Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:42:17.368Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Black politics in South Africa changed dramatically after 1976. It spread far and fast, with black organisations multiplying at all kinds of levels. The African National Congress (A.N.C.) returned and the United Democratic Front (U.D.F.) emerged. The trade unions strengthened considerably and black youths demonstrated their power. Ideologies changed and evolved. Yet at the same time as the movement broadened and deepened its hold on black people, internal divisions grew more intense. Organisational, ideological, and strategic differences became more bitter, and leaders continued to accuse each other of betraying the struggle.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 At a meeting at Turfloop in 1964 many of the later concerns of Black Consciousness were explained to this author.

2 Biko, Steve, I Write What I Like. A Selection of his Writings, edited with a personal memoir by Aelred, Stubbs (London, 1978), p. 49.Google Scholar

3 Ndebele, Njabulo, ‘Black Development’, in Biko, B. S. (ed.), Black Viewpoint (Durban, 1972), p. 14.Google Scholar

4 Ibid. p. 11.

5 Biko, op. cit. p. 78.

6 Fatton, Robert Jr, Black Consciousness in South Africa: the dialectics of ideological resistance to white supremacy (Albany, 1986), p. 71.Google Scholar

7 Hirson, Baruch, Year of Fire, Year of Ash. The Soweto Revolt: roots of a revolution? (London, 1979), p. 295.Google Scholar

8 Bennie A. Khoapa, ‘The New Black’, in Biko (ed.), op. cit. p. 61.

9 Biko, op. cit. p. 68.

10 Quoted in Hirson, op. cit. p. 110.

11 Biko, op. cit. pp. 133–4 and 136.

12 Ibid. p. 72.

13 Ibid. p. 23.

14 Ibid. p. 78.

15 Khoapa, loc. cit. p. 14.

16 Biko, op. cit. pp. 41–3 and 70.

17 Villa-Vincencio, Charles and De Gruchy, John W. (eds.), Resistance and Hope. South African Essays in Honor of Beyers Naude (Grand Rapids, 1985), pp. 93 and 99, and also ‘The Church as Seen by a Young Layman’, in Biko, op. cit. ch. 10.Google Scholar

18 Biko, op. cit. p. 21.

19 Ndebele, loc. cit. p. 20.

20 Fatton, op. cit. p. 103, and Biko, op. cit. p. 149.

21 Ndebele, loc. cit. p. 18.

22 Biko, op. cit. pp. 87–8.

23 Ibid. pp. 149–50.

24 Ibid. pp. 89 and 50.

25 Fatton, op. cit. p. 143.

26 Lodge, Tom, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 (London and New York, 1983), pp. 322–3, and Hirson, op. cit. p. 107.Google Scholar

27 Gerhart, Gail M., Black Power in South Africa: the evolution of an ideology (Berkeley, 1978), p. 291, and Hirson, op. cit. pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

28 Hirson, op. cit. pp. 107–8 and 119.

29 Cf. Brooks, Alan and Brickhill, Jeremy, Whirlwind Before the Storm: the origins and development of the uprising in Soweto and the rest of South Africa from June to December 1976 (London, 1980), ch. III, ‘Youth Ferment’.Google Scholar

30 Gerhart, op. cit. pp. 270, 295–6, and 315.

31 Fatton, op. cit. pp. 36–7.

32 Ibid. pp. 129 and 124–5.

33 Lewis, Gavin, Between the Wire and the Wall: a history of South African ‘Coloured’ politics (Cape Town, 1987), p. 278.Google Scholar

34 Kane-Berman, John, Soweto: black revolt, white reaction (Johannesburg, 1978), p. 109.Google Scholar

35 Stadler, Alf, The Political Economy of Modern South Africa (London and Sydney, 1987), p. 172.Google Scholar

36 Charney, Craig, ‘Thinking of Revolution: the new South African intelligentsia’, in Monthly Review (New York), 12 1986, p. 14.Google Scholar

37 Lodge, op. cit. pp. 322 and 324.

38 Ibid. p. 325.

39 Meer, Fatima, Political and Economic Choices of Disenfranchised South Africans. Results of a National Survey of 11,786 Black South Africans Conducted in Four Metropolitan Areas (Durban, 1986).Google Scholar

40 Schlemmer, Lawrence, Black Worker Attitudes: political options, capitalism, and investment in South Africa (Durban, 1984).Google Scholar

41 Orkin, Mark, Disinvestment, the Struggle and the Future. What Black South Africans Really Think (Johannesburg, 1986).Google Scholar

42 The author carried out 110 in-depth interviews: 45 during June–August 1986, and a further 65 during June–August 1987. Of these, 17 were interviewed in both years, which means that a total of 93 participated in the study. Including a variety of occupations, ages, educational levels, and places of residence, they consisted of a politically representative sample of urban blacks since the number selected for interview was designed to accord roughly with the support found for the three main political groupings/tendencies in the combined results of the earlier Meer/Schlemmer/Orkin surveys. My sample was made up as follows: 69.8% supported the A.N.C./U.D.F., 14% the B.C.M., and 9.7% Inkatha, while 4.3% felt supportive of both the A.N.C. and the B.C.M.

43 Gerhart, op. cit. p. 270.

44 Quoted in Sinclair, Michael, Community Development in South Africa: a guide for American donors (Washington, D.C., 1986), p. 83.Google Scholar

45 Lodge, op. cit. p. 344.

46 Khangale Mekhado, quoted in Lodge, op. cit. p. 345.

47 Fatton, op. cit. p. 131.

48 Lewis, op. cit. pp. 208, 243, and 253. See also Alexander, Neville, Sow the Wind: contemporary speeches (Johannesburg, 1985).Google Scholar

49 Gerhart, op. cit. p. 10.

50 Lewis, op. cit. p. 282, and Wolpe, Harold, ‘The ANC and the National Forum’, in Southern African Review of Books (London), 1, 1, 1987, p. 5.Google Scholar

51 Sinclair, op. cit. p. 11.

52 Stadler, op. cit. p. 159.

53 Lewis, David, ‘South Africa in World Politics. At the Gates of the Laager’, in The Nation (Johannesburg), 22 11 1986, p. 569.Google Scholar

54 Lodge, op. cit. pp. 333 and 341.

55 Fatton, op. cit. p. 343.

56 Plaut, Martin, ‘The New Unions’, in Southern African Review of Books, 1, 1, 1987, pp. 1516.Google Scholar

57 Hirson, op. cit. pp. 88–9, and Wolpe, loc. cit. p. 5.

58 Lodge, op. cit. pp. 345–6.

59 Charney, loc. cit. p. 12.

60 Stadler, op. cit. p. 172.

61 Hirson, op. cit. pp. 110–11 and 297–8.

62 Fatton, op. cit. pp. 123 and 146.

63 Ibid. p. 77.

64 Gerhart, op. cit. pp. 310–11.

65 Lewis, op. cit. p. 279.