Kala pani Book

A collection of writings by Steve Biko, remarkable, perceptive and articulate. Biko was an icon for those of us on the left when I was at university and developing my political thinking. Killed whilst in custody at the age of thirty, he is often regarded as one of the foremost thinkers about racism and was influential in the development of the Black Consciousness Movement. Biko was an anti-apartheid activist and African socialist. In 1968 he helped to found the South African Students Organisation (SASO). He was also involved in the founding of the Black People’s Convention (BPC). His life is depicted in the film Cry Freedom, Denzel Washington playing Biko.
Biko outlines the development of SASO and the BPC and the need for black people to organise themselves without the help or support of whites:
"Blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines of a game that they should we playing ... They want things for themselves and all by themselves"
He analyses white racism in the South African context and is critical of the role of white liberals in these terms:
"expecting the slave to work together with the slave-master's son to remove all the conditions leading to the former's enslavement"
He rejects white values as being inextricable from the culture of domination, exploitation and oppression and he argues the type of integration the liberals wanted was flawed:
"an integration based on exploitative values ... in which Black will compete with Black, using each other as rungs up a step ladder leading them to white values ... in which the Black person will have to prove himself/herself in terms of these values before meriting acceptance and ultimate assimilation, and in which the poor will grow poorer and the rich richer in a country where the poor have always been Black"
He also articulates the philosophy and rationale of Black Consciousness. The most powerful parts of the book are the two chapters at the end which are transcripts of Biko’s cross examination in court where he very clearly outlines his philosophy and political aims:
‘There is no running away from the fact that now in South Africa there is such an ill distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless. The white have locked up within a small minority of themselves the greater proportion of the country’s wealth. If we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie. Our society will be run almost as of yesterday. So for meaningful change to appear there needs to be an attempt at reorganising the whole economic pattern and economic policies within this particular country.’
Those who knew Biko reflect on how intelligent and articulate he was and how keenly his loss was felt.
It has been noted that Biko did not really see a role for feminism in the Black Consciousness movement. I am sure his views would have developed had he lived, but nevertheless it is worth bearing in mind.
His reflection on death at the end is telling:
“You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead you can’t care anyway. And your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing. So I said to them, listen, if you guys want to do this your way, you have got to handcuff me and bind my feet together, so that I can’t respond. If you allow me to respond I’m certainly going to respond. And I’m afraid you may have to kill me in the process even if its not your intention.”