Through the 1960s South Africa gained global notoriety for its repression of anti-apartheid organisations and activists. Repression, however, was only one aspect of the state response. The other was to create organs of ‘representation’ for the oppressed within the confines of the apartheid project. Granting citizenship to Indian South Africans was accompanied by the setting up of institutions to deal with matters ‘affecting them’.

Since its beginnings in the mid-1960s, the SAIC had garnered increasing power over what was termed ‘own affairs’ by the early 1970s. As the SAIC clamoured for more jurisdiction over the everyday life of Indians, the NIC had to find ways to respond. It could not simply call for people to boycott ‘own affairs’ offices, for example, because these dealt with pensions and grants and the identity documents needed to negotiate daily life. The power of the state was used to channel people's lives into racially bounded institutions and, over time, to ‘normalise’ these practices.

Participation in the SAIC was an issue that rallied both proponents and opponents within the NIC. This debate over participation persisted through the 1970s and 1980s, and created divides within the broader extra-parliamentary forces, turned comrade against comrade inside the NIC, and reached into the upper echelons of the ANC in exile.

Three positions emerged: boycott, participation and what came to be known as rejectionist participation. Even before the NIC was officially constituted, attorney Ahmed Bhoola, NIC stalwart of the 1950s, expressed a fear that the NIC would spend more time ‘fighting the so-called Indian Council than the real power behind that Council’. He warned against participation:

The position of Steve Biko and the BCM was that Bantustans served only to ‘contain’ the aspirations of black people, restrict what government critics could say, support apartheid tribalisation and maintain the mental subjugation of black people.