It is often assumed that events, which take place on two different continents

involving two different people, are entirely unrelated. Those who benefit most from this

narrow view would prefer that observers continue to think this way, that events are

always isolated and need to be looked at strictly within each one’s specific context alone.

Such is the case when discussing the resistance movements of Africans in the United

States and Africans on the continent of Africa. In this particular example, the Black

Power Movement (BPM) in the United States and the Black Consciousness Movement

(BCM) in South Africa are rarely exposed as being two nearly simultaneous occurrences

among two groups of African people responding to an identical European inspired

problem.

Taken by themselves historical events can leave the observer confused or lacking

enough information from which to glean a succinct understanding as to the causes,

ramifications and/or impact of each event. However, a global comparative analysis of

two seemingly unrelated events can often times allow for a greater understanding and can

therefore be instrumental in helping an observer draw more relevant conclusions. In this

case a comparison will be made between two African resistance movements that to the

naked eye appear to have little in common but when explored in proper context and in the

total light of a pan-Africanist view are exposed as being quite similar. In this case the

term pan-African is meant to describe a perspective that includes at its center the

experience of African people, and/or descendants thereof, across boundaries, seas and

time zones.

Chancellor Williams summarizes the need for a greater or more extended

perspective when studying history. Williams explains the importance of taking isolated

events out of their immediate context and showing their relationship to other data taken

from an extended study of history. This way certain truths become more readily

available to the observer. If a student of history studies the BPM or BCM with no

reference to events taking place in other regions of the world or events throughout history

that led to those movements the observer will never have enough information to properly

interpret those events. This will leave the observer thinking that each occurred in a

vacuum. Such a notion could not be more wrong or more damaging to the important

need of interpreting events in relation to one another so that the larger problem of global

domination and exploitation can eventually be addressed. Williams writes:

One of the most troublesome facts in the study of history over very long periods of times, such as several centuries, is that a truth may slowly emerge, period after period,

until it clearly forms itself into a truth impregnable, a fact nowhere explicitly stated as such in the mass of data covered.1

With this understood we can now embark on a discussion of the BPM in the United

States and the BCM in South Africa. This discussion will show how both were responses

to the same problem, how both influenced and were influenced by one another and to

show common responses from those whose power would be weakened or destroyed had

either movement been allowed to meet its own inevitable end.

The point of this endeavor is not to ignore differences between the African

experience in South Africa and the African experience in the United States; however, it is

to show that the similarities out-weigh those differences. It is the goal to illustrate that the

common experiences fostered and necessitated similar responses. The similar history

includes the increase in calls for freedom both in the United States and South Africa after

World War II as colonial rule worldwide was questioned, the attempted struggle for

1 Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization (Chicago: Third World Press, 1987), 310.

2

inclusion into each society through appeals to a European moral consciousness and

legislative change, mass demonstration and open violent conflict. Both movements were

responses to cultural/psychological repression and European/white dominance and/or

apathy towards African liberation and both sought to build movements based on the

observed conclusion that European/American/white people would not provide the means

by which Africans could attain such liberation.

From the beginning it helps to understand that the creations of the United States

and South Africa are all but identical. Both involved the arrival of uninvited European

people, the enslavement and murder of the indigenous population, the importation of

enslaved African people, the establishment of a European/American/white ruling regime,

the suppression of African culture, and the subsequent abuse, torture, and murder of those

who would oppose such systems. Both nations remained linked by a European cultural

bond and economic plan of exploitation for the gain of an extremely small percentage of

the population and in both cases that population was overwhelmingly white and male.

And as Eric Williams explains both nations had a very common origin, “when in 1492

Columbus… discovered the New World, he set in train the long and bitter international

rivalry over colonial possessions for which, after four and a half centuries, no solution

has yet been found.”2

The historical and cultural links between the two nations, their common unholy

origins, can be seen through several examples. The best description available on the

bonds between America and South Africa shows how deep the bonds go, how long they

have been there and how difficult they will be to loosen. In the introduction to Loosing

2 Eric Williams, Capitalism & Slavery (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 3.

3

the Bonds Robert Massie details the ties between the two nations that have existed since

each was colonized by European and largely British people. Massie explains connections

that extend from missionaries to gold-minded business people. He even describes an

American Civil War naval battle that took place off the coast of Table Bay as a result of

business connections between South Africa and the American North (despite South

Africa’s sympathy for the “underdog Confederacy”).3

Then there is, of course, Cecil Rhodes’ who is exposed as evil incarnate. In a

chapter titled “Cecil Rhodes: The Symbol of Empire,” Bernard Magubane defines

Rhodes’ role as the first man to make imperialism about race rather than nationhood.

Rhodes also extolled the virtues of white world domination through the reuniting of

Britain and the United States and brought into existence the De Beers diamond company

whose exploitation of African labor continues to this day.4

The American context in which the African experience is to be discussed needs

some clarification. First, as the authors of African Americans and the American Political

System5 write frame of reference is of the utmost importance when discussing any topic.

No thought comes without a base or origin and no discussion is housed outside a

particular context, paradigm or perspective. Furthermore, the actions a people take are

determined by their understanding of their condition and to that end has it been the efforts

of those in power to forever confuse the condition of those they oppress.

3Robert K. Massie, Loosing the Bonds (New York: Doubleday, 1997), xi-xxix, quote from xix. 4Bernard M. Magubane, The Making of a Racist State: British Imperialism and the Union of South

Africa, 1875-1910 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1996), 97-120. 5Frame of reference, paradigm and perspective are defined as: “a set of general assumptions about

the nature of the subject or experience being investigated, what concepts or categories of analysis are the most useful for understanding it, what level of analysis should be adopted, and what questions should be answered in order to develop the most useful understanding of that which is being investigated.”

Lucius J. Barker, Mack H. Jones and Katherine Tate, African Americans and the American Political System (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1999), 5.

4

Therefore, any description of the condition of Africans in America must be

corrected to show that the African experience in America is to be seen as just that, an

African experience. The idea of “African American” or “Black” citizenship or

identification in the United States is to be abandoned in favor of a perspective that holds

that Africans in America are not now, nor have ever been, meant to be citizens. “Citizen”

connotes equality in opportunity, representation, civil/human rights, etc., none of which,

to this day, exist for America’s African population (not to mention Native people, other

immigrant groups, the poor, women, etc.).

To summarize the conclusion that Africans in America are just that, African

people and not Americans, a parable as relayed by Yosef-ben Jochannan will be

referenced. He says, “if you took two rabbits… and put them in an oven, then opened the

oven to find more rabbits would you then say that the rabbits had biscuits simply because

they were born in an oven?”6 It is simplistic but relevant and applicable to the American

context. Africans born in the arbitrary boundaries of the United States do not by mere

birth, despite claims to the otherwise, become American. Instead, the process of teaching

the myth that Africans are Americans has been a long and painful one but it makes it

none the more true. It is the image that those in power would prefer the world to believe.

If those who are oppressed understand the true nature of their condition and their

relationship to those who oppress them their actions will subsequently change to reflect

that understanding. The colonial status of Africans in America has been attested to by

several scholars and thinkers and will prove invaluable to the current discussion.

Among those who have commented on this reality is Pansye Atkinson.

Discussing the issue from the standpoint of education she writes that:

6 Yosef ben-Jochannan (video taped lecture, 1983).

5

The psychological occupation of Black America by White America is an ongoing phenomenon resulting, in large measure, from the mechanism of cultural repression

which permeates the institution of education in the American system of internal colonialism, whereby Black America exists as a domestic colony of White America.7

Similarly, Atkinson describes the thought of Leronne Bennett, Jr. and Harold Cruse who

both agree. She quotes Cruse as writing that; “the only factor which differentiates the

Negro’s status from that of a pure colonial status is that his position is maintained in the

home country in close proximity to the dominant racial group.”8

Kwame Toure and Charles Hamilton have also done well to describe the true

colonial relationship Africans have to the United States. They note that the only real

differences can be broken down into several aspects. One difference is that population

size and percentage of both colonized Africans and European settlers differs between the

African continent and the United States of America. Another is the fact that in traditional

colonial settings the colonized produce cheap raw materials that are then shipped to a

“Mother Country” to then be shipped back as manufactured goods and sold to African

people at enormous mark-ups. In America this relationship remains true except that the

cheap exported goods are the labor Africans provide and there is no need to cross

national boundaries to find the “Mother Country” to which Africans are subjected.

However, most importantly, Toure and Hamilton note that the basic or

fundamental relationships between colonial power and those colonized remains true here

in America. The primary areas of control in the colonial setting, political, economic and

social, are all in tact in the United States. Politically, the system of indirect rule is in

effect. That is that African communities, even those with African figureheads, are

7Pansye Atkinson, Brown vs. Topeka: Desegregation and Miseducation: An African American’s View (Chicago: African American Images, 1993), 3 (emphasis added).

8Atkinson, 8.

6

controlled by European/American/white administrators. Economically, the African

community in America sees no more of its produced wealth benefit its own community

than in any other colonial setting. From the days of enslavement through to today

African labor produces wealth for other communities while relegating African people to

substandard living, no real wealth, poor education, etc.

Socially, Toure and Hamilton explain how in another time racial marking played

an enormous role in enslavement and the capture of escaped Africans. In this time, and

in theirs’, these same kinds of racial markers are used to track down “rogue” Africans on

the New Jersey Turnpike or in front of their own homes. Little has changed. In the end

though, as Toure and Hamilton also say, “it is the objective relationship that counts, not

rhetoric (such as constitutions articulating rights) or geography.”9

Like America the colonial status of Africans in South Africa differs slightly from

the “traditional” colonial model. In South Africa because of competing European

factions Africans have two separate European oppressors to appease. The Dutch settlers

(Boers, Afrikaners) who claim a South African history and right to land, power, etc. form

one group and the British form yet another. The Afrikaners parallel the American

colonial masters in that they export wealth generated by their African colonial subjects

but do so within the same boundary. The British, however, play the more “traditional”

role of colonial power as they export wealth back to the “Mother Country.” In both

cases, though, the relationship remains constant. Africans in both South Africa and the

United States watch as European/American/white leaders determine the political

outcomes for Africans. If not carried out this way they administer through African

9 Kwame Toure and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Random House, 1967), 6.

7

leaders who have little or no real power as they control little or none of the real wealth or

land of their respective countries, i.e. “indirect rule.”

In both the United States and South Africa Africans who have historically

provided the labor that has produced the enormous wealth of these nations remain largely

cutoff from the wealth they have generated. Land and wealth are in both cases

distributed unequally in gross proportions leaving little or nothing for African people in

either case. In America where the true measure of wealth is found in stocks 20% of the

population controls 97%, where the richest 5% control 86%.10 In South Africa, where

raw material producing land has more influence than in America, Europeans hold 87% of

the land.11 Suffice it to say Africans in either case are enormously weakened by the

stranglehold Europeans have over the economic power of their respective nations making

political power all but nominal.

This is the reality that not only exists now but also confronted those who would

form the BPM and BCM. From here we will examine both movements from not only the

general era in which they took off but from the examples left by their respective leaders.

Though he did not live to see the full development of Black Power consciousness

Malcolm X was its spiritual, political and cultural hero and leader while Steve Biko was

the same for South Africa’s BCM. Through them both movements saw their greatest

spokespeople and leaders and as such they will represent each movement herein.

Again, both movements were the result of Africans in their respective captive

environments abandoning older forms of struggle and accepting new cultural and

political strategies to create change. The BPM in the United States came as a result of

10Marcus D. Pohlman, Black Politics in Conservative America (New York: Longman, 1990), 63. 11Fred Anwireng-Obeng, South Africa & Africa: Within or Apart?, ed. Adebayo Adedeji (Cape

Town: SADRI Books, 1996), 137.

8

some Africans making a break from the traditional style of integration-based Civil Rights

strategies as those proved too slow in addressing the needs of African people. Similarly,

the BCM sought to address the myths of an integrated effort to liberate African people in

South Africa and Malcolm’s leadership notwithstanding; student-activists largely inspired

both.

One of the fundamental tenets of each movement was their adherence to an all

Black or nationalist ideology. Malcolm X, whose political ideology flourished after his

exile from the Nation of Islam (NOI), employed a variant of Black nationalism that he

said entailed a political, economic and social philosophy. On April 8th, 1964 he explained

that for him Black Nationalism meant African people in America would “gain complete

control over the politics and politicians of our own community.” Economically, this

philosophy meant that Africans would control the economic of their community by

controlling “the businesses and the other things which create employment so that we can

provide jobs for our own people instead of having to picket and boycott and beg someone

else for a job.” Socially, Black Nationalism meant for Malcolm addressing what was

“destroying the moral fiber” of the African society. This referred to solving problems

such as drug addiction, adultery, drunkenness and anything that weakened the African

family and that in the end forced African people “into other societies where we are not

wanted.”12

This basic philosophy, mixed with the racial pride and self-reliance attitude that

Malcolm inherited from a long line of African nationalist thinkers such as Edward

Blyden, Alexander Crummell, Henry McNeal Turner, through to Marcus Garvey,

12Malcolm X, “Black Revolution,” Two Speeches by Malcolm X, ed. George Breitman (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1990), 7-8.

9

appealed to many of the newcomers to the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). They had

begun to realize the nature of their relationship with the United States, that is a colonial

relationship that was never designed to allow for true advancement for its captives. They

may have not expressed their feelings in those terms but that was certainly the sentiment.

The early CRM was primarily a southern driven one where attitudes and problems of the

South were what governed the actions taken. But by 1965 when 80% of the African

population lived in cities and 50% were in the North attitudes changed. As Julius Lester

wrote:

Now it is over. America has had chance after chance to show that it really meant “that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights.”… Now it is over. The days of

singing freedom songs and the days of combating bullets and billy clubs with love… Nothing kills a nigger like too much love.13

And at the forefront of this sentiment was Malcolm X.

Early on it was Communism and not Black Nationalism that threatened the

American establishment. But this would change as Malcolm began to split with the NOI

and expand his own political ideology. At this point he began to attract more and more

attention from grassroots organizers and Civil Rights activists. Clayborne Carson

explains that as Malcolm began to become more of a free thinker after 1963-1964 his

agenda began to merge with a new militant youth movement that had already begun in

the CRM.14

This was when Malcolm and young militants within the CRM began to challenge

the old establishment of African leaders. Malcolm had long been critical of civil rights

leaders but he was now free of the constraints placed on him by Elijah Muhammad and

13Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – the Present (New York: HaperCollins Press, 1995), 451.

14Clayborne Carson, Malcolm X: The FBI File (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1991), 32.

10

the NOI. He began to not only be critical of leadership but made his criticisms ring

louder by backing them with active work of his own and by showing a willingness to

engage in dialogue with and become supportive of those he criticized. Whereas once the

NOI had forbidden direct involvement with the political movements of the times

Malcolm was now free to engage and engage he did. He shared a speaking engagement

with A. Philip Randolph, debates with leaders of the NAACP, Bayard Rustin and wrote

several invitations to Martin Luther King, Jr. that initially were all refused.15 Malcolm

had now begun to truly popularize a theoretical, practical and political plan of action that

would influence for years to come the BPM in all its variations.

As mentioned, the CRM was experiencing radical change as many became aware

of their colonial status. In a chapter titled “Turning Point, 1963: The Year of De Lawd”

Debbie Louis explains the transfer of attitude in the CRM movement to more radical

nationalist tones. She explains that up until 1963 the CRM had proven itself incomplete

as far as addressing all the concerns facing a colonized people. Several realities began to

gain acceptance. It became clear to many that at that point the CRM had proven to be

little more than a middle class movement, not something for the masses of poor African

people. It became clear that the government was not as concerned with improving or

enforcing the rights it felt did (and do) not belong to captives, that vicious white

responses were systemic rather than simply systematic and that grassroots organizing and

thought was quickly becoming the dominant trend. Quoting Whitney Young, Jr. Louis

writes that, “the opening of a restroom in a Southern airport couldn’t mean less to the

15Carson, 33.

11

lower class Negro.” The focus now was on “fundamental social, political and economic

change.”16

The 1963 March on Washington became the symbol many needed to see to

realize just such a reality. As Louis notes, Malcolm was spokesperson for a more

militant element who were the original planners of the march that was supposed to be

“on” Washington not merely “in” Washington.17 Malcolm explained how the march was

co-opted by wealthy white leaders in order to pacify what was supposed to be a

movement that crippled Washington, DC, but became little more than a peaceful

gathering. He made it clear that John F. Kennedy, and Stephen Currier got the civil

rights leadership, the Big Six, together and paid them $1.5 million to take control over the

march. He would say, “they didn’t integrate it, they infiltrated it.”18 Interestingly enough,

someone to whom he was diametrically opposed supported Malcolm’s version of events.

Kennedy’s then White House advisor, Arthur Schlesinger would write a strikingly similar

account in his work A Thousand Days.19 This was more than enough for many,

particularly young up and coming militants, the time was ripe for change.

It was at this point that the organization that would become the voice of Black

Power in the United States would meet its ideological father. In 1964 the Student Non-

Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the most militant of the civil rights

organizations and was becoming increasingly frustrated with the purely nominal gains

being won by the movement. John Lewis, a member of SNCC and veteran of the CRM,

had during the March On Washington his own voice censored when he was made to

16Debbie Louis, And We Are Not Yet Saved (Columbia: The Press At Water’s Edge, 1997), 119. 17Louis, 123. 18Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots,” Malcolm X Speaks, ed. George Breitman (New York:

Pathfinder Press, 1989), 16.19Zinn, 449.

12

remove parts of his speech that were critical of the American government and that

supported more militant action.20 This may have made him warm to the thought of a

Malcolm X. And as it happened both he and Kwame Toure, another young member of

SNCC who was fast growing tired of the direction of the struggle, would in the same year

of 1964 meet Malcolm X and have their views on him change.

One of the aspects of the philosophy Malcolm helped develop was its pan-African

and/or global perspective. This would be of extreme importance to Malcolm and the

subsequent BPM. This belief took Malcolm on several occasions to the African continent

where, oddly enough, he would meet John Lewis and other members of SNCC and begin

to have a direct link and influence over that organization. Not only had Malcolm begun

to influence the thought of Africans in America he had a similar affect on Africans on the

continent. While in Ghana, only a few days after Malcolm had left, John Lewis told that

after meeting with some Africans there he had been alerted to Malcolm’s international

influence. Lewis had been told that, “look, you guys might really be doing something – I

don’t know, but if you are to the right of Malcolm, you might as well start packing right

now, ‘cause no one’ll listen to you.”21 After meeting Malcolm later in Kenya Lewis

reported that there would be an attempt to increase involvement with each other’s

organizations. Lewis writes, “we departed with Malcolm giving us some contacts and the

hope that there would be greater communication between {Malcolm'’ Organization for

Afro-American Unity OAAU} and SNCC.”22

It is this sort of influence that led to Malcolm X becoming a prime target of

government espionage and tyranny culminating in his assassination on February 21,

20Zinn, 448. 21Carson, 39. 22Carson, 40.

13

1965. By this time the FBI had altered its view on Black Nationalism and made it and its

followers a primary target of their Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

Malcolm had successfully internationalized the struggle linking the African struggle to

those on the continent, Central and South America and in Vietnam. He had reorganized

the movement to cover all aspects of struggle. He attacked on an international capitalist

power structure, he called for a nationalist self-reliant movement for all African people,

he called for self-love, pride and an emphasis on the importance of historical

consciousness and awareness. He made it clear that African people would be made free

“by any means necessary.” This was his clarion call to those who realize then and now

that, as Clayborne Carson notes, “all effective political movement combine elements of

persuasion and coercion.”23

Malcolm X’s influence over the lives of those who would attempt to carry on his

legacy after his death was profound. Perhaps no other organization adhered to his

philosophy more than the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the words of one of its founders

summarize that reality well. In the second paragraph to Seize the Time, the work

describing the origins of the BPP, Bobby Seale explains the importance of Malcolm’s

legacy to that organization. He writes that after word of Malcolm’s death came down he

said, “fuck it, I’ll make my own self into a motherfucking Malcolm X, and if they want to

kill me, they’ll have to kill me.”24

Malcolm X would set the tone that echoed throughout the subsequent BPM and

that would catch the eye and in some ways influence a similar movement burgeoning

thousands of miles away. As young militants in South Africa began to emerge under a

23Carson, 49. 24Bobby Seale, Seize the Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 3.

14

new political strategic philosophy of Black Consciousness a theoretical bridge had been

built connecting the likes of Frantz Fanon to Malcolm X, to Steve Biko.

Though the two never met in person, Malcolm X and Steve Biko did meet on a

theoretical plain. Both men would independently read works such as Frantz Fanon’s The

Wretched of the Earth whose words opposing colonial regimes certainly had a similar

affect on both anti-colonial leaders. More directly though was the fact that Biko himself,

rising to political leadership in the years after Malcolm’s death, became well versed in

the literature of the African struggle in America. He read Malcolm’s Autobiography,

Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice and Kwame Toure and Charles Hamilton’s Black Power.25

Through literature and ideology the two men were tightly linked.

This link began to develop as Biko’s politics did. Through his early days of

organizing he encountered a radical pastor named Basil Moore. Moore who had been

following Black Power developments in America felt that it meshed well with the BCM

in South Africa. Moore was particularly drawn, as Biko would later become, to the Black

Power spin-off of Black Theology, a movement led primarily by James Cone whose

message was essentially that the African struggle must relate “the forces of liberation to

the essence of the {Christian} gospel, which is Jesus Christ.”26 Biko would later ask for

as much material on Black Power as could be brought to him27 recognizing the powerful

similarities between both colonial conditions and the means by which they could combat

them.

Just as Malcolm represented those frustrated with a CRM that had been in their

minds bought off and pacified so to did Steve Biko represent youthful militants whose

25 Massie, 255.26James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1990), 1. 27Massie, 254.

15

patience with South Africa’s repressive government was near an end and whose previous

leadership had been quieted. By the early 1960s Africans had suffered much violence at

the hands of the white regime of which the Sharpeville massacre is but one example. In

addition, both major resistance movements in South African, the African National

Congress (ANC) and the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) had been banned leaving a

relative “political vacuum”28 open for something new. Also like the emergence of the

BPM the BCM came as a result of many Africans in South Africa desiring a break from

white dominated social movements and moving towards thoughts of nationalism.

Sipho Buthelezi writes that, “there are few, if any, historical examples of students

successfully leading major movements of social change.”29 Depending on how one

defines “successful” there are two major exceptions to this rule. He mentions one, the

South African Students Organization (SASO) which became the fountainhead of Black

Consciousness and a leading political organization that ran independently from older

organizations. The other, which he does not mention until later, is SNCC in the United

States that became the fountainhead of Black Power and also ran independently of older

organizations. Both movements were student inspired and represented refusals of

previous ways of struggle.

SASO began as a movement to bring about African independence in struggle

from the multiracial National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Early 1960s

attempts at forming all-Black student organizations failed and NUSAS was left as the

leading student organization. However, like multiracial organization in America whites

found themselves in almost all leadership positions to the dismay of a growing number of

28Sipho Buthelezi, “The Emergence of Black Consciousness: An Historical Appraisal,” Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness (London: Zed Books, 1991), 111.

29Buthelezi, 124.

16

African people. Because NUSAS had its power base on white campuses like Rhodes

University and the University of Witwatersrand, whites usually ended up in positions of

leadership so when it sought to speak out for non-white campuses it did so from a largely

uniformed position.30

SASO, formed in 1968, became the vessel through which its first president Steve

Biko could relay the message of Black Consciousness. Black Consciousness was meant

to address what Biko felt were the two greatest problems facing Africans in South Africa;

white racism and African acceptance of oppression. Whites were all benefactors of a

white supremacist system yet white liberals continued to presume that they were best

prepared to speak on behalf of oppressed African people and sought to lead these poor

downtrodden Africans to liberation. This, as the case in the United States, was

unacceptable to Biko, as it was unacceptable to those coming to power in the BPM in

America.

When faced with accusations of being a racist for wanting to have an all African

liberation movement Biko responded by defining racism as “discrimination by a group

against another for the purposes of subjugation. In other words one cannot be a racist

unless he has the power to subjugate.”31 This is astoundingly similar to the definition

Kwame Toure and Charles Hamilton would come to in their seminal 1967 work Black

Power. They would write that, “by ‘racism’ we mean the predication of decisions and

policies on considerations of race for the purpose of subordinating a racial group and

maintaining control over that group.”32

30Steve Biko, I Write What I Like (London: Bowerdean Press, 1996), 3. 31Biko, 25. 32Toure and Hamilton, 3.

17

Secondly, Biko felt that African acquiescence to white domination was equally

troublesome. This was among the primary focuses of Black Consciousness, to alert

Africans to their own strength, history and culture. Biko would explain that, “we cannot

be conscious of ourselves and yet remain in bondage.”33 Just as John Henrik Clarke

would say, himself having served in Malcolm X’s “historical cabinet,” that “a historically

conscious people cannot be oppressed,”34 Biko realized this and sought to make

consciousness his major emphasis. To this end he even felt that political organization

could wait. Consciousness had to be fostered before there could be any political

organizing or, he felt, what was organized may not be fruitful.35

One difference between the development of the BCM and the BPM that is

interesting to note is that Malcolm had similar thoughts on consciousness but was in a

slightly different environment. Though Malcolm was concerned with consciousness and

proper direction in struggle once free from the NOI he moved immediately into creating

the Organization for Afro-American Unity (OAAU) to address the political needs of his

people. This is most likely a result of there being far more open political activity in

America than there was in Biko’s South Africa at the time SASO came into being. With

the ANC and PAC banned and no other major political movement actively working

perhaps Biko’s strategy was more viable than it would have been in America. With no

organizations being openly active Biko may have felt a tactical withdraw in order to build

a solid consciousness was best, whereas this would have surely failed in the openly active

and political American environment.

33Biko, 49. 34A Great and Mighty Walk, dir. St. Claire Bourne, videocassette. 35Buthelezi, 125.

18

As mentioned earlier, Malcolm’s pan-Africanist viewpoint forced him to connect

the struggle of Africans in the United States to the struggles of all Africans and oppressed

people worldwide. This philosophy influenced directly SNCC and indirectly (perhaps

through SNCC and the BPM) SASO and the BCM. As C.R.D. Halisi writes, “each in its

own way {SASO and SNCC}, these two student organizations were largely responsible

for internationalizing the concept of black power.”36 Summarizing the similarities

between the two groups Halisi offers several factors the two had in common.

Halisi notes that both SASO and SNCC had once been united with liberal whites

but that both would later abandon that philosophy for a self-reliant nationalist one.

Where also the two groups had gained much of their support from segregated college

campuses their leadership had come from people who had multiracial coalition

backgrounds. Both groups “formed an ideological bond” based on their common stance

against racial domination and their ability to link their respective African struggles to the

larger one of the Diaspora. Halisi makes the extremely important point that while there

was no formal link between SASO and SNCC by their mere existence each influenced

and supported the other. This cannot be under-appreciated. It illustrates the reality that

just by struggling where one is she/he may enlighten, inspire and influence others to do

the same. Finally, Halisi explains that, “the identification of the Black American students

with African liberation was in part revitalized by Malcolm X’s fervent belief in ‘linking

the national struggle to the international one.’”37

Both Malcolm X and Steve Biko were uncompromising, incorruptible figures in

the history of the African struggle which has been largely underway since Columbus’

36C.R.D. Halisi, “Biko and Black Consciousness Philosophy: An Interpretation,” Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness (London: Zed Books, 1991), 107.

37Halisi, 107.

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time (invasions of Kemet and Eastern Africa from the earliest times of recorded history

notwithstanding). Their deaths remain shrouded in mystery. Where Malcolm’s assassins

remain in prison despite the many unanswered questions about their actual involvement

and the roles of the FBI, CIA and the New York City police department. Those involved

in the assassination of Steve Biko who was killed in police detention (it was nevertheless

an assassination!) have since been pardoned (in 1997) as result of their testimony before

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.38 However, this has done little to

explain the true nature of why he was killed and to that extent his death remains

mysterious.

Both men were killed because they spoke to the heart of the matter. Both were

relentless in their pursuit of true material and spiritual improvement for their people in

the hopes that this would bring about the same for all humankind. As Biko wrote, “any

form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will

be meaningless.”39 Likewise, Malcolm, in his own oratorical style, said nearly the same

thing several years earlier. He explained that, “I’m not going to sit at your table and

watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call my self a diner. Sitting at the table

doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate.”40 Biko would go

on to say that, “people are prepared to use any means to attain their aspirations.”41 This is,

of course, clearly influenced by the statement made famous by Malcolm that Africans in

America would have their rights “by any means necessary!”

38Roy Moodley, “‘I Say What Like': Frank Talk(ing) in Counseling and Psychotherapy,” British Journal of Guidance and Counseling 26 (1998): 495-508.

39Biko, 149. 40Malcolm X, 26. 41Biko, 140.

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Their refusal to acquiesce, settle for legislative promises, work with those not

dedicated to allowing Africans the freedom to lead and govern themselves along with the

willingness and foresight of these men to connect their struggle to others worldwide

made it impossible for those oppressing African people to leave them to continue their

work. Their work remains unfinished and it falls upon those of us still here to pick up

where they left off and to continue.

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