Friday Feature: Black Community Programmes (BCP)
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| Zanempilo Clinic |
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, after the banning of the ANC
and PAC, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) resuscitated the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa –
at first through the establishment of the South African Students Organisation (SASO). Conscious of the limitations of a
student-oriented organisation, the BCM subsequently developed a number of
political and community organisations to widen the struggle and mobilise
supporters from the wider black community. One such organisation, was Black
Community Programmes (BCP), which focused on community projects.
BCP and the Black Consciousness Movement
The BCP developed out of one aspect of the BCM’sphilosophy –
engaging in welfare work and programmes of self-help run by Blacks for Blacks. Steve Biko, as one of the founders of the BCM, was heavily
involved in the running of BCP, which he joined in August 1972 after quitting
his medical studies at the University of Natal. He described the rationale
behind the organisation as
“…essentially to
answer [the] problem…that the Black man is a defeated being who finds it very
difficult to lift himself up by his bootstrings. He is alienated…He is made to
live all the time concerned with matters of existence, concerned with
tomorrow…Now, we felt that we must attempt to defeat and break this kind of
attitude and instill once more a sense of dignity within the Black man. So what
we did was to design various types of programs, present these to the Black
community with an obvious illustration that these are done by the Black people
for the sole purpose of uplifting the Black community. We believed that we
teach people by example”.
The launch of the Black People’s Convention (BPC) early in 1973 added a political wing to the BC movement to
complement the activities of BCP and SASO. Thus within the BCM there was a
clear ‘division of labour’ – the BPC was the ‘adult’ political body, SASO the
student body and the BCP the community projects arm.
Although Biko was
involved with BCP from its beginning, he was also, together with Barney Pityana
and others, running SASO. After he was banned in March 1973 and restricted to
King William’s Town, BCP became Biko’s main outlet for political activity.
Although the state prohibited him from involvement with SASO, it at first
failed to realise that BCP was a fully-fledged BC organisation, and Biko was
able to take up a position as regional director in King William’s Town. Biko
quickly gathered a few trusted comrades around him: Malusi Mpumlwana, Mapetla
Mohapi, Thoko Mbanjwa, Mxolisi Mvovo, Biko’s sister Nobandile, and NohleHaya,
who became Biko’s administrative assistant.
Thenjiwe Mtintso, who eventually joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, later painted a picture of life in King
William’s Town: ‘When we built that community, around Steve, around King
William’s Town, it really made us. It really made the good parts of me. We were
building together, we were fumbling along starting so many things together, and
that made us. And that created the political discipline that we think we have.’
One of BCP’s most important projects was the production and
dissemination of Black journals and community newspapers, leading to a revival
of cultural, political and literary activity. Through Ravan Press, established
by Spro-cas and the Christian Institute to publish struggle literature, the BC
annual, titled Black Review, was published from 1972 to 1976.
Biko, together with
Thoko Mbanjwa and a small team, was the prime mover behind these publications,
which sought to correct the distorted representation of the Black community as
passive and incapable of intellectual production. But by the time the 1972
review was published in 1973, Biko had been banned, and the book listed its
editor as Bennie Khoapa, but was dedicated to Biko and Bokwe Mafuna, who had
also been banned in March 1973. Mbanjwa went on to edit the 1974-5 edition,
while the 1976-77 edition was edited by Asha Rambally after Mbanjwa was banned.
Other occasional journals, such as Creativity in Development and Black Perspectives, as well as Black Viewpoint, were also published. In trying to reflect
work being done in Black communities, BCP carried out a countrywide survey of
Black organisations, and in 1973 it published a directory of 70 of these
organisations.
BCP was also heavily
involved in training and youth development projects, a side of the organisation
that eventually yielded events of massive significance. Biko clearly understood
the need to have people available to replace cadres who might be banned by the
state and, together withSASO’s national organiser Harry Nengwekhulu, he ran
leadership seminars from mid-1972 until the pair were banned.
Biko and Nengwekhulu
created the National Youth Organisation, an umbrella body for regional youth
organisations, as well as the South African Student Movement (SASM), which
organised Student Representative Committees at high schools, the most famous of
these being the Soweto SRC, which organised the June 1976 uprising.
One of the more
enduring structures established as a BCP initiative was the Zanempilo Community
Health Centre. Situated in Zinyoka, 10km
outside King William’s Town, it opened in January 1975 and was one of the first
primary healthcare initiatives outside the public sector in South Africa and
provided much needed community health education. However, the centre was not
solely a health facility, it became a meeting point and a training ground for
activists, a place where the community could gather to discuss issues, but also
a place for joy and celebration, an example of the communal life that Biko and
Pityana had spoken about.
The success of the
Zanempilo project led to a similar establishment on the south coast of Natal,
named Solempilo (Eye of Health), but the ban on BC organisations in 1977 put an
end to the project.
Church organisations
assisted BCP with many of its programmes but BCP in turn assisted in running
church programmes. In May 1972 BCP sponsored a church conference which focused
on developing a more effective and Black-oriented preaching of the Gospel. On
the basis of this the ‘Black Theology Agency’ was formed in February 1973 at
another BCP-sponsored conference. The establishment and funding of the Zimele
Trust Fund was another way political activists and religious figures worked
together.
In line with the
project to promote self-reliance, BCP was involved in building schools, clinics
and day-care centres across the country, and set up home-based industries and
cooperatives in many rural areas. Cottage industries producing leather goods
were set up in Zinyoka, Njwaxa and Norwood, all villages near King William’s
Town, and later in Cape Town.
When the leatherwork
project proved successful, women in Zinyoka were tasked with finishing the
leather. Demand grew and MxolisiMvovo became a fulltime salesman for the goods.
So successful was the enterprise that a new building was erected next to the
Zanempilo clinic to facilitate production of the leather goods.
In March 1973, barely
a year after its inception, the BCP Johannesburg Branch Executive, Bokwe Mafuna,
and the King William’s Town Branch Executive, Steve Biko, were banned. Biko’s
restriction order was later widened to halt his BCP activities. These were
followed in August by further restrictions placed on Sam Moodley (Programme
Assistant at the Durban office), Bennie Khoapa (the Director of BCP) – who was
restricted to the Umlazi magisterial district, and Malusi Mpumlwana, Programme
Assistant at the King William’s Town Branch (Black Community Programmes, n.d.).
By 1974 more than 20 BCM activists were banned, many of whom were involved in
the BCP.
This was the beginning
of a police investigation into BCP, the Christian Institute and allied
organisations, all of which were implicated in what the police deemed ‘a
programme for radical change in South Africa’. Thus on 19 October 1977, a month
after the death of Biko, the security police shut down the BCP and all other
BCM associated bodies. These bodies were declared illegal and many of their
members received banning orders.
Accessed on South African History Online website on http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/black-community-programmes-bcp on 26 September 2014.
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