is why, writing about Biko’s death, Alan Paton could say “Any black who thinks he has a right equal to the white man ... to share equally in its government of South Africa will end up in detention. But there is a possibility more grave than that, the possibility that he may die there.”
In the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and elsewhere there has been some evidence and much speculation about the extent to which ministers of the government knew of the fatal assaults, perpetrated by the Security Branch. With so many deaths, over so long a period it is hard to believe that responsible ministers did not know how section 6 detainees were treated. If any did not know it was through what lawyers call diligence in
ignorance. Nor was it easy to publicise the treatment of detainees. During those years the press was for the most part surprisingly free to criticise government action. However, the Nationalist government passed an act which made it a criminal offence to publish any false statement about the police or about prisons unless the publisher could show that he had taken due care before publishing it. That may not sound unreasonable, but its practical effect was far-reaching. Even if a newspaper had a sworn statement from an ex-detainee alleging assault or torture it could be sure that it would be disputed in court by the Security Branch officers concerned, with every chance that some equivalent of the Chief Magistrate of Pretoria would decide in their favour. As to taking due care before publishing, in the leading case under this statute the judge held that “due care” required a newspaper to give the authorities advance notice of its proposed publication and await their comments. The chilling effect on the press was inevitable. The facts about the treatment of Steve Biko could be safely published only because they were disclosed in the inquest. Now South Africa has a constitution with a comprehensive Bill
of Rights which protects every individual from abuses of executive power. It is enforced by the Courts and particularly by the Constitutional Court of South Africa – undoubtedly one of the great successes of the new constitution. One cannot now visualise anything like section 6 of the old Terrorism Act. Such a law would be quickly struck down by the Courts. This is a country under the rule of law. Nonetheless a glance around the modern world shows us that nowhere can the rule of law be taken for granted. In the United States the 200 year old Bill of Rights has not prevented
Guantanamo Bay. In the great democracy of India its Constitution and its distinguished Supreme Court have not prevented episodes of oppressive executive power. I do not claim any special political expertise but my belief is that in modern constitutional democracies threats to the rule of law do not come so much from sweeping acts of legislation as from seemingly limited but incremental encroachments. I most certainly do not claim any qualification to comment on South African politics. However, as a lawyer who over a long, some would say too long, period has practised in different countries I shall venture a few very general observations.
It is a truism that a free, independent and critical press is essential to the rule of law. So first I would say beware of any law which seeks to regulate the press. Statutory regulation, however reasonable it may look, will inevitably stifle both reporting and comment. The apartheid era press law is a clear example. It penalised only false statements and required of the press only reasonable care. But the actual and intended result was
censorship of reporting on police and prisons. Still more dangerous would be any extension of the Official Secrets Act beyond its traditional scope of protecting military secrets which could be of use to an enemy. Any more general definition of official secrets would inhibit legitimate investigative journalism. I would also beware of any measure which directly or indirectly undermines the independence of the judiciary. This may take different forms. It may take the form of cutting down the jurisdiction of the courts. Or it may take the form of appointments to the Bench for political reasons. Diversity of the Bench is of real value, and merit may often be a matter of opinion, but the aim, even if not immediately attainable, should be to make merit the sole criterion for judicial appointment. A succession of political appointments undermines the respect for the judiciary as an institution.
It was famously said by one of the authors of the Constitution of the United States that the judiciary in its nature is the weakest branch of government. Its power in the long run depends on its commanding the respect of society as a whole. The courts are rightly open to public criticism. Judgments of the courts may legitimately be subjected to strong criticism, even criticism which many of us would think unfair. Appointments to the Bench like any other acts of government must also be open to reasoned criticism. But scurrilous and ill-founded attacks on the integrity and motives of the courts as a whole or of individual judges undermine respect for the judiciary and so undermine the rule of law. Such attacks should be deprecated by all democrats and the motives of those who make them should be viewed with the utmost suspicion. They are
particularly damaging when they come from persons within or close to government. That is the end of my sermon. Let me return to Steve Biko.
After the inquest I read some of his writings. I have recently re-read some of them. Even today, over thirty years on, in a radically changed society, their power is extraordinary. You find in them a combination of eloquence, insight, political passion and political pragmatism. The Steve Biko Foundation is to be congratulated for keeping alive not only his memory but also the principles on which his actions were founded. I shall not venture to summarise his political philosophy, but I shall try to say what I have taken from my reading. Steve Biko’s definition of Black Consciousness in the fewest words would be “self-respect, pride in one’s own people and culture and, above all self-reliance.” Blacks in South Africa, he asserted must look to their own efforts to achieve freedom, not rely on the assistance of other groups. Blacks must never be complicit in their own oppression. He was quite uncompromising in this. He had hard words for those such as Kaiser Matanzima who took office in the so-called Bantu homelands. He regarded even ordinary black policemen as having sold their souls. He acted on his own principles. As a student at the University of Natal he had been active in the National Union of South African Students, a body which was of course strongly opposed to apartheid, and whose white leaders had often attracted the attention of the Security police. Yet in 1968 he led a breakaway of black students from Nusas to form the South African Students Organisation. His writings at the time show that he had no ill-will towards Nusas. His thinking was epitomised in the Saso slogan – “Blackman, you are on your own.”
In his later political work he continued to attract a following among young blacks and much of his writing and speeches continued to be addressed to them. His message, tough, uncompromising and militant as it was, was entirely free of rancour or any expression of racism. Speaking immediately after his death Bishop Desmond Tutu said that of all young blacks involved in working for change he was the least infected by racism. Here was a true youth leader who was a moral inspiration to his followers. It would be sad if such a man and what he stood for were to be forgotten.
Now that much which Steve Biko lived and died for has come to pass, his words have not lost their resonance. His forthright analysis was that the struggle in South Africa was not a class struggle but a racial one. He said that on the one side was white racism and “the antithesis to this must ipso facto be a strong solidarity amongst the blacks. But out of these two situations he said one could hope to reach some kind of balance – “a true humanity where power politics will have no place”. And he
concluded one article in these words – “Blacks have had enough experience as objects of racism not to wish to turn the tables. While it may be relevant now to talk about black in relation to white, we must not make it our preoccupation, for it can be a negative exercise ...
We have set out on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize ... in time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible – a more human face.” He would, I think, have endorsed Ubuntu as the foundation of a new South African constitution. This evening we remember Stephen Bantu Biko – his life, a South African beacon, his death, a South African tragedy.

Sir Sydney Kentridge Q.C.
Cape Town
12th September 2011

COPYRIGHT - Sir Sydney Kentridge and Steve Biko Foundation - 12 September 2011. All rights reserved

Franktalk Dialogue Session 6

2011-08-23T10:01:00.000+02:00

On August 18th the Steve Biko Foundation held the sixth session in the Franktalk series. Given recent pronouncements that have been made by public figures in the media, this forum explored the topic "Free Speech versus Hate Speech, What is the Dividing Line?" Here are some of the images from the session...

Steve Biko Memorial Lecture - 2011

2011-08-19T10:26:00.000+02:00

On September 12th The Steve Biko Foundation will host the 12th annual Steve Biko Memorial lecture. A formal notification with advice on ticketing will follow. Save The Date...

Franktalk Dialogue Session 6

2011-08-15T14:23:00.001+02:00

On August 18th, the Steve Biko Foundation will host the sixth session in the Franktalk series, a non-partisan platform for engagement with relevant socio-economic and political issues in order to strengthen democracy, advance human rights and facilitate development. Given recent pronouncements that have been made by public figures in the media, this forum will explore the topic "Free Speech versus Hate Speech, What is the Dividing Line?" View the invitation below for more information...

Steve Biko Exhibition: The Quest For A True Humanity

2011-08-02T16:05:00.002+02:00

On July 28th the McGregor Museum, situated in Kimberley, held the Launch of the Northern Cape Exhibition entitled Biko: The Quest For A True Humanity. Here are some of the pictures from the event.

Steve Biko enthusiasts at the opening of his exhibition. The exhibition was a collaboration between the Steve Biko Foundation, the Department of Education and the Apartheid Museum.

Daniel Matlho, Drake Tshenkeng (friend of late Steve Biko) and Sam Ramphoma at the Steve Biko exhibit at the McGregor Museum.

People commenting on the legacy of Steve Biko. Some of them are: Johnny Clegg, Nelson Mandela, Mamphela Ramphele, Keith Murray, Thandiswa Mazwai, Desmond Tutu, Thabo Mbeki

Drake Tshenkeng opened the Steve Biko Exhibition with a prayer and was also asked to say a few words about Biko seeing as was one of his close friends back in the day.

2011-07-25T15:53:00.000+02:00

On the 28th of July the McGregor Museum will host the Launch of the Steve Biko Exhibition: The Quest For A True Humanity. For more information, contact the Foundation at (011) 403 - 0310.

5th Franktalk Discussion

2011-07-15T15:28:00.000+02:00

On the 21st of July, the Steve Biko Foundation will host the fifth session in the Franktalk series. The topic for discussion will be the Historic and Contemporary Reflections on Student Leadership. For more information, contact the Office at (011) 403-0310.

Steve Biko Memorial Lectures

2011-07-12T15:39:00.000+02:00

The Steve Biko Memorial Lectures book is now available on Amazon. Anyone with a Kindle or a device that can access Kindle eBooks such as PCs, iPads or iPhones can now easily purchase and enjoy this title through Amazon.com, .de and .co.uk. Below are the links to their various websites...

www.amazon.com

www.amazon.co.uk

www.amazon.de

Ethics left behind as drug trials soar in developing countries

2011-07-06T12:19:00.000+02:00

By SciDev Net, part of the Guardian development network guardian.co.uk
BST Article history

Ethical rules to protect participants in developing countries aren't keeping pace with the increase in clinical trials, conference told

The number of clinical trials in developing countries has surged in recent years but the legal and ethical frameworks to make them fair are often not in place, the 7th World Conference of Science Journalists, in Qatar, heard last week.

By 2008, for example, there were three times as many developing countries participating in clinical trials registered with the US Food and Drug Administration than there were in the entire period between 1948 and 2000, with many "transitional" countries, such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, taking part.

For the pharmaceutical industry, the attractions are the lower costs and the availability of "treatment-naive" patients, who are much less likely to have been previously exposed to drugs or trials.

The main incentive for developing countries is the promise of advanced medical science and access to the latest medications. However, the process of putting in place a legal and ethical framework to protect participants is not going at the same pace in many of these countries, the meeting heard.

"Less stringent ethical review, anticipated under-reporting of side effects, and the lower risk of litigation make carrying out research in the developing world less demanding," said Ames Dhai, director of the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

While many countries have set ethical standards for clinical trials, this is not a guarantee they will be respected by those who perform the trials. "The problem is implementing these [ethical] guidelines and the imperialistic attitude of researchers and sponsors who come to the country and frequently disregard our process," Dhai added.

Places such as South Africa – where mostly vulnerable poor with low literacy levels are recruited and the culture is to accept authority without question – are fertile land for ethical misconduct, speakers said.

India is another example, where a recent trial of two vaccines against the virus responsible for cervical cancer has had a lot of negative publicity after some deaths that were later shown to be unrelated to the trial, but exposed ethical irregularities in the Indian system.

According to Sonia Shah, author of The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients, up to 80% of patients recruited in some developing countries are not informed about the nature of the study they are taking part in. In addition, many of them do not feel free to quit the trial, because they think that they or their children will lose out on good healthcare or treatment if they abandon it.

"The greatest challenge in moving to mutual benefit is balancing the needs of biomedical research with the full protection of research participants and communities," said Dhai. If this can be achieved, clinical trials can be highly beneficial for developing countries.

Prerna Mona Khanna, medical contributor for Fox Chicago News, said: "Research can be used as a platform to enhance skills locally, build genuine partnership, and get funds to develop appropriate programmes – and maintenance of equipment can be built into the costs of the original research."

For more information, follow the link below...

www.guardian.co.uk

Steve Biko Exhibition: BIKO THE QUEST FOR A TRUE HUMANITY

2011-06-20T09:42:00.000+02:00

The launch of the Steve Biko Exhibition: BIKO THE QUEST FOR A TRUE HUMANITY will begin on the 24th of June at the East London Museum. The exhibition showcases until January 2012. For more information, contact Nishklin at npillay@sbf.org.za

The Ginsberg Easter Festival

2011-05-04T15:20:00.000+02:00

The Steve Biko Centre
The Ginsberg Easter Festival
“Resurrecting our Narrative of Identity and Village Spirit.”

A harvest of stories weaved by evocative physical movement, images, choral singing, dance, poetry, and expressions of identity dialogues. Inspired by the notion of Ubuntu, the experience took its audience on a journey of self realization and discovery described by Biko as the quest for a true humanity. Shaped by popular symbols, images, and communal voice, this voyage explored the collective stories, popular memories and history of the region as a platform for reflection on todays burning issues.

“Resurrecting the archived stories and excavating the narrative spirit of Eastern Cape.”

The performance took place on the platform at the King Williams Town Train station and took the audience on a journey to rediscover and reconstruct the village spirit. Enabling Eastern Cape to claim its stolen memory and putting its narratives back to its landscape.

4th Franktalk Discussion

2011-04-19T13:15:00.000+02:00

On the 14th of April, the Steve Biko Foundation held the fourth session in the Franktalk series. The topic for discussion was "Black Theology - 1960 to the Current Day." As the Easter season approaches we took this opportunity to assess the historic and contemporary impact of Black Theology on South African society. The discussion took place at the PDH Hub in the University of the Witwatersrand.

Here are some of the images from the discussion...

Mind your language - shake-up at universities

2011-04-08T14:10:00.000+02:00

Pretoria - Every university student in South Africa could be required to learn one African language as a condition for graduating, Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande said on Tuesday.

An advisory panel had been tasked with looking into the issue, Nzimande said in Pretoria at the launch of the teacher education and development plan for the next 15 years.

"One of the things we are looking into is... to what extent should we consider that every university student in South Africa must at least learn one African language as a condition for graduating," he said.

This was "very, very critical".

Speaking in isiZulu, Nzimande said: "Akukwazi ukuba yithi kuphela ekuthiwa sifunde isingisi nesibhunu bakwethu, kodwa ezethu iyilimi nabanye bangazifundi [We can't be expected to learn English and Afrikaans, yet they don't learn our languages]".

He said the issue of the development and teaching of African languages in universities was something he was taking up as a special ministerial project.

The advisory panel would look at how to strengthen university teaching and expansion of African languages, which was in a serious decline.

The launch of the strategic planning framework for teachers aims to improve the quality of teachers and teaching in the country in line with calls over the years by teacher unions.

The plan identifies the availability of qualified and capable African language foundation phase teachers as particularly problematic.

Nzimande said this had "severe implications" for the development of early numeracy and literacy, which was the foundation for all future learning.

"African language learners in the poor, rural context are mostly severely impacted," he said.

A European Union-supported programme to strengthen foundation teacher education was already being implemented by the higher and basic education departments.

It would increase the number of universities involved in foundation phase teacher education from 18 in 2008 to 20 by 2014, said Nzimande.

- SAPA

This article was taken from the news24 website. To view the full article and all the comments, go to www.news24.com

Franktalk Dialogue Session 4

2011-04-06T10:30:00.001+02:00

On the 14th of April, The Steve Biko Foundation will host the fourth session in the FrankTalk series, a nonpartisan platform for engagement with relevant socio-economic and political issues in order to strengthen democracy, advance human rights and facilitate development. As the Easter season approaches we will take this opportunity to assess the historic and contemporary impact of Black Theology on South African society. The discussion will take place at the PDH Hub, University of the Witwatersrand, Entrance 6, Empire Road and M1 Interchange. For more information, contact us at (011) 403-0310 or at npillay@sbf.org.za

The 6th Annual Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture

2011-03-18T08:43:00.000+02:00

The Legacy and Relevance of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe in the 21st Africa

By: Kwandiwe Kondlo
University of Fort Hare
Alice

Honourable Vice Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare, the CEO of the Steven Biko Foundation, the CEO of the Robert Sobukwe Trust, fellow academics, honourable, members of the provincial government, the leadership of the ANC and PAC as well as other political parties, guests from various sections of our society including those from outside South Africa, student leadership, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour to give the 6th Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture at this University.
Mangaliso Sobukwe’s footprints in South African political history shall never be erased. Unfortunately Sobukwe is not widely known in South Africa and I think this is not just a matter of oversight but is deliberate. The post-apartheid dispensation in our country is marked by the rise of a new kind of selective memory and a new kind of exclusion . We are led to believe that one movements’ history of struggle; one movement’s leaders and fallen heroes are all- embracing of the entire liberation movement. This attempt to stamp the entire history of the liberation struggle in South Africa with the colours one organization has made some of our heroes - who were victims of exclusion during colonialism and apartheid, victims once again – they are now victims of an exclusionary post-apartheid memory, which is largely an invention of today’s the victors.

This invention has its own intellectuals, these I call tendentious scholars who one day shall stand accused before the judgment of history. Yes there are efforts to bring Sobukwe and his ideas back to public discourse but let him not be inscribed with meanings completely unrelated to the cause he stood for and the organization in which he operated. I am refer here to the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania.

Ladies and gentlemen I am an academic, I am a researcher and an African scholar. What energizes scholars is the pursuit of the truth in all its dimensions.I say this so that it is clear from the outset that I am not a political party activist, I am loyal to no political party but to the quest for truth.
I owe ordinary African people, especially those humbled by their conditions of poverty and deprivation, the truth about our reality and circumstances; the truth about why the ideas of Robert Sobukwe remain so true and so relevant today as they were before1994.

Ordinary people, want to know the truth – they have nothing to lose from the truthful analyses of their predicament, it’s the elites who usually benefit from the mystification of the way society works. The problem in the 21st century Africa is that African scholars have sort of abandoned their mission – some also found comfortable spaces in the market place – as Isa Shivji (1993) puts it, they have also distinguished themselves by their silence, submission and subservience rather than courage and consistency.

I have chosen to talk about the legacy and relevance of Robert Sobukwe in the 21st Century Africa, the African Century. I am acutely aware of debates around whether the 20th century really ended or is it just a change in numeric – I will stay clear of that debate for now.
In a book which I edited, titled ‘Africa in Focus – Governance in the 21st Century’ to be released next month, I argue that the 21st century is for the African continent a make or break century. If liberal democracy doesn’t deliver in order to meet the ‘cares and sorrows’ of the African majority, then all prospects of peace are likely to be dashed and destroyed. In fact among the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century is the sustainability of peace and the crisis of the state as a form of power and authority that guarantees order in human society.

There are four thematic issues which emerge from a close examination of the political life and work of Robert Sobukwe. I will examine only 2 for the sake of time. These include:
First is organic social-capital leadership – a leadership style which emerges from and is rooted among people – a kind of leadership which cultivates bonds of solidarity and trust

Second, is the weapon of theory in the building of a united polity. The dry pragmatism of today has eclipsed the significance of theory to inform and guides action; people want to implement and conceptualize later; thinking and conceptualization are seen as a waste of time.
Third, Sobukwe taught us the possibility of another kind of politics - the ‘politics of devotion’, This is a desire-less politics of sacrifice . Lastly his entire life and politics underlined the ethical duty of solidarity and reconciliation – the poverty of the new South Africa in this area is glaring
.
From the political life of Robert Sobukwe the most important lesson for today is that where there is no desire for fruits, the temptation to untruth carries no force (Ghandi). The hankering for fruits; the hankering for benefits of having been part of the liberation struggle is at the root of some of the problems we have today

The themes I have identified lead us to an examination of a number of recurrent themes in South African and African politics to date. These include, leadership battles and unhealthy contestation; for the African continent the issue is the kind of leadership Africa needs in order to emerge from today’s crisis; the character of politics in many African countries is another issue and most importantly, the relationship between the ethical and the political in emerging democracies in the continent.

The organic social capital type of leadership which Sobukwe embodied provides an anchor for a collectively owned transformative vision - it provides inspiration and overall integration of strategic approaches to realize the collective vision. The leader is trusted because of his/her integrity, because of the depth of insight, his overall guiding eye and cementing inspiration.

The quality of leadership is very important in emerging democracies where institutions of oversight and control are still fragile and consolidating. But the manner in which we choose leaders and who we choose as our leaders in Africa is very important for the future we want to have not only for ourselves but also for our children.
Of course, those who want to avail themselves as leaders need to have conscience – it doesn’t mean if you are popular, then you should avail yourself for leadership – not all popular persons make great leaders who matter. The masses need education in this area
Sobukwe alluded to this in 1970 when he indicated, I quote “we are up against a situation that has always existed in South Africa, namely that the masses will always automatically follow a leader or organization that they have loyalty to, without thinking about the wisdom or weaknesses of particular policies they are told to support”.

What this shows is that the masses, without critical consciousness to deal creatively with their reality, can be complicit in the reproduction of their conditions of subordination. But as real leaders we must not agree to lead when we know we have serious deficiencies. This is an ethical issue which requires a lively conscience and humility. The relationship between the political and the ethical is a difficult one and needs serious interrogation

I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that South Africa is poor today largely because it lacks leaders of Sobukwe’s caliber. It took long and hard persuasion to get Sobukwe to stand for the leadership of the Pan Africanist Congress in 1959– as Sobukwe explains – he saw himself as an intellectual to support the new organization at the level of theory from behind the scenes.
Even when he got convinced that he was suitable to lead, he never lobbied people to be on his side – he never bought people to vote for him at the inaugural congress of the PAC in 1959.

The quality of his personality, the shining example of his moral leadership and height of his intellectual development were so outstanding such that he was the obvious choice. This is the kind of leadership South Africa needs. This is the kind of leadership the continent needs, if the 21st Century is to become an African Century.

Martin Luther King jnr describes the leaders of this calibre as “leaders not in love with money, but in love with justice; leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity; leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause” (1991:143). This kind of leadership is also conceptually strong and intellectually grounded. This is an important leadership trait, especially today, the era of knowledge economy. This brings me to point about the weapon of theory in Sobukwe’s political outlook.

As a theoretician, ladies and gentlemen, I want to argue, Sobukwe holds together all the threads of major theoretical questions inSouth Africa. He holds them at the very point of their entanglement.
The answer to the question of race and racism - which today is debated by ANC politicians without theoretical grounding, emerges from the works of Robert Sobukwe. He argued that there is only one race, the human race. The myth of race in Africa, Sobukwe argued, has been “propounded and propagated by imperialists and colonialists from Europe, in order to facilitate and justify their inhuman exploitation of the indigenous people of the land – it is from the myth of race with its attendant claims of cultural superiority that the doctrine of white supremacy stems”.

The correctness of Sobukwe’s position is confirmed by generations of prominent scholars in the studies of race and race relations in the 21st century.

Rodolf Torres and Xavier Inda, for instance argue that race is not a biological fact; race does not refer to an already constituted object – race constitutes it own object.

Cornel West (1994), in his book ‘Keeping Faith – Philosophy and Race in America’ argues that when European immigrants arrived on American shores they perceived themselves as “Irish”, “Sicilian” “Lithuanian” and so on. “They had to learn that they were white”
He concludes that ‘whiteness is a political construction which is parasitic on the construction of ‘blackness’. Race may have constructed biological referents but it is not a biological fact
Whereas Santos, Nunes and Meneses (2008) argue that race and racism were constructed with the rise of ‘the coloniality of power and knowledge’ to ensure the dominance of the colonizers. The invention of the savage as an inferior being and that the savage is black and he is devoid of knowledge and culture justified the civilizing violence that was enacted on him.
What this confirms is that ‘race’ is a construction; it is not merely about pigmentation but it is about material relations of power among social groups and how unequal power relations are used to advantage the powerful and disadvantage the powerless. Blackness, Steve Biko indicated, is an attitude of mind and a way of life as well as a commitment to rally together to get rid of oppression and exploitation.

This brings me to the question – how is it possible for black people to be racist against each other? We have heard about the case of Jimmy Manyi and Trevor Manuel. Yes Black people may label each other negatively because of ethnic biases or regional grounds. There is a difference between is what is called racialized ethnic relations which emanate from disjunctures around issues of consciousness and culture and racism. I really don’t believe black people can be racist towards one another. Racism is a structure and ideology of domination and exclusion based ion historical materialism – it is not a mood or just negative comments. Hence it is difficult to imagine how black people can even be racist towards white people. The balance of socio-economic power doesn’t favour the socio-historical groups to which Black people belong.

Ladies and gentlemen let be clear here; in this country we relate to each other not only as individuals but also as historical beings who emerge from socio-historical groups. Material power does not favour Black people, as a socio-historical group hence it is difficult to accuse them of racism.

The problem of our time is that the post independence South Africa and the negotiations out of which it emerged have been so grotesquely refined and emptied of historical content. Hence you find black people accusing each other of being racist and inadvertently encouraging the true racists to not feel bad about their racism. African people have a tendency to allow those who dominate South Africa conceptually to define their problems, to individualize collective problems and in turn Africans also comply as they privatize collective suffering.
The media will portray, for example, children in Ngqeleni who attend classes under a tree, as if they are the only ones in that situation. Whereas the reality is that many children of black people, 16 years after democracy, are still condemned to growing up in degrading ghetto conditions where they are being preselected by their conditions for inferior and subordinate positions in the new South Africa. The fact that we allow collective suffering to be so individualized signifies a problem – the lack of theory and critical consciousness

Sobukwe dealt with all these questions and defined an African not in terms of race but in terms of first loyalty to Africa and acceptance of the rule of an African majority.

The reconciliation project has also been affected by the pervasive lack of theory and critical consciousness among the masses of our people. The choice of the paradigm of reconciliation and how it got to be defined, was to a large extent done on our behalf – the timidity of African intellectuals also created a big gap.

Ideally Reconciliation becomes true and applies meaningfully at the point of victory of the oppressed over oppression. This is different from a reconciliation project which is launched when the oppressor and the oppressed have clearly deadlocked. When they are both winners, then the former oppressor is not really bound to reconcile. Reconciliation under such conditions, tends to paper over the cracks. It is unfortunate that the model of reconciliation in this country bears a lot of these features

Reconciliation is about the extension of redeeming goodwill by the oppressed who have overcome oppression. It is not defined for the oppressed by historically advantaged groups, still arrogant and powerful, as a joint project of both the oppressed and the oppressors, otherwise it never works.
We still need reconciliation in this country but on fresh grounds and informed by a new paradigm

Ladies and gentlemen, in summary, the worst dilemmas facing South Africa, now in the 21st century, are threefold, first, the resolution of contradiction between the ethical and the political in post 1994 emancipatory politics – this requires leadership of Sobukwe’s caliber – intellectually and morally strong enough to lead by example; second, the democratization of ownership of economic means of life. This why the land question is so central in Sobukwe’s political philosophy. Black people cannot determine their destiny merely through a vote – via patronizing stances of a rainbow nation – a people who do not own the material means of production in their country cannot determine their destiny.
Lastly the resolution of the Blackmen’s existential deviation, a black person is still not himself/herself – the black men still aspires to be white; he wants to prove to the white world at all costs, the richness of his thought and the equal value of his intellect (Fanon 1986). The African needs to be saved from himself, if the African continent is to be saved.

To conclude ladies and gentlemen, there are three possible paths in the foreseeable future, in the case of South Africa. We will either sink or swim together depending on how we handle our choices – first, is how to effectively handle the settlement we negotiated in our country so that it delivers on the hopes of the majority – ‘a better life for all South Africans? The settlement is a mixed bag – there is good and bad in it.

It is dominated by the hegemonic interests of big capital, there is elite consensus which provides some kind of a glue, we have a liberal constitution, there is promise and hope; but socio-economic inequalities are deepening, human capacity development is still low and economic power is still in the hands of white elites
This state of affairs is likely to continue for a longer time. The question is how do we build inclusive communities, guarantee peace and stability, economic transformation, reconciliation and national unity under these conditions?
But in the end this scenario is very unsustainable because the very foundations are wrong. The settlement was premised on nursing white fears and less on dealing with black suffering and historic grief. It is unsustainable because white elites will never surrender or negotiate away economic power – they will open spaces for a few conformists but will never give-up ownership and leadership –
On the other hand the growing numbers of radical African youths, some unemployed, the rising frustration and anger African communities, the growing civil society networks who argue that the solution is outside formal political parties, and is outside the ruling party, gives an impression that the very pain we avoided when we decided to negotiate, may soon catch-up with us.
Part of the solution to ensure sustainability of the settlement , depends on how far white South Africans are willing to go a step further to demonstrate commitment and sacrifice and how the Black political elites is prepared to provide inspiring leadership which takes on board the challenge of personal example.

The second scenario is what I am afraid of - ‘the democracy to come’ – this may have nothing to do with Kempton Park negotiations but will emerge from a new mass- political spirituality deriving from years of pain and disappointment. The emerging sociology of democracy in South Africa” shows two distinct and “ultimately incompatible democracies that are incubating in the same democratic movement, led by the ANC Alliance, i.e. the minimalist liberal democracy which is strong on procedures, e.g. elections, parliamentary cretinism, formalities of institutions but weak on outcomes,
On the other hand is the democracy of the subalterns, the masses, peasants and workers which is more social democratic and demands concrete equality, cultural upliftment and concrete rights. This is ‘the democracy to come’ – the question is the form it will take and when it will come. The pain it will initially bring is difficult to imagine but the joy it will ultimately deliver will surpass imagination

The third possibility – is some kind of reversal of radical gains by the ‘centre-right’ victory against the forces who fought for and negotiated national liberation.

As a country, therefore we are in a crisis – if by crisis we mean a moment of choice – we need towering leadership, solid enough to leave up to the challenge of personal example. This is what Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe left behind and also took with him. Like many of us, Sobukwe came to this world with nothing, but unlike many of us, he left ONE thing behind but took ONE thing with him. He left behind a memorable example of the caliber and standard of leadership Africa needs BUT he took with him the prodigal paradox of an ethical political revolution.

I THANK YOU

The 6th Annual Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture

2011-02-23T08:46:00.002+02:00

The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare, the CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation and the CEO of the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust cordially invite you to the 6th Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture to be delivered by Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo, Director, Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State.

Date: Thursday 17 March, 2011

Time: 14 :30 for 15 :00

Venue: The Science Auditorium, Alice Campus, University of Fort Hare, Alice

RSVP Details: Due to limited space, seating will be done on a first come, first serve basis.

Please reply by Monday, March 7, 2010 to

Mr. Bruce Waters, bruce@sbf.org.za; (011) 403-0310;

Launched in 2003, The Robert Sobukwe Memorial lecture is an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation and the University of Fort Hare. The lecture commemorates the legacy of the late Pan Africanist, who early on articulated the importance of African unity and the need for an African Renaissance. Accordingly, the gathering focuses on developments in Africa that have a bearing on the realization of Sobukwe’s vision.

This initiative has become a national ritual of collective remembrance. To date, the Robert Sobukwe Memorial Lecture has been delivered by such renowned speakers as:

* Professor Eskia Mphahlele;
* Archbishop Emeritus Njongonkulu Ndungane;
* Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza;
* His Excellency Pierre Buyoya of Burundi; and
* Minister Adama Samassékou of Mali.

In 2011, in commemoration of Human Rights Day, the Memorial Lecture will be delivered Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo, of the University of the Free State.

Kwandiwe Merriman Kondlo obtained his PhD from the University of Johannesburg. His doctorate covered exile liberation movements in southern Africa, with a special focus on the Pan Africanist Congress. He is currently the head of the Centre for Africa Studies at the University of the Free State, a multidisciplinary research and post-graduate centre which was launched in November 2007. Previously, he served as Executive Director of the Programme of Democracy and Governance at the Human Science Research Council in South Africa.

The Steve Biko Foundation, the University of Fort Hare and the Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Trust are extremely privileged to host Professor Kondlo for this timely exploration of the Pan African Legacy.

The Bridge: Defining blackness for the 21st centuury

2011-02-14T16:03:00.000+02:00

This article was written by Sipho Hlongwane, journalist and coloumnist for the Daily Maverick.

A couple of months ago I interviewed Nkosinathi Biko the CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation, for The Daily Maverick. In an unreported part of our conversation, we discussed black consciousness and its place in post-apartheid South Africa. Biko said, “If under the old dispensation being black meant being oppressed, what does it mean today?”

It has since occurred to me that I took this matter of blackness for granted — as something that needed no examining. To me, it was always an issue of skin colour, and nothing more. That is not true, obviously. As Biko indicated, the concept of blackness was predetermined for those it applied to, whether they wanted it or not. To be black meant to be subservient. The effect that this had on the black collective was profound and deeply tragic, and will continue to live with us for generations to come.

But this column is not about the past. As much as what came before is important, we are not completely prisoner to history. It is around that thought base that I pick at my thoughts, sorting and discarding as they come to me. I do not believe that history is the only determinant to how we think today. We can define for ourselves what blackness means. I believe that my generation — too young to have lived through much of apartheid, but not so far removed that those dark days are but a faded memory — is at a critical juncture. We are uniquely poised to determine and write a new narrative of blackness, our memories still fresh but unburdened by the emotional scars that our parents and past generations carry.

It is in this regard that I find the life of Barack Obama very illuminating (The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama by David Remnick is required reading for anyone who cares about the man). Obama is more than just a political miracle; he’s a self-made man in every sense of the word. Born in Hawaii in 1961, brought up by a white mother in the complete absence of his Kenyan father, he spent his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, far removed from the turmoil of post-civil-rights America. Obama’s path to the White House was that of a black man, precisely because he had to “become” black. He had to learn what being a black man meant, adopt the cadence, frame of thought and place in the world. The isolation from the civil-rights movements and the bitter fights that came afterwards gave Obama the emotional distance he needed to approach the issue academically (much like our generation should today) and to thus be able to cast off the negative qualities that blackness had donned over the years.

For instance, young Obama read many black autobiographies. For black Americans under slavery and afterwards, writing was a journey of self-discovery: a way of asserting their identity and sense of worth. Obama carefully studied, among many other works, Dusk of Dawn by WEB Du Bois, The Big Sea by Langston Hughes and the Autobiography of Malcolm X. It is to the latter that he finds himself drawn, admiring the masculine strength of Malcolm X. But he is simultaneously repulsed by the brokenness that he sees in many of these black authors. “Obama’s reading of black memoirists when he was still living in Hawaii was the ‘homework’ of a young man trying to ‘reconcile the world as I’d found it with the terms of my birth’,” Remnick writes in The Bridge. “And yet, in all the books he reads, he keeps finding authors filled with depressing self-contempt; they flee or withdraw to varying corners of the world and to Obama they are all of them ‘all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels’.”

Obama then sets out to write out a new narrative for himself, adopting the parts of black history that make him a better man, and discarding those that hold him back. Today, there is no doubt that he is a black man. We, the young blacks of South Africa, must in the same way reach into our past to help construct a new narrative, but must also be willing to shed the things that will hold us back.

We seem to struggle a great deal as black people to free the black individual to think and write as he or she pleases. The legacy of collective oppression lives on in our habit of criticising anyone who from “within the ranks” fails to affirm the accepted norms of blackness. We feel as if we must move and think as a bloc, we must all think in the same way, and have each other’s backs, as it were. This mode of thinking reflects in our constant harkening back to some pre-colonial Africa, where the group trumped the individual. We yearn back to “African culture”, an abstraction far removed from how pre-colonial societies organised themselves or worked. So profound is our sense of displacement.

However, we cannot save ourselves by going back. It is forward that we must look. This African group-think is going to cripple us. The individual must be freed. I want to be able to write whatever I like without being criticised by other blacks for “selling out”. I want to be able to critique black leaders without being told that I have adopted a white frame of thinking. I don’t want the seething rage that comes with having lived in oppression under apartheid. I don’t want to flinch every time someone throws a racial barb at me. Most importantly, I want to be able to construct a new meaning of blackness for myself without needing to lean against the “African culture” fetish.

I understand the fear of letting each other go that haunts so many blacks. But until the black individual is free, we cannot say that we have fully reaped the benefits of post-apartheid South Africa. I want to be able to think and write what I like.

This article was taken from Thought Leader, Mail&Guardian online.

This column was first published in JucyAfrica.

To view the article and all comments go to: www.thoughtleader.co.za

State of the Nation Address By His Excellency Jacob G Zuma, President of the Republic of South Africa, at the Joint Sitting Of Parliament

2011-02-11T13:05:00.004+02:00

"Celebrating the legacy of freedom through strengthening the link between Parliament and the People”.

Honourable Speaker of the National Assembly,
Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces;
Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and Deputy Chairperson of the NCOP;
Deputy President of the Republic, Honourable Kgalema Motlanthe;
Former President Thabo Mbeki,
Former Deputy President FW De Klerk,
Former Deputy President Baleka Mbete,
Honourable Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa, and all esteemed members of the Judiciary;
Distinguished Premiers and Speakers of our Provinces;
Chairperson of SALGA, and all local government leadership;
Chairperson of the National House of Traditional Leaders;
The Heads of Chapter 9 Institutions;
The Governor of the Reserve Bank; Gill Marcus
The Heads of our security institutions,
Leadership of all sectors – labour, business, sports, and religious leaders,
Members of the diplomatic corps;
South African and foreign media;
Fellow South Africans,
Dumelang, good evening, goeie naand, molweni, thobela,

Thank you Honourable Speaker of the National Assembly and the Honourable Chairperson of the NCOP, for this opportunity to share with fellow South Africans and international guests our review and programme of action for this year.

I called this Joint Sitting in the evening again so that all, including students and workers, can have an opportunity at first hand to listen to their government speak on issues affecting their lives.

We thank the Presiding Officers for allowing us this opportunity.

Let me also, on behalf of government, welcome the Members of Parliament back to this beautiful mother city of Cape Town.

We would like to thank all South Africans who contributed to this State of the Nation Address through mainstream media, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as direct contact.

The inputs have been very helpful.

Tomorrow will be 21 years since the release of our beloved President Nelson Mandela from prison.

It was a historic and very special moment for our country, which demonstrated the victory of our people over tyranny and apartheid oppression.

The events of that day prepared the ground for the implementation of our vision of a free, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, united and prosperous South Africa.

We have entered the 17th year of freedom, ready to continue the drive to make South Africa a successful and prosperous country, building on the foundation that was laid by President Mandela.

As we mark this milestone, we extend the nation’s good wishes to Tata Madiba and his family, and wish him a speedy recovery.

Compatriots,

We need to accept the reality that President Mandela, who is loved by all of us, young and old, men and women, black and white, is not young anymore.

He will, from time to time, visit medical facilities for checkups, which is normal for a person of his age.

We should allow him to do so with dignity, and give the family and the medical team the space to look after him, on our behalf, in privacy.

We owe him that much given his love of this country and its people, and the contribution he has made to South Africa, Africa and the world.

We thank the family, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the medical team for the sterling work that they are doing, in caring for a global icon, that we are so proud to call our own.

We want to assure the nation that Madiba is receiving very good medical care, and is comfortable.

TOGETHER WE HAVE ACHIEVED MUCH

Compatriots,

We continue to make steady progress as we work towards a more prosperous society. The political foundation is solid.

We have built a vibrant, fully functional Constitutional democracy.

We have well-established institutions that support democracy and protect the rights of our citizens, such as the Office of the Public Protector, the South African Human Rights Commission, the Office of the Auditor General, the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities and the Gender Commission.

Without fail, national general elections are held every five years to enable South Africans to choose a government of their choice, run by our efficient Independent Electoral Commission.

We have a Parliament that is vibrant and holds the executive accountable.

We have an independent judiciary which is a trusted final arbiter in all disputes in our society. We have a media whose freedom is enshrined in the Constitution.

On basic services, we are also making progress. More than 400 000 additional people were served with basic water supply last year. About 81% of the country is electrified as compared to 63% in the year 2000.

The crime statistics show a decrease in most crimes, particularly armed robberies, housebreakings and business robberies as well as contact crimes, for example, the murder rate declined by 8, 6 percent in the past year.

We are making a difference in education, as evidenced by the significant increase in the matric pass rate last year, and the interest displayed by the youth in education around the country.

Honourable Members,

Close to 15 million South Africans obtain social grants from the State. We will phase in the extension of the Child Support Grant to cover eligible children under the age of 18 years.

Since we are building a developmental and not a welfare state, the social grants will be linked to economic activity and community development, to enable short-term beneficiaries to become self-supporting in the long run.

Honourable Members,

We are pleased with the performance of our financial sector.

It has proven to be remarkably resilient in the face of the recent financial crisis and the global economic meltdown.

The Budget deficit is set to decline from the current 6.7% to between 3 and 4% by 2013.

Concerns about the exchange rate have been taken to heart.

Exchange control reforms that were announced in the Medium Term Budget Policy statement last year are being implemented. Further information will be provided by the Minister of Finance in the Budget Speech.

The 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup was undoubtedly the most exciting project in 2010.

On the international front, we are greatly honoured to join the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa forum. It is an important bloc of emerging economies. We look forward to the inaugural meeting of BRICS in April in China.

We have taken up our non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, which we will use to promote the African agenda as well as peace and security in Africa and the world.

We have come a long way. We have achieved a lot, but challenges still remain.

Working together we will achieve much more.

BUILDING A MORE PROSPEROUS SOCIETY

Compatriots,

While many South Africans celebrate the delivery of houses, electricity or water, there are yet many others who are still waiting.

The legacy of decades of apartheid underdevelopment and colonial oppression cannot be undone in only 17 years.

But we are forging ahead, determined to achieve our mission of building a better life for all.

And we are doing so with the help of our people. We appreciate the feedback they continue to give us.

Bongokuhle Miya wrote on the Presidency Facebook page that his hometown Umzimkhulu is in an appalling condition, with burst sewerage pipes everywhere, no drainage system and domestic animals that are roaming around town.

He writes: “If the Government, which is doing very well, could just pay much more attention, with a bit of urgency to such areas”.

Indeed, we agree service delivery should move faster.

Our interactive government also obtains information from direct contact with our people.

In the past year we have visited many villages, townships and suburbs. Their message is consistent.

They appreciate progress made, request faster delivery and state their commitment to work with government to achieve more.

Given the work that must still be done, we decided in 2009 to focus on five priorities. These are education, health, rural development and agrarian reform, taking forward the fight against crime and creating decent work.

We have done well on these priorities.

However, we are concerned that unemployment and poverty persist despite the economic growth experienced in the past 10 years.

To address these concerns, we have declared 2011 a year of job creation through meaningful economic transformation and inclusive growth.

We have introduced a New Growth Path that will guide our work in achieving these goals, working within the premise that the creation of decent work is at the centre of our economic policies.

We urge every sector and every business entity, regardless of size, to focus on job creation. Every contribution counts in this national effort.

I will provide just a broad outline of our programme of action in this address.

Ministers will announce their jobs targets and more specific details per sector, in their forthcoming Budget Vote Speeches.

All government departments will align their programmes with the job creation imperative. The provincial and local government spheres have also been requested to do the same.

The programmes of State Owned Enterprises and development finance institutions should also be more strongly aligned to the job creation agenda.

Honourable Members,

Research has indicated that we can create jobs in six priority areas. These are infrastructure development, agriculture, mining and beneficiation, manufacturing, the green economy and tourism.

We cannot create these jobs alone. We have to work with business, labour and the community constituencies.

Experience shows that we succeed when we work together.

One key example is the work done by the Presidential Framework Response to the International Economic Crisis team, comprising government, business, labour and community sectors.

Amongst the key achievements of the team, South Africa introduced its first ever training layoff scheme to provide alternatives to retrenchments.

Another intervention included financial support for firms in distress, which saved about seven thousand jobs. We thank the team for their sterling work, and look forward to ongoing collaboration.

While looking to the private sector in particular to help us create most of the jobs, government will certainly play its part.

We are pleased to announce the establishment of a jobs fund of 9 billion rand over the next three years to finance new job-creation initiatives.

In addition, the Industrial Development Corporation has set aside R10 billion over the next five years for investment in such economic activities with a high jobs potential.

It is also my pleasure Honourable Members, to announce R20 billion in tax allowances or tax breaks to promote investments, expansions and upgrades in the manufacturing sector.

For a project to qualify, the minimum investment must be R200 million for new projects, and R30 million for expansion and upgrades.

The programme will provide an allowance of up to R900 million in tax deductible allowances rand for new investors and R550 million for upgrades and expansions.

Compatriots,

The small business sector is a critical component of the job creation drive.

We will continue to provide financial and non-financial support to small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs), small scale agriculture as well as cooperatives.

We need to cut administrative costs, avoid duplication and direct more resources to small business.

We are therefore considering merging the three agencies Khula, the SA Micro-Finance Apex Fund and the IDC’s small business funding into a single unit.

The campaign to pay SMMEs on time, within 30 days, is proceeding well.

The Department of Trade and Industry payment hotline received about 20 000 calls in the last financial year, and the value of payments facilitated was R210 million.

Other departments have launched their own initiatives, for example the Re Ya Patala (We Pay) initiative of the Department of Public Works.

We are continuing with legislative reforms to make it easier to register businesses and also to strengthen the Competition Act to open the market to new participants.

Honourable Members,

The mineral wealth of our country is a national asset and a common heritage that belongs to all South Africans, with the State as the custodian.

South Africa has significant mining assets, currently valued at 2.5 trillion US dollars.

By 2009, the mining industry contributed more than thirty percent to the country’s total export revenue, and employed 2.9% of the country’s economically active population.

Estimates suggest that our mineral resources are expected to be exploitable for over a century to come.

To take advantage of that potential, government has endorsed the African Exploration, Mining and Finance Corporation as the State Owned Mining Company, that will undertake the mining of minerals of strategic significance.

One of government’s priorities this year is also to finalise and adopt the beneficiation strategy as the official policy of government, so that we can start reaping the full benefits of our commodities.

Compatriots,

In communications, we have committed to convert our television and radio signals from the analogue platform to the more advanced digital signal which will enable quality pictures and sound.

Jobs will be created in manufacturing, packaging, distribution and installation during this period.

Honourable Speaker and National Chairperson,

We are pleased with the success of our tourism sector, especially given that sixteen tourists create one job in our country.

More than 7, 3 million tourists arrived in South Africa last year, as compared to about 6.3 million in 2009. For further growth, we will strengthen existing markets while exploring the emerging economies.

Our country also continues to be a popular destination for international gatherings.

In July, we will host a high level sports gathering in Durban, the 123rd International Olympic Committee General Assembly Session.

We thank the IOC for the opportunity to host this important congress.

We have already secured ninety five meetings and conferences between 2010 and 2016.

To further boost our tourism potential, we will amongst other measures, look into flexible visa requirements, improved landing slots at foreign airports as well as improved tourism infrastructure.

Linked to tourism, we will continue to develop the cultural industries sector, which contributes about R2 billion to the Gross Domestic Product.

We have also seen the value of events such as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival which, contributed more than R475 million to the economy of Cape Town and created 2 000 jobs in 2010.

We also wish to extend a special mention to the popular Cape Minstrels Carnival, which brightens up this city every year on the 2nd of January, celebrating the freeing of slaves.

Honourable Members,

Our infrastructure development programme enables us to expand access to basic services and to improve the quality of life.

This includes projects for the provision of water, electricity and housing.

Energy security is critical for economic development and job creation. To ensure the security of electricity supply for the country, Eskom has invested more than R75 billion, mainly on the new stations Medupi, Kusile and Ingula, as well as the return to service and transmission of other projects.

We must all save energy so that we do not have to resort to load shedding again as a saving measure.

This year we will start procuring power from Renewable Energy Power Producers, which will demonstrate our commitment to renewable energy.

Honourable Members,

The construction industry is a known driver for work opportunities. There are 1.2 million households living in the country’s 2 700 informal settlements.

By the year 2014, 400 000 of the said households should have security of tenure and access to basic services.

We will also improve the delivery of rental accommodation as some people coming to urban areas do not intend to settle permanently.

This should be welcome news to citizens such as Portia Busisiwe Mrwetyana who wrote on our Facebook page about inequalities in Bekkersdal, where an informal settlement which has no services, lies alongside a suburb across the road with all amenities.

She asks: “What I wanna know is why treat us differently, but we give you the same vote, WHY?”.

Government will spend R2,6 billion on water services this year. Among the priority areas are the provinces of Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape where there are still high numbers of people without safe drinking water.

We noted the requests from many contributors to this address, for government to fix potholes.

Our Expanded Public Works Programme aims to create 4, 5 million work opportunities, and more than a million opportunities have been created already since the beginning of Phase 2.Part of the programme focuses on repairing our roads networks.

Abantu abaningi bakithi bathola ukusizakala kakhulu ngaloluhlelo lwamatoho emisebenzi kahulumeni.

Kutholakala amatoho okulungisa imigwaqo, ezemidlalo, ukufundisa abadala ukufunda nokubhala, ukugcina imigqwaqo ihlanzekile.

Uhlelo lokulungisa imigwaqo, olubizwa nge-Zibambele, seluzosatshalaliswa izwe lonke kulonyaka luvule amathuba emisebenzi.

We will develop infrastructure that will boost our agricultural sector, while also helping to create jobs.

Water reservoirs, windmills and irrigation schemes will be rehabilitated. Crops, livestock as well as grazing will be protected with the installation of fences.

These projects will enhance food security and create work opportunities for many, especially women in rural areas.

To enhance our innovation in science and technology and create jobs, we are bidding to host the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.

The bid has already provided 800 construction job opportunities in the Northern Cape and will create a further 100 jobs this year.

Our job creation drive should also enhance youth development.

The National Youth Development agency is in discussion with state organs and the private sector to mainstream youth development in public sector programmes and to promote youth enterprises and cooperatives.

Compatriots,

We believe that the interventions we have mentioned briefly will take us forward in placing job creation high on the agenda of all decision makers in the country.

Seven Ministers met with our social partners on Tuesday to discuss this partnership and we remain optimistic that we are poised for success.

Honourable Speaker and Honourable Chairperson,

Parallel to the job creation incentives, we will also undertake policy reforms related to improving the lives of our workers.

Government, with its social partners, is reviewing legislation on labour brokers and the policy framework for the provision of public employment services.

This will enable government to maintain a database of job seekers and job opportunities.

The Government Position Paper on Social Security Reform is expected to be released this year for discussion.

Issues to be dealt with include the funding and nature of the National Social Security Fund, how the private sector occupational and retirement funds will fit into the entire system, and the possible regulatory structure.

Government must fill all funded vacant posts.The performance monitoring and evaluation department will provide a report within six months.

Honourable Speaker and Honourable Chairperson,

Indeed, we have come a long way since 1994. We have achieved a lot, but much more still needs to be done, and working together as South Africans, we will achieve much more!

Please allow me to now tackle the other four priorities as well as other programmes.

The focus in basic education this year is Triple T: Teachers, Textbooks and Time. We reiterate our call that teachers must be at school, in class, on time, teaching for at least seven hours a day.

The administration must ensure that every child has a textbook on time, and that we assist our teachers to create the right working environment for quality teaching to take place.

To track progress, this year, we began the annual national assessments in literacy and numeracy that are internationally benchmarked, for grades 3, 6 and 9.

We will continue investing in teacher training, especially in mathematics and science.

We will pay special attention to the training of principals, particularly those in underperforming schools.

The focus of higher education will be to expand access especially for children of the poor.

This includes the conversion of loans into bursaries for qualifying final year students.

Students in Further Education and Training Colleges who qualify for financial aid will be exempted from paying fees.

We urge state owned enterprises to play a key role in skills development and help us provide the technical skills needed by the economy.

Denel, Eskom, SAA and Transnet have supported the training of more than 6 000 learners in technical and engineering-related scarce and critical skills.

Fellow South Africans,

We are continuing to improve the capacity and effectiveness of the police in particular the detective services, forensic analysts and crime intelligence.

We have increased visible policing and patrols in identified hotspots. We are making visible progress in reducing the proliferation of illegal and legal firearms.

Our courts continue to function better, and the backlog reduction programmes at district and regional levels are proceeding well.

We will continue to prioritise crimes against women and children, and to provide support through the Thuthuzela Care Centres.

We will work with communities and other key stakeholders to deal with drug peddling and drug abuse which are tearing some communities apart.

My visit to a drug rehabilitation centre in Mitchells Plain on Tuesday convinced me that we need more energy in the fight against drug abuse and drug peddling in our communities.

I have directed our police force to deal decisively with people who sell drugs to children in Cape Town and other areas. We will also not tolerate tavern owners who sell alcohol to children.

The fight against corruption also continues.

A Special Anti-Corruption Unit has been established in the Department of Public Service and Administration to handle corruption-related disciplinary cases involving public servants.

Progress is being made in many ongoing investigations.

About R44 million has been recovered from public servants who are illegally benefiting from housing subsidies, while the cleaning of the social grants system of fraud is also continuing.

We have directed the Special Investigating Unit to probe alleged maladministration or corruption in various government departments, municipalities and institutions.

While not pre-judging the investigations, they prove our resolve to combat corruption at all levels of Government and the public service.

The Multi-Agency Working Group on procurement led by National Treasury, SARS and the Financial Intelligence Centre is reviewing the entire state procurement system to ensure better value for money from state spending.

In the health sector, this year we will emphasise the appointment of appropriate and qualified personnel to the right positions.

We need qualified heads of department, chief financial officers, hospital chief executive officers, district health officers and clinic managers.

We plan to revitalise 105 nursing colleges countrywide, to train more nurses.

We are also planning to open a medical faculty at the Limpopo Academic Hospital to train more doctors.

The renovations and refurbishments of hospitals and clinics will continue.

Given our emphasis on women’s health, we will broaden the scope of reproductive health rights and provide services related to amongst others, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancy and sanitary towels for the indigent.

On the fight against HIV and AIDS, we have revitalised our programmes and promote various prevention measures including medical male circumcision, prevention of mother to child transmission and the promotion of HIV testing.

The testing has been popularly taken up around the country. Just over 5 million HIV tests have been done since the launch of the testing campaign in April last year.

Over the past year, work has continued to develop the National Health Insurance policy and implementation plan.Government will soon be releasing the policy document for public engagement.

Honourable Speaker and Honourable Chairperson of the NCOP,

We will continue with the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme directed at reviving land reform projects and irrigation schemes in the former homelands as well as distressed farms owned by individuals.

Government has developed the National Rural Youth Service Corps programme to assist youth in rural areas. To date, more than 7 000 young people have been employed in the programme.

Somlomo nosihlalo abahloniphekileyo,

Uhulumeni useshaye umthetho ovuselela ibhange lasePosini, phecelezi iPostBank, elizosiza abasemakhaya ukonga imali, kanye nokuboleka imali yokwakha amabhizinisi amancane.

Siyabakhuthaza ukuthi balisebenzise kutholakale intuthuko.

Building a responsive, accountable, effective and efficient local government system

Honourable Members,

The country will hold the fourth local government elections before the end of May.

There have been lots of complaints over the past few months about local government.

The frustrations in some areas resulted in protests which indicated the problems that existed in this sphere.

We have to make people’s experience of local government a pleasant one, as it touches their homes and their lives directly, every day.

Some municipalities are functioning very well, andsome councillors are also performing their duties as well as they should.

We have instituted a turnaround strategy for local government, focusing on, amongst others, the strengthening of basic administrative systems, financial management and customer care.

The preparations for local government elections are on course.

The registration that took place last weekend went well, and we congratulate those who have registered. We urge those without identity documents to apply without delay, so as not to miss the next registration period next month.

Following the launch of the National Population Registration Campaign in Libode, in the Eastern Cape last year, more than 700 000 first time identity documents were issued, indicating great enthusiasm by our people to have this crucial document.

As we prepare for elections, we also note that our country has been struck by devastating floods in recent weeks, and many families have been affected.

We extend heartfelt condolences to the families of those who lost their lives. Our hearts also go out to those who were injured and who lost all their belongings.

Fellow South Africans,

Let me use this opportunity to announce that Government has set aside R800 million for immediate relief to assist communities.

We will also be earmarking funding to deal with post disaster recovery and reconstruction in the years ahead.

We thank relief agencies, non-governmental organisations, private sector, religious organisations and communities for assisting those in need.

Building a better Africa and a better world

The African agenda remains our key policy focus.

South Africa is serving a two year term on the African Union Peace and Security Council.

The country will chair the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security from August.

In this role, we will continue to engage the parties in the implementation of the Global Political Agreement in Zimbabwe and the development of a roadman to elections.

We will also promote the resolution of the Malagasy conflict. We will monitor and assist where possible to ensure that the political and security situation in the DRC is conducive to elections.

We are also honoured to participate in finding solutions to the situation in Cote d’Ivoire, as a member of the African Union High Level Panel chosen to help resolve the challenges in that country.

We applaud the work of the South African National Defence Force, which has on average deployed over 2 000 military personnel in peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Sudan and the Central African Republic.

We will continue to participate in the revitalisation of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development with specific focus on the implementation of its infrastructure programme, of which we champion the North-South infrastructure development corridor.

South Africa has taken note of the unfolding developments in Egypt as well as the earlier events in Tunisia.

We continue to monitor the situation closely, including its implications for the Middle East and North Africa.

We firmly believe that the course and the content of the transition as well as the destiny that these sister countries choose, should be authored by them.

In this regard, South Africa lends its support to efforts aimed at introducing and implementing political reforms that will ensure a smooth and peaceful transition in Tunisia and Egypt.

We trust that nothing will derail the realization of the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a secure independent state, existing side by side and in peace with the Israeli state.

South Africa reiterates its call to the international community to encourage the parties to continue the search for a durable solution in the Middle East.

We extend our heartiest congratulations to the people of the Sudan for a successful referendum, and welcome the new state of Southern Sudan.

This is a key African success story.We congratulate the African Union and the United Nations for the skilful handling of this project.

On the broader international front, we look forward to hosting the fifth India-Brazil-South Africa Summit, this year.

At the G20 Forum, we will continue to argue for a more equitable world economic order.

Building a national democratic and cohesive society

Compatriots,

The experience of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup taught us the need to appreciate all that is good about our country.

The South African flag became the most important item for every household.

Government will build on this by ensuring the placing of flags in schools and public institutions to promote our national symbols and identity.

We urge all our people to learn the national anthem and sing it properly, with pride.

We will launch a programme celebrating National Icons and promote a National Heritage Route, to honour individuals who have made an enormous contribution to the liberation of our country.

Honourable Members,

We have seen the power of sport as a unifying and nation building tool in our country.

All of us must support the Proteas who will soon be playing in the 2011 ICC World Cup, and the Springboks who will travel to New Zealand to defend our 2007 Rugby World Cup Title.

We also wish the national netball team well when they compete in the Netball World Cup in July. We will be fully behind them.

Let me take this opportunity to salute one of our finest cricketers, Makhaya Ntini who is our special guest this evening. He has made an enormous contribution to local and international cricket.

South Africa will have its third post-apartheid census in October this year.We thank Mr Makhaya Ntini for agreeing to become an ambassador of this important campaign.

Honourable Speaker and Honourable Chairperson,

We remain committed to building a performance-orientated State.

Our performance monitoring and evaluation department will coordinate and monitor the work of government departments closely, as they mainstream job creation.

We welcome the undertaking by Parliament to also monitor the adherence to the call to prioritise job creation by government.

Compatriots,

Our goal is clear. We want to have a country where millions more South Africans have decent employment opportunities, which has a modern infrastructure and a vibrant economy and where the quality of life is high.

We all have a responsibility to work hard to make this a reality.

Everyone must think of how they can contribute to the jobs campaign through creating opportunities for themselves and others.

In doing so, we should draw inspiration from our beloved President Mandela in his inauguration address in 1994, reminding us of the need to work together.

He said:

“We understand it still, that there is no easy road to freedom.

We know it well, that none of us acting alone can achieve success.

We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.

Let there be justice for all.

Let there be peace for all.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves”.

I thank you.

Issued by: The Presidency
10 Feb 2011

Taken from The South African Government Information Website www.info.gov.za

Johannesburg Launch of "Black Man You Are On Your Own"

2011-02-04T13:14:00.000+02:00

On the 10th of November 2010 the Steve Biko Foundation, Faculty of Humanities, Univeristy of the Witwatersrand and STE Publishers celebrated the launch of Black Man, You Are On Your Own by Dr. Saleem Badat, Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University.

Here are some of the images from the event...

3rd Franktalk Discussion

2011-02-02T14:22:00.000+02:00

On the 26th of January, the Steve Biko Foundation held the third session in the Franktalk series. Given that learners, educators and parents throughout South Africa were reviewing and analysing the recent matric results, the dialogue explored the role that communities at large could play in supporting the nation's educational agenda.

Here are some of the images from the discussion...

Extract from Black Man You are On Your Own

2011-02-02T09:58:00.003+02:00

Taken from Black Man You Are On Your Own
By Dr. Saleem Badat
Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University

In both scholarly and popular literature, black students in South Africa have tended to be treated in two ways: simply as victims of apartheid in appalling educations conditions, or as catalysts of educational and political struggle through their campaigns. Yet their role as activists has seldom been analysed. Indeed, few scholars have researched the remarkable continuity of student activism and militancy under apartheid, or considered the historical development, ideological and political character, and role, contribution and significance of the movements and organisations to which black students belonged.
This book attempts to rectify the relative silence by examining the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), formed in 1968 and popularly associated with the person of Steve Biko. Black students were not just victims of apartheid but were also thinkers, conscious actors and historical agents. In the face of an authoritarian political order and intense repression, they displayed an indomitable spirit of courage and defiance, they activated and intensified opposition to apartheid, and they contributed immensely to the struggle for national liberation and educational transformation in South Africa. In particular, SASO gave birth to the Black Consciousness movement, was the leading formation within it, and did much to revitalise black opposition politics during the 1970s before the organisation was banned by the apartheid government in 1977.

The Role of SASO

In the political conditions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, launching SASO was an important and progressive step, and the organisation performed a number of historically specific and valuable functions.
SASO was instrumental in rekindling a new era of black political activism and mass popular resistance. Its formation ruptured the silence and despair that characterised the early to mid-1960s. It activated ‘sentiments and ideas’ that responded ‘cognitively and operationally, in militant ways towards certain objects – in this case the state, its functionaries and the doctrines and structures of its legitimation.’ By seceding from, deconstructing, and challenging multiracial and liberal politics, SASO played a vital role in recreating black politics and political action. Once again, national and racial oppression were made the focus of struggle, the apartheid programme was challenged, and a forum created for organised opposition to apartheid. Through the doctrine of Black Consciousness, SASO tried ‘to rebuild and recondition the mind of the oppressed in such a way that eventually they would be ready forcefully to demand what was rightfully theirs.’ Its essential focus was ‘consciousness’, and through its activities it sought to develop the self-esteem, pride, confidence and solidarity of black students and the black oppressed and contribute to their
‘psychological liberation’. This approach was shaped by how you had to mesh with others in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when the apartheid regime seemed so firmly entrenched as to be immovable and black responses were typically fear, apathy, resignation, sullen acquiescence and accommodation to separate development. In concentrating on ‘psychological liberation’, SASO saw its role as complementing that of the ANC and PAC, whom it regarded as the authentic voices of the people, and had no notion of competing with the exiled liberation movements. Other aspects of liberation, for example the ‘physical liberation’ that was spoken about and which implied armed struggle, it sought to leave to the liberation movements even though most SASO leaders were not opposed to the armed struggle; there was some contact with the liberation movements on this point.
SASO also had no notion of incorporating non-students and becoming a political organisation itself with a bias towards one or other liberation movement. It tried to avoid being paralysed by ideological divisions of the kind that had awakened the black student body during the time of ASA and ASUSA and aimed to forge a broad unity of all the oppressed. To this end, outside the educational sphere, it played a key role in launching other anti-apartheid players such as the Black People’s Convention, encouraged the formation of youth and cultural organisations, and lent support to the Black Community Programmes. Here too, it promoted black unity and solidarity as the basis for effective struggle against white power. SASO’s role within the overall BC movement that it helped to create is well captured by Nolutshungu: ‘At the centre of the movement, giving leadership, was SASO.’ But there were limits to how far SASO was prepared to submerge political differences in the quest for black unity. When some black organisations and individuals participating in separate development structures began linking up with some of the ostensibly more progressive bantustan leaders, SASO condemned them, since there was a concern that fear and passivity could lead to black accommodation with separate development.
SASO provided black higher education students a political home and an avenue for political activity outside the black political parties involved in separate development institutions. Many, like Masterpiece Gumede, were inducted into progressive politics through SASO. As Gumede says: ‘When we came to Ngoye we were immediately grabbed by SASO ... I only got into politics through the student movement at university.’ By being an exclusively black organisation, SASO made it possible for black students no longer to stand ‘at the touchlines’; instead they could ‘do things for themselves and all by themselves.’ It helped to engender a culture of black pride and assertiveness. It provided political education and organisational training and the ‘experience of leadership, planning, strategising and mobilising’. On its community development initiatives, Ramphele adds that there was ‘success in empowering activists in its ranks at all levels. Most of these individuals attained total psychological liberation and realised the meaning of being active agents in history. The impact of this success had a multiplier effect on the wider black community.’ SASO members would thus take into post-Soweto popular organisations considerable political and organisational expertise. In a context where politics was generally regarded as the preserve of adults, SASO also introduced students as an independent political and organisational force. From here on, whether adults and political organisations liked it or not, organised students became a standard feature of South African politics and a vital part of the national liberation struggle. Through its various projects and initiatives, meetings, statements and publications, SASO diffused ideas and a mood that aroused both anger and hope plus a spirit of resistance among students. The spread of ideas and mood gained impetus with the student boycotts of 1972 and aided political awakening and organisation among school students and other youth. Even the court trial of 1975–76 was used to restate the nationalist viewpoint, and [the accused] took every opportunity to symbolise their defiance of the state by singing freedom songs and raising clenched fists in the courtroom. Thus, instead of contributing to the suppression of Black Consciousness ideology, the trial, by giving the accused a continuous public platform through the press, merely disseminated that ideology even more widely, and held up to the youth once again a model of ‘rebel’ courage.
Through its contribution to the Soweto uprising and the subsequent flow of students and youth into exile, SASO also gave ‘to the ANC oxygen and new life, which the movement desperately needed – youth of the South African people, tempered in defiance in action.’ Thus, in various ways, SASO mobilised opposition to white minority rule and contributed to interrupting the previously untrammelled reproduction of apartheid power and domination.

Franktalk Dialogue Session 3

2011-01-19T10:51:00.001+02:00

On the 26th of January the Steve Biko Foundation will host the third discussion in the Franktalk series. The topic for discussion will be "The Role of Communities in Advancing Education." For more information contact Nishklin at npillay@sbf.org.za.

The Steve Biko Birthday Invitational Tournament 2010

2011-01-17T10:30:00.000+02:00

On the 18th December the Steve Biko Foundation and the Ben Jonas Golf Development Trust hosted the 3rd annual Steve Biko Birthday Invitational Golf Tournament at the King William’s Town Golf Club in the Eastern Cape. The tournament was extremely successful with over 160 players on course – an increase of some 33% on the previous year. With the weather being ideal for a round of golf, it was a fantastic day on which we commemorated the birthday of Bantu Stephen Biko and continued his legacy of community upliftment with remarkable success being achieved in the competition by a number of developmental players. The Steve Biko Foundation would like to thank the following who contributed to the successful hosting of the tournament:

Sponsored by:
- South African National Roads Agency Limited
- Vodacom Eastern Cape

Media partner:
- Daily Dispatch

Hole sponsors:
- Rainbow Construction
- Rhodes University
- Carifro Consulting Engineers
- B T K M Quantity Surveyors
- V Slots Eastern Cape
- Triviron Project Management

Special thanks;
- Standard Bank of South Africa Limited

Here are some of the images from the tournament:

2nd Franktalk Discussion

2011-01-12T15:00:00.002+02:00

On November 17th 2010, the Steve Biko Foundation hosted the second dialogue in the Franktalk series at Museum Africa in Newtown. Franktalk is an innovative program for individuals committed to utilizing their skills and experience for the advancement of South African society. Given developments around the creation of a national health insurance programme, the topic of discussion explored “The Proposed National Health Insurance Scheme and its Potential Impact on all Sectors of Society.” The panel was made up of Ms Roseanne Da Silva (NHI Task Team Chair, Actuarial Society of South Africa) and Mr Jonathan Broomberg (Chief Operating Officer of Discovery Health). The discussion was moderated by Mr Xolani Gwala.

Here are some of the images from the discussion…

The Biko Route

2010-12-15T11:29:00.007+02:00

By Kevin Boswell

http://kevinboswell.wordpress.com/
2010 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to South Africa
University of Cape Town, M. Phil. Justice and Transformation

I had just finished the compilation of Biko’s writings, I Write What I Like. I was struck by what a precise and logical thinker he was. Even his contemplation of issues that could only have been of secondary importance for him were incredibly sharp. For example, the book contains clips of correpsondence he had with a local priest over theological issues, and with some chagrin, I noted his grasp and explanation of theological issues was probably superior to my own, even after three years of intense study.

Of course, his primary historical importance concerned his ideas on the nature of the black struggle against apartheid. He is considered the father of the Black Consciousness Movement, which asserted that in order to be free, blacks in South Africa need to free themselves from an ingrained inferiority complex (thanks to colonialism and apartheid).

His eludication of issues has caused me to reflect on my own country’s racial history. For example, Biko argued for a black solution to apartheid, i.e., an exclusively black organization fighting for an inclusive future. He likened the liberal white insistence on a multiracial solution to “expecting the slave to work together with the slave-master’s son to remove all the conditions leading he former’s enslavement.” In the United States, you will often hear people lambasting something like the Black Entertainment Network with the line, “If there was a White Entertainment Network, somebody would get sued.” Biko disavowed me of these notions...
To read the full article, click here...

Steve Biko Honoured with Posthumous Literary Award

2010-12-13T16:00:00.000+02:00

On December 8, 2010 Bantu Stephen Biko was awarded the Posthumous Literary Award by the South African Literary Awards ,for his seminal work "I Write What I Like." These awards pay tribute to South African writers who have distinguished themselves as innovative producers and creators of literature, while celebrating literary excellence in the depiction and sharing of South Africa’s histories, value systems, philosophies and art.

I Write What I Like was originally published in 1978 after Biko's death and has been republished and reprinted several times since then. The book contains a collection of Biko's works dating from 1969 to 1972.

Previous recipients of the Posthumous Literary Award include Sol Plaatjie, Bessie Head and Dora Taylor. The South African Literary Awards were founded by the wRite associates in partnership with the National Department of Arts and Culture, Sowetan and Nutrend Publishers.

Click here to purchase a copy.

Development: What’s Culture Got to do With it?

2010-12-07T16:00:00.001+02:00

By Y.Obenewa Amponsah

Often, in developmental circles, there is an implied or explicitly stated view that African culture is inherently patriarchal. Patriarchy is problematic in that it hinders growth and development by denying women equal opportunities while perpetuating negative social attitudes that fuel social injustice. This view is not only espoused by people outside of the continent’s boarders but by Africans as well. Yet the perspective that culture is inimical to development robs society of a powerful tool with which to bring about the desired change. If the developmental community is to advance a culture of human rights in which women and men are able to jointly reach their full potential, then every instrument possible, including culture, must be utilized to realize that objective.

A fundamental problem in the pronouncements against African culture is that the speakers themselves are often ignorant as to what African culture is. This approach is particularly detrimental in that it perpetuates the notion that Western cultures are superior to African cultures. Rather than winning converts, this message is likely to alienate people who hold those “patriarchal views” and individuals from within those cultures who may not hold the same view but understand that their point of origin is not respected.

The observation that ill-informed people frequently make pronouncements of cultural legitimacy not only relates to those from outside African cultures; this phenomenon is as true of people from within. It is not uncommon to hear people making statements to justify a particular practice by stating, “it is our culture,” or “we have always done it this way.” Which may be true, but without an understanding of the rationale behind a practice, its symbolism and purpose, individuals and communities will be unable to retain the positive values that are meant to be expressed through a particular practice—let alone transmit those values to the next generation.

Also with a greater understanding of the meaning behind cultural traditions, communities will have an opportunity to alter their practices in a manner that enables them to express their values but takes advantage of the 21^st century’s new technologies and growing knowledge base. Most importantly, however, when communities have a deeper understanding of their cultural background, they are better equipped to challenge the abuses, such as domestic violence, that are all too often carried out in the name of culture.

If the development community is to effectively utilize culture to advance its objectives, there must first be a recognition that Africa is not one monolithic block, nor are its cultures homogenous. Rather Africa is a continent comprised of 54 distinct nation states, a continent where approximately 2,000 languages are spoken and a continent that is home to myriad ethnic groups. In this diversity, one is bound to find examples of societies that are perceived as more egalitarian in nature and those where equality is not the norm. While there are cultures that subjugate women, there are those such as the Ashanti of Ghana, which have historically been matrilineal and in which women serve as traditional leaders.

In approaching culture, development practitioners should also realize that culture is not stagnant; rather it is a dynamic force that changes to reflect the historic values of a community in a contemporary context. Recently, a dramatic example of a change in cultural practice took place among the Valoyi tribe in the Limpopo province when in 2008 Ms. Nwamitwa Shiluban became the chief or Hosi. Hosi Nwamitwa’s inauguration was preceded by a long court battle against her cousin who attempted to claim the title based on his gender. What is remarkable in this instance, however, was that Hosi Nwamitwa’s leadership was backed not only by the Constitutional Court and “Western style” democracy, but the Valoyi traditional leadership and royal family supported her claim as well. Some sources even point to the fact that traditionally the Valoyi had women chiefs; yet with the advent of colonialism, matrilineal practices and female leadership throughout Africa were discouraged, reflecting the gender biases of Western powers of the time. In the experience of Hosi Nwamitwa, a return to traditional African cultural practices has actually helped to overcome patriarchy rather than support it.

Regularly there are a number of dialogues and debates taking place around the efficacy of cultural practices ranging from polygamy to circumcision. If better understood, the cultural ethos behind these and other practices could provide powerful tools with which to advance gender equality and social justice. Rather than being perceived as a ritual through which patriarchy is entrenched, could male circumcision schools become platforms through which gender equality, safety and health issues are rigorously taught to young men? By better understanding the dynamics of man-boy marriage that was practiced among the Zande of Sudan, could we have the basis for better communication around same sex marriages?

In closing, while there are a number of cultural beliefs and practices found in African communities that do serve to advance the interests of men to the detriment of women, there is also a wealth of cultural and traditional resources in communities that can be utilized to effectively combat these challenges, and to advance the developmental agenda; but the first step in utilizing these tools is to actually understand them.

Y. Obenewa Amponsah is the Director of Fundraising & International Partnerships at the Steve Biko Foundation.

THE STEVE BIKO BIRTHDAY INVITATIONAL TOURNAMENT 2010

2010-12-06T15:17:00.000+02:00

"Black Man You Are On Your Own"

2010-11-01T10:35:00.002+02:00

On the 10th of November the Steve Biko Foundation will launch Dr Saleem Badat's Black Man, You Are On Your Own in association with the University of Witswatersrand's Faculty of Humanities and STE Publishers. This event will take place at the PDH Building , East Campus, Entrance 1, Wits University, Empire Road(Off Jan Smuts Ave& Empire Road intersection). The programme will run from 18h30 to 20h00.

Please RSVP to Bruce Waters on 011.403.0310 or bruce@sbf.org.za by Friday 5th of November if you are interested in attending this event.

Below is a review of Black Man , You Are On Your Own , written by Mr Don Makatile.

13-Sep-2010 | Don Makatile |

LIKE a myriad war cries of the times, Black Man, You Are On Your Own is popularly and erroneously credited to Stephen Bantu Biko.

Bruce Waters, operations manager at the Biko Foundation, says the words were actually from the mouth of one Nyameko Barney Pityana, a long-time Biko ally.

It is a fitting title to the scholarly look into the role and identity of the SA Students Organisation (Saso), a body of which Biko was elected national president at its inaugural launch in July 1969.

Saso was formed a year earlier and it proved such a thorn in the side of the apartheid authorities that nine years later, in October 1977, they ended its shelf life by banning it.

Vice-chancellor at Rhodes University Dr Saleem Badat does such a splendid job of throwing the spotlight on Saso's raison d' etre that reading this book one is left wondering if the likes of the Congress of SA Students (Cosas) and the SA Students Congress (Sasco) - after Biko - fully understood the purpose of their own existence.

A former student activist himself, the author is adamant that we need research and analysis of student politics and the bodies through which this activism was achieved.

In the meantime, Saso stands as proof that black students were agents of historical change, thinkers - especially as evinced in the activism of Biko, Pityana and their contemporaries such as Onkgopotse Tiro and Diliza Mji.

For the record, it is Saso that kicked out the younger Themba Sono from within their ranks.

Under the likes of Julius Malema, it is almost impossible to put a finger on tangible achievements of organisations such as Cosas but, most notably, it is this Saso that gave birth to the philosophy of black consciousness and the crème de la crème of political leaders as its products.

The beauty of Badat's writing and the fruits of his meticulous research don't just plonk Saso in the middle of student politics - it locates it within a context.

The grand scheme of apartheid did not envisage the spectre of an educated black man. True to the words of its architect, Hendrik Verwoerd, blacks were good for chopping wood and drawing water. There was no point in equipping the African with skills he'd find no use for inside the confines of his own society, the separatists argued.

The University of Natal, where Biko entered medical school, was only opened to blacks and funded by the state with the strict proviso that it would prepare the black graduate for a career that would serve the white people. Rhodes, which the author now heads, totally prohibited blacks from studying there.

Before Saso, Fort Hare had experienced the ANC Youth League, the African Students Association (ASA) and the African Students Union of SA (Asusa).

But student politics would only come alive in 1968. At this time, student politics at black universities took place within the conduit of the white National Union of SA Students. The realisation that the liberal Nusas could not and would not address the needs of black students forced those like Biko to conclude that, eh, the black man was on his own.

This article was published in the Sowetan newspaper on the 13th of September 2010.

2010-10-25T09:26:00.002+02:00

Last week Tuesday the Steve Biko Foundation hosted the Inaugural FrankTalk dialogue at Museum Africa in Newtown.The topic was "The Role,Rights and Responsibility of the Media in Contemporary South Africa." The panel was made up of Mr Joe Thloloe ( Press Ombudsman), Mr Eusebius McKaiser and Professor Pumla Gqola. We look forward to the next dialogue which will be on the 17th of November at Museum Africa.

Here are some images from the Inaugural FrankTalk dialogue

The Panel: Mr Joe Thloloe,Mr Eusebius McKaiser, Professor Pumla Gqola

The Panel and the moderator Ms.Andile Gaelisiwe

The Audience

Inaugural FrankTalk Dialogue

2010-10-13T16:12:00.000+02:00

Please click on our events page to find out more about our Inaugural FrankTalk Dialogue taking place on the 19th of October.

School Visits to the Steve Biko Foundation.

2010-10-04T12:44:00.006+02:00

Throughout the year hundreds of students visit the Steve Biko Foundation's Eastern Cape offices to learn more about Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement. Upon their arrival they are requested to fill out a questionnaire that allows us to gauge how much they know about Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement. After that they are taken through the Life Stations of Bantu Stephen Biko photographic exhibition which is up at the SBF’s Eastern Cape Offices. They are then taken on the Biko Heritage Trail which is made up of six Biko related sites, which include his home and the Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance where he is buried. At the end of their visit the students are once again asked to fill out a questionnaire to see how much they have learnt about Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement.

Here are some pictures from recent visits:


Students from Upper Chulunca Secondary School at Bantu Stephen Biko's graveside.

Students from Qonce High School viewing the Life Stations of Bantu Stephen Biko exhibition.

Students from Elukhanyisweni High School at the Biko House also know as the Biko Monument.

Students from Greenpoint Secondary School outside the Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance.

Students from L M Ndindwa High School filling out their questionnaires.

SBF-BRUTE FORCE Poetry & Hip-Hop Sessions

2010-09-28T10:11:00.007+02:00

SBF-BRUTE FORCE Poetry and Hip Hop Sessions take place every Thursdays at Talamanca lounge at the Esplanade Beach Front in East London. Artists who perform during these sessions are emerging artists from around the Eastern Cape.

During the sessions the audience is requested to listen attentively since at the end of the session the audience get to vote for the headline artist next Thursday. During every session a guest artist is invited to share the stage. Ntsiki Mazwayi was the guest artist on the 2nd of September along with Sipokazi “Sposh” Petshwa who had just returned from Idols SA's top 14. The SBF-BRUTE FORCE Poetry & Hip-Hop Sessions fall under the Steve Biko Foundation's Arts, Culture and Identity Programme, which empowers youth to actively shape and express a positive sense of self through the arts.

Below are images from the session that took place on the 2nd of September :

Ntsiki Mazwayi

Ntsiki during her performance

The audience

Dark West

"Sposh"


Chuma "The Black Diamond"

Coming to See You Since I was Five: An American Poet's Connection to the South African Soul.

2010-09-20T10:15:00.001+02:00

The 11th Annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture

September 9, 2010

The University of Cape Town

Cape Town, South Africa
Copyright ©2010 by Alice Walker

I have spent most of the early morning thinking of what I want to say to you: there is so much. First of all I want to say that I am in your country, have been drawn to your country, the beautiful South Africa, which for some years in our own struggle we referred to as Azania, because of a deep love of you, of your heroines and heroes, of your long, long struggle toward positive humanity for yourselves and for all oppressed people on the planet. You have been a great inspiration to all people on earth who are interested in and devoted to Justice, Peace and Happiness.

I was asked to provide a title for my talk and this is what came to me: Coming to See You Since I was Five Years Old: a Poet's Connection to the South African Soul. The reason I have been coming your way for over sixty years is because when I was five years old my eldest sister Mamie Lee Walker, all of seventeen years old herself, came home from college her freshman year and taught my eleven year old sister and myself your National Anthem, Nkosi Sikeleli'Afrika. (Sung). We were the only children of any color who were taught this song in our tiny, totally segregated town in the deep South of the United States, in Georgia; the somber, intense passion and dignity of the melody entered my heart. It has lodged there for the last sixty years.

It did not just lodge there, it propelled me into the deepest of curiosities about who Africans might truly be. Because, in the deeply racist United States of the Forties and Fifties, when I was born, Africa was shrouded in the most profound mists of distortion, racially motivated misperceptions, gross exploitation, and lies.

Africans were almost cheerfully despised.

Considered to be savages. Certainly.

And yet, for me, and for my sister Ruth, there was our sister coming home from college, whose fees my materially poor parents sweated to pay; there was the sound of Nkosi Sikeleli' Afrika.(Sung). "God Bless Mother Africa" was sung so earnestly by her loving sons and daughters, her horribly abused children, that it made an impression on our psyches never to be erased.

Here is part of the poem that goes with this awakening to Africa. In the poem I changed my sister Mamie’s name to Molly.

For my sister Molly

Who in the Fifties knew Hamlet well and read into the night

And coached me in my songs of Africa

A continent I never knew

But learned to love

Because they

She said

Could carry a tune

And spoke in accents never heard

In Eatonton. (Our small town where we didn't actually live. We lived in the outlying countryside of Putnam County, which was far more beautiful.)

When I myself went off to college it was that song, Nkosi Sikeleli’Afrika”(Sung) that sound of so much humility, love, devotion and trust that led me to the most important friendship I encountered during my student years - my friendship with an African woman named Constance Nabwire who hailed from Uganda.

From that friendship, and the understanding that Constance and I were sisters, developed my deep interest in and concern for Africa and its peoples, its animals, its rainforests and its diverse cultures. Through the writing of Africans both male and female I began to encounter an intellectual and moral thoughtfulness that bordered on, and often embodied the most astonishing profundity. I remember reading The Concubine by Elechi Amadi and The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye, for instance, and just being stunned. I would go on to read Ama Ata Aidoo, Buchi Emecheta, the great, troubling, Bessie Head, the Ugandan poet Okot p' Bitek (part of whose masterpiece "Song of Lawino" would preface my first novel), Ngugi wa Thiong'o of Kenya and of course the incomparable author of Two Thousand Seasons, Ayi Kwei Armah, who, years into the future, would become a friend.

It should not have been surprising that as soon as I found a way to do so, when I was around twenty, I made my way to East Africa, to the land of Constance Nabwire's birth, to discover for myself what made her such a wonderful person - wise and gentle beyond her years and certainly beyond that of most of the other girls at our school. I am happy to say I encountered a Uganda that bears little resemblance to the one we see today.

Uganda was referred to by Winston Churchill as the "Japan" of Africa, because of the people's courtesy and kindliness. This was a colonialist view, but even so. It was also a land of the greenest hills and valleys; where there was a palpable feeling of peace and patience with the stranger.

I was taken in immediately by a Ugandan family who sheltered and cared for me during my visit, dispelling forever any sense I might have had that I would not be recognized as one of Africa's children.

From this encounter in Africa, and later in Kenya, where I joined others in beginning the construction of a school, I followed my curiosity about the African continent in many of my works.

It was in Kenya that I first learned of female genital cutting. I was so shocked that I hid from this subject for many years. And then, because by now I knew I loved Africa, whatever was going on there, I set out to learn all that I could about this practice and then I set out to write about it as fully as I could. This I did in a novel called Possessing the Secret of Joy.

I was driven to find the answer to the question: Why would any parents who loved them willingly hurt their children?

One of the things I began to understand about oppression, as I worked on this issue, was how The Oppressor, whoever it is, will happily steal everything we have, but they will leave us our self-inflicted suffering. They will leave us, gladly leave us, our scars. And they will then help others define us by the wounds and scars we give ourselves. They will take all our land, our water, our minerals and our dances, even, and they will feel justified in doing so, but they will leave us with visibly very little, except that which is gruesome to outsiders and painful to those of us who must suffer it.

The resonance of "Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika" (Sung) is also deeply embedded in The Color Purple . Half of that novel is set in colonial Africa, among Africans, and explores what happens to the Africans, as their land is confiscated by foreign rubber plantation owner/thieves. The discovery that Africans are enslaved on their own land is of grave concern to the African American Missionaries who come to understand that they too, in America, have been stolen from the African people and the African continent in the same way that the land has been. This is a horrifying realization and sends them into intense pain and grief. They are also awakened to the sham of their missionary mission to "'uplift' the hapless 'natives."

Many readers fail to realize this, but The Color Purple is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one's original God: the earth and nature. It is about re-examining that word that most colonized people are taught to loathe: Pagan. One who loves and worships nature, venerates and protects Mother Earth; one who cares for all of Her creatures with a degree of acceptance and tolerance. There is a built in humility toward nature that means it is respected for the very wonder of its being and that if a tree must be cut down, for example, one must beg its pardon.

This respect for nature is one of the biggest losses to African and other indigenous peoples since our domination and colonization by people who think about nature entirely differently than we do. Those unfortunate sufferers in the northern part of globe from the ravages and hardships of the last Ice Age.

Nkosi Sikeleli' Afrika (Sung) God Bless Mother Africa.

Hearing this song, learning this song, hearing your heart and soul coming through it, even as a five year old, how could I ever leave you?

And so I have taken you, your spirit, the spirit of Steve Biko, of Winnie Mandela, of Nelson Mandela, of the Children of Sharpeville, completely into the very marrow of my bones.

In our own struggles to end American Apartheid you have been with us.

In our struggles against nuclear weapons that threaten to end all of our lives, your struggle has encouraged us.

In the infinitely long struggle to affirm the rights of women, your example of never giving up, sustains us. For we have seen in your struggle the completely complimentary nature of male and female solidarity in the pursuit of the common objective: freedom.

In my ongoing befriending of the other animals of the planet, it is your struggle that is part of my passionate defense of them. For who knows better than black South Africans what it has meant to be treated as if one did not deserve to live.

Another poem, from my very first visit to East Africa: when I didn’t yet understand that while the white man was wantonly slaughtering almost all the buffalo in my country, he was also busily destroying the animals of Africa. I saw this in a shop window in Nairobi, but naïve as I was, I did not understand what I was seeing.

It is a short poem; if you blink you could miss it. Only this, a haiku:

Elephant legs

In a store

To hold

Umbrellas.

And today, when I write about Aung San Suu Kyii in Burma (Myanmar) or visit Gaza to see the devastation caused by the Israeli assault on a people under present day apartheid laws, it is as if a tiny recording of Nkosi Sikeleli’ Afrika (Sung) is lodged in my brain.

And because it is there never ceasing, just as your desire to be free never stopped, I know that whatever disaster I am witnessing will have an end. The people of Palestine, like the people of South Africa, have a right to their land, their resources, their freedom. I know, from the world's gradual embracing of the South African struggle, that the same will be the fate of the Palestinians. And the why of it is simple: no lie will live forever. And when a lie is exposed: that Africans are merely savages, that Palestinians are merely terrorists, that women are basically servants of men or whores, there in the bright glare of our collective awareness it dies. When lies die, people live.

And that brings us to consciousness. And to Steve Biko.

Steven Bantu Biko is known as the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa. He taught that black people must investigate and validate their own existence, irrespective of other people's opinions of them. That they must see themselves in the warm light of their own genius – the unique gift that they come into the world carrying to deliver to all of humankind. That they must have faith that they are made perfectly for the singular expression of The Divine that they are.

This is why one reveres Steven Biko. Because, in short, he fully understood that the foundation of any true liberation is self love.

And that reminds me of an earlier poem that I wrote about missing things like car keys, glasses and where one parked the car. That short poem, in my book Absolute Faith in the Goodness of the Earth is titled: Where Is That Nail File? Where Are My Glasses? Have You Seen My Car Keys? It is very short and goes like this:

Nothing is ever lost

it is only misplaced

if we look

we can find

again

human

kindness.

There is also a lovely phrase from poet Galway Kinnell that comes to mind here: that “sometimes it is necessary to re-teach a thing its loveliness.”

This is perhaps where South Africans are, many of them, at the moment. Needing the rest of us who have been so deeply inspired and imprinted by your courage, dignity and beauty of soul and body, to remind you of all this; to remind you of who you are.

It is with so much sadness that one reads about South Africa in recent news. As an activist, a revolutionary, a poet and writer, and yes, for all my daughter's criticism of me, as a mother, I am unable to comprehend how you now have a president who has three wives and twenty-odd children. A president who has been accused of atrocious acts and who seems to have little of the restraint in his personal life that would mean more dignity and respect accorded to his people.

I am by no means the only person in the world scratching my head over this.

I have been in your country for three or four days. Each day has brought a new disclosure in the news of rampant greed and materialism that quite takes one's breath away. There is news about the desperation of the poor. News of violence and despair. A lack of faith in the persons guiding the country. The feeling that perhaps people have lost the will to guide themselves.

Was it all for this? Was Mandela's incarceration for nearly three decades and Steve Biko's death from torture, for this?

For people fighting over mines they own not simply in South Africa but in battered and bleeding countries, i.e. the Congo for instance, far, but not that far, away?

Perhaps my heart is heaviest regarding the Congo because I was recently there. As you know it has become known as the worst place on earth to be a woman. And indeed, while I was there I witnessed what is happening to our brothers and sisters because of the greed that is devouring their land. On a level almost too horrible to contemplate, the people themselves are being devoured, sometimes literally.

I know I am not the only one in this room who remembers the beauty and dignity, the grace and eloquence of Patrice Lumumba. That last view of him, his hands tied behind his back, his torturers attempting to force something into his mouth. His proud refusal to open to whatever it was. Then, the news later, that he had been tortured, had been killed. His body thrown from a plane. And then later, the colonialists placed another African in his place who was not bothered by the rape of his country. In fact, he profited from it. Is this to be the fate of South Africa?

Nkosi Sikilei’ Afrika. (Sung). (Sadly).

South Africans of that era, as well as black activists in the United States saw exactly what was going on, and we wept for the dream of Africa for Africans that we witnessed being lost.

All true revolutionaries, like Lumumba, love us. They want us to have abundant, joyful life. Tenderness, said Che Guevara, is at root what revolution is about. Caring for each other, honoring the other in ourselves. Ourselves in the other. Namaste.

I have seen the hovels, the shacks, the unpaved roads, the unkempt children on one side of Johannesburg. And the mansions behind the highest walls I've ever seen around dwellings, in another. What to make of this? What to make of the words of your constitution - where you profess such an understanding of the unique sufferings of the poor?

What to make of the stories one sets outside one's mind, they are so troubling: the young woman stoned, years ago, for admitting she had aids? The rampant rape and other brutality against women and children that appeared everywhere in the news. The disdain, often, for those who have fallen ill with a disease; the documented homophobia? the turning away of the “human face” Steven Biko wanted us all to have?

And also there is this: My love for Winnie Mandela whose voice throughout the Apartheid years kept alive for millions of us in the U.S. the reality of the South African struggle. What happened there? We in the United States ask ourselves. Can it be that if she is guilty at all of any bad behavior it is because, being human, and having been treated, under Apartheid misrule worse than many of us can even imagine, she broke? And after giving us all of her love and substance for so many years, what was the new South Africa’s response to her? If we cannot extend compassion to those whose lives prove their devotion and love, who are we that Life should smile on our stinginess of heart?

We do not understand, nor will our children ever understand, why a country does not have both its parents: it’s father, yes, but also it’s mother. Neither of them perfect, but both of them necessary for our birth.

It was deeply disturbing to many of us in the United States to see that Bill Clinton (who could not respond to the genocide of 800,000 Rwandans) and even deKlerk are going down in history as more honorable, more smiled upon by many South Africans, than Winnie Mandela. How can this be?

When I was shown the house where the Mandela family lived I was struck by the fact that this woman, this soldier, this “man among men” as Abraham Lincoln once said of the indomitable freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, is portrayed ironing. I have nothing against ironing – I don’t do very much of it. But it seems a strange choice, lovely as Winnie Mandela looks while ironing, for someone who spent so much time harassed, firebombed, jailed, stuck in solitary confinement – 200 days. Whose every move was monitored and contested brutally by white supremacist, Nazi/Fascist police.

It was outside what was formerly the Mandela home in Johannesburg that I heard a version of Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika (Sung) I’d never heard before. It came from the mouths of young men who were making a condescending parody of it while holding out their hands for money. Knowing that moment would live forever in my consciousness, I felt I, and the South African struggle, had lost enormous ground.

The African way with woman leaves much to be desired, and I am not faulting only the men. Some women are content to be potted plants. Here and elsewhere. But most are not.

I have a poem about this:

A Woman is Not a Potted Plant

A woman is not a potted plant

Her roots bound

To the confines

Of her house

A woman is not

A potted plant

Her leaves trimmed

To the contours

Of her sex

A woman is not a potted plant

Her branches

Espaliered

Against the fences

Of her race

Her country

Her mother

Her man

Her trained blossom

Turning this way

And that

To follow the sun

Of whoever feeds

And waters

Her

A woman is wilderness

Unbounded

Holding the future

Between each breath

Walking the earth

Only because she is free

And not creeper vine

Or tree.

Nor even honeysuckle

Or bee.

These stories of coldness, cruelty, and lack of compassion would make anyone doubt their people’s loveliness. And yet, "Nkosi Sikeleli' AfriKa"(Sung) you are so lovely. It is, this loveliness, who you deeply are. But you have forgotten, as so many of us have forgotten that we are beautiful, and it is not all our own fault.

We have entered a period of such instability and impoverishment of spirit that even though they are charged with our soul care, our ministers, our teachers, our spiritual guides, are in a state of fright themselves.

Never before has humanity faced losing the earth itself, which is exactly what we are losing as global warming increases, and greater climate disasters affect us, worldwide. We are, all of us on some level, living with a degree of terror that humanity has never experienced before.

It is not so surprising therefore that there are those who feel the need to protect themselves behind vast barriers of wealth.

But such “protection” is an illusion. Mother Nature presents a very different kind of army than the ones we are used to fighting: the armies of poverty, colonization, weapons of all kinds; media double- speak that keeps us confused. In fact, what is so chilling about Mother Nature is how indifferent She can be to who should be punished for the crimes committed against her. We are all being punished. And this is because we have forgotten one of the most basic of the things that made us beautiful: that we must never fail to have respect for her. And we must cease, at once, from taking more than she is willing to give.

And here I will insert another poem from my collection: Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990.

We have a beautiful Mother

Her hills are buffaloes

Her buffaloes

Hills

We have a beautiful Mother

Her oceans are wombs

Her wombs

Oceans

We have a beautiful Mother

Her teeth

The white stones

At the edge

Of the water

The summer grasses

Her plentiful hair

We have a beautiful Mother

Her green lap

Immense

Her brown embrace

Eternal

Her Blue Body

Everything

We know.

Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika:(Sung) God Bless Mother Africa.

I would remind you that this beautiful Mother of whom you sing and of whom I write, is not an intellectual idea. She is real and She is Nature. She is Earth. She is this world. She is the cosmos, the moon and the stars. Grass and planets. She is your lions and elephants just as She is our buffalo and bears. She is the Everything of Life, our Mother. Our Goddess and God. It is this Everything of Life we must return to, bow to, protect and nurture. It is largely because we have forgotten the beauty of our Mother that we have forgotten the beauty and wonder of ourselves, for we are one.

On a practical level, what is to be done?

I realized, during the Bush years in the United States, which were all but unbearable for many of us to endure, that we must in no instance rely totally on external leadership. That each of us has a leader within us; it is our conscience. One of the ways of developing this leader within is to sit during some portion of the day in meditation. Or in contemplation, if the thought of meditation seems too far-fetched. This is the time, all the old Africans knew, when the soul is permitted to catch up to the run-a-way body and the speedy, chattering mind.

During this state of inner development it is sometimes revealed not only that we are all connected to one another but that, indeed, we are one another. Or separation is largely illusion. Realizing this, there develops the intention of caring for the totality of Life, not just for our selves.

I have been a political, social and spiritual activist for most of my life, and feel connected to peoples and struggles all over the globe. The foundation for this work, as an adult, lies in the circle of women (at times including men) I have instigated or joined. And this is the medicine, today, that I bring to you.

That at the moment, from what I read in the papers, your government is not listening to your cries for a new and better way to exist. That “democracy” of which much has been said, is still radically unclear to the people who still hunger and thirst. As well, the old methods of protest have left a great weariness and disappointment.

It is time to circle.

I advise that everyone of you in this room call up between seven and eleven of your staunchest, smartest, and most thoughtful friends, and that you create of yourselves a circle that meets at least once a month in each other’s homes. There, in the safety and privacy of that sacred space, enter thoroughly into dialogue about what you wish for and will work for in your country. There need not be a specific agenda. In fact, it will work better if there is not.

What I have found, especially with women’s circles, is that when a certain number of women get together, leaving all agendas outside the door, whatever is most urgent gets addressed anyway. There appears to be magic simply in the willingness to tackle life’s hardest problems from the humble position of being simply one among many in a circle of individuals caring for the common lot.

I began my writing life as a poet, went on to write seven novels, dozens of short stories and essays, volumes of poetry, children’s books, etc. but now I am re-embracing poetry as a priority, which is what, in my opinion, current movements for liberation and justice desperately need. Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness. And it is the raising of consciousness that is the most effective way to ensure lasting change. About this Steve Biko was absolutely right. Once our consciousness changes, so does our existence.

I believe we must spread the idea of circling around the globe until all our circles merge, transforming the face of the planet organically. Making our public political leaders, those who refuse circling with the people, as obsolete as they frequently show themselves to be.

We are capable of leading ourselves if we can develop the capacity to listen to, to hear, what we ourselves believe. This will undoubtedly require releasing our attachment to many of our gadgets, which are drowning out our inner voices.

Lastly, I would advise you to dance.

Over a period of about a year I wrote a book of poems that will be published in the United States next month. It is called Hard Times Require Furious Dancing.

I believe Africans, who have suffered so grievously and who obviously have also experienced a great depth of joy (you see this sometimes in your smiles and eyes) have always known this. That this is why dance, like song, is prominent in the culture of all Africans.

In writing this book I revisited the times in recent years that my heart was heavy, nearly bursting with sorrow; times when losing family, friends, or the earth itself, felt like more than I could bear.

And yet, just as springtime makes us forget about winter, my own love of the wonder of existence, in any condition or form, forced me to wish to celebrate Life.

And so I hired a band and a dance floor and invited friends and family to a gathering at which the only directive was: dance!

Times are hard. Everywhere. Mother Africa also known as Mother Earth is very irritated with us. We may be on our way to extinction as a species. I wish Her happiness in any outcome.

Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us in this very large room is the proof.

Nkosi’ Sikeleli Afrika. (Sung with hope).

And with all my love,

Alice Walker

Delivered in honor of Willie Lee Walker, father of eight, who exhibited as long as he was able, a courage and spirit like Steven Biko's in the American apartheid South.

Note: this written talk has been edited and amended to include the names of additional writers I wish to honor. Also, it appears there are more than one official way to spell Nkosi' Sikeleli Afrika. I have used the phonetic spelling based on the sound I learned as a five year old.

Rewriting the Spirit of Steve Biko for the Twitter Generation

2010-09-01T12:32:00.001+02:00

Mr Nkosinathi Biko, CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation.

The Daily Maverick’s SIPHO HLONGWANE spoke to the son of the iconic embodiment of Black Consciousness in South Africa, mostly about the apparent apathy of today’s youth toward political involvement.

Nkosinathi Biko sees a great need for quality leadership in South Africa. And he is not the only one. Why, he asks, would the ANC be speaking of forming a political school, if the issue of quality political leadership did not concern them?
The eldest son of Steve Biko is involved in quite a few non-profit organisations these days and is a director in several other business enterprises. He is also the CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation, the organisation that “bothers itself about the things that were important to Steve Biko”, as he puts it.

The foundation was founded in 1998 to be the premier independent promoter of the values Steve Biko lived and died for: Restoring people to their true humanity. The foundation numbers among its projects the Steve Biko Centre, in King Williams Town, as well as the Biko Heritage Trail in Eastern Cape. The foundation’s best-known work is the Steve Biko memorial lecture, delivered annually near the date when Biko was murdered by the apartheid police. The lecture has been delivered by the likes of Chinua Achebe, former president Nelson Mandela and former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni.

Nkosinathi Biko met with The Daily Maverick in the Braamfontein headquarters of the Steve Biko Foundation to talk about youth leadership, and the participation of young people in public affairs.

Inevitably then the conversation goes to the extraordinary crop of young leaders the struggle against apartheid bred, not least among them Steve Biko. We now live in post-apartheid South Africa, a country where the youth are increasingly coming under criticism for not having the same zeal for democracy and justice as their predecessors did.
Is there still a need for young people to actively fight for freedom and justice, or is it merely enough for them to take an interest in things that safeguard freedom and democracy, we asked. From the perspective of someone (someone being this particular reporter) who recognises that his generation has this problem of political apathy, and when speaking to people of a like mind, it seems they are far more interested in talking about these things, to read the papers and to sign a petition here and there. Is there a need for active participation?

Biko was adamant the need for active participation by the citizenry and the youth still exists in this country. “That need even exists in more mature and more successful economies,” he said. “The only difference is that the vocabulary has changed since the end of apartheid. Poverty is still poverty, but perhaps when I was younger and certainly when Steve Biko was around, it was framed around the political vocabulary. There were structural reasons why we had poverty, whether it was job exclusion of people, Bantu education and a whole range of things that lead to somebody having a very low ceiling in their lives and being subjected to poverty. That was the analysis then. But the same lot of people, and their children, are still stuck in cycles of poverty. So this is not just a responsibility for youth, but of all citizens to ensure that this country works for a bigger majority than it currently does, otherwise it will work for nobody.”

We really ought to be concerning ourselves with these things, shifts in vocabulary notwithstanding. Using the example of crime (well, this is South Africa after all), Biko shows that what were once issues of politics are now issues of economics. “If you track things like crime, which used to be made as if it was something being perpetrated by one group against another, black against white, certainly has lost preference for distinction based on colour. Crime is crime. So people will steal your motor at your gate or anything to get a plate of food, irrespective of whether you are black or white. Those are things that should concern us as citizens and certainly should be part of the political machinery of the youth.”

But apathy does exist, and it extends beyond political matters. Biko related a personal incident to illustrate this point. “I went to a university yesterday and looked at the condition of some of the facilities available to the students and the conditions under which they live. It’s a combination – I think that particular university has resource challenges, but there are certain things that should have been done. Now, when we were young, apart from the national agenda, there were things that were very real in our hostels that we attended to. But there tends to be apathy, even around bread-and-butter issues. You see this happening around campus. There was a point, I think two elections ago, when most campuses were lead by independents, in terms of youth leadership. It was not the ANC, it was not the PAC, not the DA – independents. Somebody who just wakes up and says, you know what, I’m tired, I want our dormitory clean, and they become president.”

It is also not true that the youth are silent. Things are being said. The issue is the content of what is being said, and the manner in which that content is delivered. Youth have been very vociferous within the political space, Biko said. The problem is that we tend to make the debate of political factionalism to be the entire national conversation, as far as youth formations are concerned, the truth being that there are many voices that aren’t being listened to. “If you go to churches, you will find a significant amount of youth activity and quality youth leadership, in my view, within church structures.”

Where we failed to give equal ear to all voices is with the National Youth Commission, a desk that was created with direct links to the presidency. The idea was that different youth constituencies, in both political and social formations, would contest for that direct ear to the presidency. For whatever reason, it failed. As a direct result, the factionalist political battles have consumed the entire public space occupied by the youth.

What is failing the youth the most, according to Biko, is their lack of organisation. “I think that there are a lot of discordant voices. Everywhere we go, for instance in the creative field, we see young people churning out poetry and music, who are unaware that there are hundreds of young people out there doing the same thing, and were we to organise ourselves into some form of network, we would probably be the greatest cultural group in the world.”

What then, is to be done?

“First of all we need to change the language and vocabulary,” Biko said. “And the second thing we need to do is to organise young people into a coherent voice that can prioritise their issues. Every government department ought to have a youth element – department of health, department of education, department of treasury etc. It should have been a horizontal agenda that runs across every department so that every department drives the agenda of the youth. Now that’s not going to come about if there’s no organisation of the voice and changing the way in which we engage in the public domain.” Sounds like a very tall order for Facebook generation.

But it’s the technological tools available today that give young people no excuse for not organising themselves, according to Biko. Just look at Trevor Noah on Twitter he says. “If ever there was a time in history where having no voice is an absolutely unacceptable excuse, it is now. Can you imagine what the struggle would have been like with cellphones and emails and all that stuff? The comedian Trevor Noah has an audience of 13,000 followers. So without a major investment, youth can organise themselves into a network that is insurmountable, simply because of technology. What is often explained as exclusion is self-exclusion, rather than by anybody else.”

Inexperience is also a tired excuse for poor leadership. The worldwide trend is that leadership is becoming younger, looking at people like Barack Obama, Dmitry Medvedev and David Cameron, and it, therefore, boggles the mind that in South Africa, people still linger on in this stage of “youth” well into their 30s, and use it as an excuse to speak in objectionable ways. “The question is then that if you can become a president, such as Medvedev in Russia, if you can become a leader of a country at the age of 42, it would mean by necessity that you start yourself on that trajectory at a very early age, and it certainly is not 35. So that excuse has to fall away, and we need to call for a greater level of accountability, and in my view, quality in the pronouncements that come out of youth groups.”

Then there’s Steve Biko himself. “His best writings were between the ages of 19 and 29,” his son told The Daily Maverick. “So age was not necessarily an excuse for him to lean towards mediocrity.”

A great danger that lies in this apathy by the youth and society in general, is that we may end up with an excessively powerful government on one hand, and an excessively disengaged citizenry on the other. Biko said that the agenda of government no longer becomes about serving the people.

In a way then, we have the government we deserve.

But you can do something. The way Biko sees it, the salvation for South Africa lies in the fact that democracy at its grittiest form still occurs. “It is almost impossible to be elected to the top of a political party without that having come, not only from a street committee, but a ward committee, then the municipal level, regional level, province and so forth,” he said. “So you have this machinery, which is still with us, to a large extent, and it is about making use of that machinery, and giving audibility to local issues and the voice of the people.”

This article was featured on the The Daily Maverick website on the 29th of August 2010.

Only civil society can reinvigorate the country's culture of activism

2010-07-13T13:33:00.000+02:00

Throughout the World Cup games, which began June 11th, representatives from Mott-funded organizations in South Africa shared personal reflections on the nation’s past, present and future by writing brief essays from many of the communities where the matches were played. Here is the Steve Biko Foundation's contribution written by Y. Obenewa Amponsah.

"Only civil society can reinvigorate the country's culture of activism."

Sixteen years after the establishment of a full democracy, South Africa has much to be proud of. It is a nation whose constitution is the envy of many human rights activists around the world; a democracy which has demonstrated a maturity far beyond its years in weathering political storms; and which has seen the creation of 3.5 million jobs in the past decade and a half.

Yet, South Africa is also a nation that struggles to overcome inequality on a daily basis, both the disparities that are a legacy of apartheid and those that have been fostered in the present. These inequalities are evidenced by the fact that as of 2008 only 36 percent of third graders could read and count at grade level; that life expectancy has fallen to age 50; and that 40 percent of households are extremely poor.

In the early, exhilarating days of post-apartheid South Africa, government – in concert with a variety of stakeholders – worked to create policies that embodied the hopes and dreams of South Africans from every walk of life. Yet, today, as the nation approaches the third decade of its democracy, the struggle has shifted from the creation of equitable policies to their implementation. This is a fight that civil society is well-positioned to champion. Not by promoting a passive culture of service delivery and entitlement, which unfortunately has come to frame so much of the developmental discourse, but by reinvigorating the culture of activism that marked the years leading up to the realization of South Africa’s freedom.

It is only through partnering with those at the periphery of South Africa’s democratic spaces to equip the marginalized with the skills, information, and, most importantly, a sense of ownership, that the nation will achieve its true potential. Only in recognizing the inexorable link between biography and history, between consciousness of self and national ideals, will South Africa attain the vision articulated by Steve Biko: In time we shall be in the position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible: a more human face.”

Black Leadership in the 21st Century

2010-07-13T11:44:00.001+02:00

On the 3rd of June 2010,Mr. Nkosinathi Biko delivered an address on Black Leadership in the 21st Century at the Zanele Kunene-Mbeje Memorial Symposium on Black Leadership. What is contained here is a excerpt of the address titled "Black Leadership through the African Perspective."

"Black Leadership through the African Perspective"

In explaining what Black Leadership means, perhaps two concepts become useful...The first is now the cliched African concept of ubuntu - the notion that I am because you are.

Few African cultural concepts have grabbed the public imagination quite like the notion of ubuntu. Since 1994 , it has become a regular if not cliched insert in political and business addresses,religious sermons, public conversations, academic papers and other many similar platforms. But despite the fact that references to ubuntu are plentiful the concept itself remains at once illuminated and blurred. At best it has been reduced to pacifist philosophy, devoid of any trace of the "African image being an assertive sovereign subject."

For my limited contribution I am indebted to Mogobe Ramose, Desmond Tutu , Steve Biko and a few others who have shed light on the subject. In common parlance the African term umtnu translates loosely to the Western concept of person, human being or homosapien. Yet, there is a vast philosophical difference between the Western notion and the African interpretation of umntu. All of us are born human beings. However , the term umntu is not a biological concept. It is a social phenomenon.It is a judgement pronounced in approval or disapproval, in affirmation or negation of a persons worth in terms of their social or ethical texture.

In isiXhosa it is common to hear the following expression , "Ngumntu lowo!" meaning "that is a quality human being." This reference is used for a special category- the most outstanding.

Inversely , it is common to hear the expression "Akukho mntu apho!" meaning "that person is sub-human or not worthy of being regarded as a human being." In short , whereas we are human beings by birth in the Western sense, only some human beings are of the status of umntu in the African sense- the latter being a higher state of being.

[In the 4th Steve Biko Memorial Lecture] Ngugi waThiong'o refers to Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit and the Science of Logic. Hegel distinguishes Being-in-itself, and Being-for-itself.Being-in-itself is mere existence. Being-for-itself is being aware not only of its existence but existence for a purpose, an ethical purpose, the distinction between saying I live to eat and I eat to live.

What then is the foundation of this higher state of being, this state of eating to live? In African philosophy this affirmation derives from the notion of ubuntu.One is bestowed the status of umntu if they depict the qualities of ubuntu .There are three main pillars that make up ubuntu:

First, ubuntu is not a noun. Its not simply being a homo sapien.Ubuntu is a verb. It describes a way of life. It is not only theoretical, it is practical. In this regard, one cannot be said to have ubuntu only on the basis of their ideals but on the basis of how those ideals find expression in their daily lives.

Second, this way of life is based on values. Ubuntu is a qualitative factor that enables people to achieve a higher level of humanity based on the application of these values.

Third , ubuntu is underpinned by an inextricable link between the life of the individual and the life of the collective- between history and biography. In this regard, our humanity is indivisible from that of others. It is this link that informs the African adage "uMntu ngumntu ngabantu" ( a person is a person through others). If ubuntu is indivisible, then one cannot celebrate one's humanity while undermining that of others nor for that matter be indifferent to it ...

The relationship between citizens and society is perhaps best explained through the concept of a circle. The circle is used extensively to give form and design to the homes of many African cultures... Going further, the circle is the preferred form of layout of homesteads, providing both a sense of security and community.

But it is perhaps in the social architecture of so many African peoples that the circle is so prevalent. Whether in conversation, song, or breaking bread, most African societies tend to be seated in the form of a circle. Literally, the circle means there is no top table and everyone is seated in the formation is equidistant from the centre.Metaphorically it means hat even if there is hierarchy and rank in the group, there is generally adequate room for other voices, on a fairly equal basis. In the circle, the individual is not lost in the collective, rather their voice contributes toward making the collective more audible.

In this circle there is an invaluable balance between the individual and the group. For example food is served in groups, so is responsibility. As Biko opines, the boys rightly or wrongly look after the cattle and the girls fetch water . The effective execution of such tasks is dependent on the individual contributing to the group. So within the group exists a well understood, self-enforced code of conduct, often built on a rotating basis of responsibility and management. If but one cow should go missing , the displeasure of the elders is borne not by the under performing individual, but by the entire group on the basis of collective accountability. In short , the integrity of the group is based on the performance of the individual members.

Conclusion

... African Knowledge Systems have a lot to contribute towards the definition of the role of Black Leadership in the 21st Century. The African Philosophy on leadership teaches us that leadership is not necessarily about the pyramid structure emphasised by the Western approach. It is not about occupying a seat at the top table. Leadership is in essence about taking your place in the circle. It is about linking identity agency and social action.

This approach makes leadership less about election and more about creating a movement characterised by an engaged citizenry.

Frank Talk, an Innovative Initiative for Young Professionals

2010-07-09T16:13:00.001+02:00

In September 2010 the Steve Biko Foundation will launch Frank Talk , an innovative dialogue series for young professionals.Titled after the pseudonym under which Steve Biko wrote, this forum is designed to bring together young people from various sectors for discussion around salient issues impacting South Africa's political, economic and social development.

Although it may not be immediately evident, as South African society is known for its consultative nature, an initiative such as Frank Talk is a timely and needed endeavor. While there are a number of forums in which individuals can engage one another around relevant topics, there are a few that are cross cutting. To date, dialogue tends to happen within silos based on private or public sector affiliation, gender, student status or organizational membership ; but rarely between various constituencies.

Even less common , are discussions around social issues or policy reform for those who are not public sector or development professionals. This is particularly true for Frank Talk's target audience, those aged 25-40. For this generation, many of whom may not have histories of engagement with struggle organizations or current affiliations with socially relevant institutions , an initiative such as Frank Talk would fill a much needed void, creating a space for young people to engage one another around salient issues and refine their thinking.

Frank Talk will be comprised of the following elements:
. A monthly dialogue series ;
. A quarterly current events publication featuring contributions by topical experts and lay people ;
. A dynamic internet platform that will enable regular engagement with relevant topics as well as interaction among participants.

This blog will serve as a vehicle through which program participants can interact with one another on a continuous basis. We will also feature original articles and sourced materials that are of relevance to South African development. We encourage all participants to register their input and to submit any questions or any ideas for future articles and discussions.