Biko: A Biography. Xolela Mangcu
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Biko: A Biography - Xolela Mangcu страница 14
Название: Biko: A Biography
Автор: Xolela Mangcu
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780624058168
isbn:
Mandela concludes:
I could hardly believe my ears. His boldness in speaking of such delicate matters in the presence of Dr Wellington and other whites seemed utterly astonishing to us. Yet at the same time it aroused and motivated us, and began to alter my perception of men like Dr Wellington, whom I had automatically considered my benefactor.[76]
Although Mqhayi falls squarely among radical modernisers such as the later Tiyo Soga, WB Rubusana and Sol Plaatje, it is important to keep in mind that all these individuals were complicated. They were part of the very modernity they were contesting, and thus their lives were often characterised by contradictions. AC Jordan reminds us, for example, that Mqhayi had a “double loyalty”:
As a Xhosa he was loyal to the Xhosa chiefs and their ancestors, and as a British subject he had to be loyal to the British king. A poem written during the Anglo-Boer War in the Izwi Labantu of 13 March 1900 shows how very sincerely Mqhayi had accepted British guardianship. Each stanza has a refrain, SingamaBritani – We are Britons.[77]
It was only in the 1940s that a younger generation of radical modernisers emerged through the formation of the ANC Youth League under the leadership of Anton Lembede, AP Mda, Robert Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo. To this day the Unity Movement claims it was the first to preach non-collaboration with government institutions, which became an important plank in the Black Consciousness Movement. An even more radical group of modernisers arrived on the scene with the breakaway of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) from the ANC in 1959. As we shall see in the following chapter, this breakaway would have a direct bearing on Steve Biko’s life in Ginsberg Location. In his brilliant summary of Steve’s testimony, Millard Arnold notes that “there was no indication in his childhood or early background that Biko possessed the political genius that would lead him to develop an ideology and a mode of action that would irreversibly change the course of history in South Africa”.[78] Yes and no. As a young child he was not particularly interested in political life – which he left to his older brother Khaya – until he left Ginsberg for Lovedale College. As Khaya put it: “Then the giant was awakened.”
[1] Steve Biko (1977). Interview with Bernard Zylstra. “The Struggle for South Africa”, An Interview With Steve Biko, 1978.
[2] Michael Burawoy and Karl von Holdt (2012). Conversations with Bourdieu: The Johannesburg Moment (Johannesburg: Wits University Press), 122.
[3] Noel Mostert (1992). Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa’s Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (London: Cape Publishers), 1278.
[4] Daniel Magaziner (2010). The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968-1977 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press), 6.
[5] Cornel West (1993). Race Matters (New York: Vintage Books), 56.
[6] Frantz Fanon (1963). The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press), 226-227.
[7] Lewis Nkosi (2006 [1981]). “Negritude: New and Old Perspectives” in Lindy Stiebel and Liz Gunner (eds) (2006) Still Beating the Drum: Critical Perspectives on Lewis Nkosi (Johannesburg: Wits University Press).
[8] DDT Jabavu (1928). The Segregation Fallacy and Other Papers (Alice: Lovedale Press). Cited in Gail Gerhart (1978). Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press), 35. Jabavu was the first black professor at the University of Fort Hare and later became president of the South African Institute of Race Relations and the All African Convention. Like his father John Tengo – discussed below – DDT became a towering force in black political and intellectual life.
[9] Bhekizizwe Peterson (2000). Monarchs, Missionaries and Intellectuals (Johannesburg: Wits University Press).
[10] David Attwell (2005). Rewriting Modernity (Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press), 23.
[11] Ian Martin Macqueen (2011). “Re-imagining South Africa: Black Consciousness, Radical Christianity and the New Left, 1967-1977”, PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 24.
[12] Attwell, Rewriting Modernity, 20.
[13] Biko cited in Macqueen, Re-imagining South Africa.
[14] Hitchens, Arguably, 41.
[15] Noni Jabavu (1963). The Ochre People: Scenes from a South African Life (London: Murray). Noni Jabavu was one of DDT Jabavu’s daughters.
[16] Noni Jabavu (1960). Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts (London: Murray).
[17] In his book A Living Man From Africa, Roger Levine calls the chief Jan Tzatzoe. Here I use the Xhosa version of his name, Dyani Tshatshu, except where it is in a direct quotation from Levine.
[18] Donovan Williams (1983). The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga (Cape Town: AA Balkema).
[19] Levine, A Living Man from Africa, 54.
[20] In Mostert, Frontiers, 653.
[21] Williams, The Journal and Selected Writings of the Reverend Tiyo Soga, 172-173.
[22] Mostert, Frontiers, 463.
[23] Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets, 23.
[24] Levine, A Living Man from Africa, 13.
[25] Levine, A Living Man from Africa, 24-25.
[26] Martin Legassick (2010). The Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854 (Johannesburg: KMN Review Publishers), 59.