role of Christianity in the life of Steve Biko, African political activist during the late 1960s and 1970s, when he took center stage as a powerful leader in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It examines Biko’s evolution and maturation as a revolutionary leader against apartheid and examines how Christianity was central to Biko’s leadership in rebuilding hope and self-reliance among his people. It also examines Christianity as the pivotal foundation for the Black Consciousness Movement and how it became the center of nefarious race relations within South Africa.
The dissertation looks at Biko’s life in the Black Consciousness Movement from a Christian perspective, with a focus on discovering how he and others in the South African Students’ Organization, Black People’s Convention, and Black Community Programmes used Christianity to create a gospel message suitable for the upliftment and empowerment of black South Africans through black theology while fighting for the psychological, economic, spiritual, and political liberation of the people. It identifies the parallels between the tenets of Christianity and those of the Black Consciousness Movement, both of which espouse exhibiting Christlike behavior that aligns closely with that of Jesus, the central figure in the Christian religion. Therefore, this dissertation sets out to discover the different ways in which Biko exhibits the tenets of Christianity and Christlike behavior while singling out events where Jesus’s and Biko’s lives align in purpose, occasion, and death according to varying accounts. Lastly, it highlights Biko’s humanitarian message in reaching an envisaged authentic and egalitarian society for blacks and whites in South Africa while focusing on its importance and impact on varying segments of society. “It is important to note, there is no account of Biko declaring a personal confession of Christian belief; however, it did not nullify his conviction of Christianity’s influence and utility in the development and advancement of black consciousness.” The theoretical frameworks of this dissertation draw on developed concepts and theories on the relationship between religion, society, and ethics, with a particular focus on race, oppression, struggle, liberation, and social justice. Specifically, Pan-Africanism, black theology, and black power from within an American context, and similar articulations, such as liberation theology from Latin America, and how they were adapted and conceptually restructured to fit within an apartheid South African context starting from the late 1960s through the late 1970s. These frameworks were employed to ground descriptions and an analysis of Biko’s thoughts and practices for struggle and liberation in South Africa.
Since the research focuses on historical events, the methods used have been qualitative, descriptive, and analytical; and the bulk of the study was sourced from dated biographies, books, speeches, letters, articles, essays, documentaries, and interviews by scholars and persons who were closely associated with the Black Consciousness Movement and Biko’s fight against apartheid. The primary sources were various essays, speeches, and letters Biko wrote, many of which are collected in his book I Write What I Like (1978). All sources aided in providing perspectives on the life, work, and death of Biko in developing a dissertation that seeks to inform the role of Christianity in the development and application of his philosophical black consciousness ideology, which became a pedagogy of the oppressed in the black South African liberation framework.
Chapter 1
Introduction
In one of my graduate courses, I had the opportunity to read a speech by Ngugi wa Thiong’o from a Steve Biko lecture series. Dr. wa Thiong’o’s speech honoring Biko focused on the Black Consciousness Movement, in which Biko was a central figure. He also emphasized the importance of memory and the decolonization of the mind. After reading his speech, I became intrigued with Biko based on the picture that Thiong’o portrayed of him. One quotation in particular significantly affected me to the extent that I knew I wanted to find out more about Biko and his Black Consciousness Movement.
In addressing law enforcement during one of the periods of Biko’s imprisonment in South Africa, wa Thiong’o shared Biko’s words: “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 it’s not your intention” (Biko 1978, p. 153). These words were from a black man who was both courageous and unafraid of death, especially if it meant fighting for his beliefs. This passage compelled me to conduct further research. After reading excerpts from I Write What I Like, I became fascinated with Biko’s writings and even more with his black consciousness message.
Biko’s struggle was relevant and parallel to the struggles between law enforcement and the black community here in the United States; it was as though his words pertaining to police brutality and unjust laws that target blacks were written yesterday. Specifically, there appeared to be striking similarities between the Black Consciousness Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement, particularly in the fight against racial injustice and the need for law enforcement reform within the United States that disproportionately and negatively affects the black community. As a black woman in the United States enduring the current political climate with racial tensions burgeoning, I can personally relate to the experiences with oppression and exploitation of Biko and black South Africans. These experiences are particularly relevant when considering the history of slavery, the Reconstruction Era, Jim Crow, Black Codes, the Antebellum Period, the Civil Rights Movement, and at present, the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Subsequently, I noticed there was another aspect of his writings that captured my attention, namely, his views on theology generally and his references to black theology specifically and whitewashed Christianity. I was interested in how they shaped and influenced social and political beliefs in South African history. The confluence of these belief systems began to come to life for me as I began to understand how culture (black identity), religion, and philosophy, subjects that I had studied during my matriculation at Howard University, were interrelated. I knew what I wanted to conduct research on—the interrelationship of Biko’s radical, holistic, active, and powerful Christian message of black identity and empowerment and how they were proclaimed in the gospel of black consciousness. I wanted to know in depth the message of this “black prophet” to the people of South Africa as proclaimed in the newly developed gospel and how this message instilled and assured hope among black people.
Additionally, I wanted an opportunity to understand and analyze his deeper message to the different sects of society. It was a new way of looking, processing, living, and perceiving life in an oppressed state that had the ability to free and release black minds and souls who were captives to colonization’s institutionalized message of inferiority and subjugation. And it equally had the ability to liberate the consciousness of nonblacks if they were willing to embrace the truth that blacks were made in God’s image too. Mesmerized by Biko’s life, call, and message, I could not ignore the obvious parallels between Biko’s and Jesus’s messages of liberation and their government-led executions. In the movie Cry Freedom, where Denzel Washington portrays Biko, one is able to visualize what Biko endured and embodied as a prophet who was willing to die for what he believed, as well as the freedom of the people to whom he proclaimed this message (Attenborough 2006).
In studying Biko’s life and message, there were many critical events leading up to the rise of this prominent and courageous young black prophet/leader who was catapulted on to the center stage of South African history.
From the late 1960s up to the time of his death on September 12, 1977, Biko was on center stage. The political climate was chaotic in South Africa; it was in great turmoil and peril, especially for blacks, due to colonialism and apartheid. Sharing these major events that led to Biko’s entry onto center stage will help in understanding how critical he was in the fight against apartheid and the gravity of his black consciousness ideology and Christian thought in providing hope for his people.
During the period of apartheid, this legalized system of racism was at the height of oppressing people of color in South Africa. Hill (2015) explains the etymology of the word apartheid as “an Afrikaans word that means ‘separateness,’ indicative of belief in inner (or essence/essential) difference
