Biko: A Biography. Xolela Mangcu

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      As I write this book there is a raging debate between two leading South African political commentators, Moeletsi Mbeki and Zubeida Jaffer. Mbeki stirred the hornet’s nest when, at the 2012 Franschhoek Literary Festival, he described Steve Biko as a Xhosa prophet. Jaffer found this characterisation of Biko objectionable, given the Black Consciousness Movement’s (BCM’s) non-ethnic politics. The approach taken in this book is that this is an unhelpful dualism. Steve Biko was as much a product of South Africa’s multi-ethnic political heritage as he was a child of the Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape. Chapter 2 locates Steve within a long trajectory that goes back to the wars of resistance by the Khoi-Khoi and San people in the Northern Cape frontier in the 17th and 18th centuries, right up to the anti-colonial resistance of the Xhosa people on the Eastern Cape frontier throughout the 19th century.

      I have provided an approximate periodisation of frontiers – if only to demonstrate the length of time it took to resist colonial rule, which is almost 150 years in each case. The third period, which is taken up in later chapters, would be that of the almost 100 years of nationalist struggle since the formation of the African National Congress (ANC), and later the Pan Africanist Congress, the Unity Movement, and the Black Consciousness Movement. This adds up to almost 400 years of political action and intellectual thought. Years are not a substitute for intensity of struggle, and there are great degrees of overlap, which is exactly the point of this chapter – the intercultural solidarities that were forged by different groups over time, culminating in Black Consciousness in the 1970s.

I use the term “frontier” for ease of reference to the literature. Roger Levine argues that “to describe the Eastern Cape in the early to mid-nineteenth century as a frontier is to underplay the long-term presence of Africans in the region”. Levine uses the term “border region”[1] to signal the degree of intercultural contact among the Xhosa, the Khoi, the San and the European colonists and missionaries. This idea of intercultural contact is central to Steve Biko’s attempt to reframe European modernity into a progressive African modernity through the philosophy of Black Consciousness, resulting in what he called a “joint culture”.

There is indeed more than a superficial relationship between the Khoi and the San on the one hand and the Xhosa on the other. The clicks in isiXhosa come from the languages of the Khoi and San people. Roger Levine observes that “the Xhosa have incorporated three click consonants from the Khoisan into their language – the explosive plop produced by the tongue rocketing from the top of the mouth [q], the gentle tut from the front of the mouth [c] and the cluck from the side [x]”.[2] Jeff Peires similarly notes that one sixth of all Xhosa words have clicks in them, attributing this to “the influence of the Khoi and San languages on Xhosa”.[3] The BCM’s definition of Blackness to include Coloureds and Indians is a supreme example of the centuries-old construction of hybrid identities. Aelred Stubbs describes Steve’s unique contribution to the solidarity that developed among Coloureds, Indians and Africans as follows:

. . . it was a special strength of the Black Consciousness Movement that from the beginning in the 1960s SASO [South African Students Organisation] had been open to Coloureds and Indians. I am not sure that the importance of this achievement, in the given social structures of South Africa, has been emphasised . . . but the way in which SASO managed to overcome traditional barriers between Africans and Coloureds . . . was not only indicative of a new mood in the Coloured community, but a significant achievement of non-ethnic solidarity.[4]

Recognition of this hybrid heritage does not mean we cannot trace specific СКАЧАТЬ