sociocultural practices. Built on a racist foundation, apartheid has come to stand for an entire structure of legalized racism rooted in South Africa but evidenced elsewhere in the world” (p. xvi). Hill writes that apartheid systemically oppressed black South Africans through legislation instituted by the National Party, which came to power in 1948. She states, “Although the nation’s history hardly begins in 1948, this is the year that the National Party, a heavy favorite among Afrikaners, won legislative majorities in all branches of governance [Parliament], after which a veritable flood of laws were passed built on the idea that separation of ‘races’ was natural, thus Godly” (p. xvi).
The legislation exploited and segregated the Bantu-speaking people, who represented several ethnicities and languages, by clumping them all into a measly eight ethnicities. This was even more shocking since black South Africans were the majority. After the National Party was able to isolate and marginalize black South Africans through legislation that took away their rights, the new white minority became the power structure, Hill states. Further, the Bantu Self-Government Act ended parliamentary representation for “natives” (Bantu Self-Government Act 1959). Finally, she points out that “this same populace was compelled to become citizens of a prescribed area called Bantustan, and they were stripped of South African citizenship by Bantu Homelands Citizens Act 1970” (p. xvi). This new regime took away not only their rights but also their citizenship, according to Hill.
Throughout history, there is always that one event when the oppressed will no longer tolerate injustice. Frederick Douglas describes it in one of his famous quotes: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress” (Douglas 1857). This event for the black people of South Africa was what became known as the Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960. In opposition to the passbook laws demanding that Africans must carry passbooks at all times, stating their identity, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) planned a mass protest to put an end to the action. The protest was one of civil disobedience, where thousands protested throughout the day and later marched to the local police station. Nevertheless, the police indiscriminately opened fire on the crowd, killing sixty-seven blacks, the majority of whom were shot in the back. One hundred eighty-six were wounded (Hopkins 1989, p. 20).
In the aftermath of this event, protests erupted not only throughout South Africa but also throughout the world. The African National Congress (ANC), the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), liberals, African nations, and world leaders put pressure upon the apartheid regime to put an end to legalized racism, segregation, and violence against blacks after this horrific event; however, it did not immediately heed to the pressure. In fact, according to Hopkins (1989), the South African government “swooped up” the leadership of both the PAC and ANC, causing some of them to go underground and others to flee into exile (p. 20). It is important to note here that although several black leaders were underground, banned, and imprisoned, they were still secretly organizing and mobilizing at the grassroots level.
After the PAC and ANC leaders were silenced one way or the other, there was no black public voice. Hill (2015) states, “A lull is said to have spread over organized resistance to apartheid in that decade” (p. xvii). Dr. Dwight Hopkins (1989), in his book Black Theology: USA and South Africa, writes, “Black resistance smoldered until the rise of black consciousness” (p. 20). Donald Woods (1978) further explained in his book Biko:
With Mandela imprisoned and Sobukwe banned, there was for some years a leadership vacuum in South African black politics. It was filled toward the close of the 1960s by Bantu Stephen Biko. (p. 30)
During this critical time when black voices were dying out and Biko’s own life circumstances were coming to a crisis point, he began to emerge as a central figure and was catapulted into the middle of the Black Consciousness Movement. Biko was severely challenged by racial bias within the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), where whites were still leading, representing, and speaking on behalf of black students. Biko and other students were troubled by the fact that “this liberal formation afforded one of the few remaining legal avenues for national dialogue among blacks” (Hopkins 1989, p. 21). Biko realized that liberal whites were still perpetuating white superiority in their treatment of black students. This became apparent at a NUSAS conference where “black delegates were forced to live in appalling, segregated accommodations away from the conference site” (Hopkins 1989, p. 21). After this event, Biko and other black students knew that white liberals were still part of the problem despite their multiracial ideology. Black students needed to be the face and voice for overcoming and advocating for their own issues and concerns. “With the founding of SASO [South African Students’ Organization], an all-black student group that broke with the multiracial National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) in 1969, black students under Biko’s leadership began to emerge in the early 1970s as the critical center of internal resistance to apartheid during that decade” (Magaziner 2010, p. 3). Biko and others later organized the Black People’s Convention (BPC) to continue the grassroots movement of black consciousness within black communities.
It was through the development of black consciousness ideology, along with SASO—as evident in Biko’s letters, writings, speeches, and interviews—that Biko began to make a sharp distinction between what he saw as white Christianity exhibited by whites generally (particularly white liberals, even some black intelligentsia) and what he saw as black theology exhibited by many blacks who were problack and antimultiracialism.
These events are at the core of my research, which is to analyze Biko’s life, the black consciousness message as a radical gospel focused on psychological liberation, his understanding of white Christianity and black theology, how he perceived them operating in society, and his use of black theology as an integral component of black consciousness.
Biko saw the need for a radical change. He fought against apartheid by enlightening the black man’s consciousness, which had been diminished with the lies and ideology of white racism, religion, and colonialism. His ideas and efforts, along with others within SASO, would become known as the Black Consciousness Movement. In this paradigm, there was a stark contrast between black and white Christianity. White Christianity had become deadly to African traditions, culture, and the economic flourishing of blacks in South Africa, while black religious thought and practices began to restore the value, image, consciousness, spirituality, and economic state of the black community.
Definition of Terms
Black Theology, according to James Cone, “places our past and present actions toward black liberation in a theological context, seeking to destroy alien gods and create value-structures according to the God of black freedom. The significance of black theology lies in the conviction that the content of the Christian gospel is liberation, so that any talk about God that fails to take seriously the righteousness of God as revealed in the liberation of the weak and downtrodden is not Christian language” (as cited in Moore 1973, p. 52). Cone also describes it as a “religious explication of the need for black people to define the scope and meaning of black existence in a white racist society… Black theology puts black identity in a theological context, showing that Black Power is not only consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that it is the gospel of Jesus Christ” (as cited in Moore 1973, p. 48). For Biko (1978), black theology is “a situational interpretation of Christianity. It seeks to relate the present-day black man to God within the given context of the man’s suffering and his attempts to get out of it. It shifts the emphasis of man’s moral obligations from avoiding wronging false authorities by not losing his Reference Book, not stealing food when hungry and not cheating police when he is caught, to being committed to eradicating all cause for suffering as represented in the death of children from starvation, outbreaks of epidemics in poor areas, or the existence of thuggery and vandalism in townships. In other words, it shifts the emphasis from petty sins to major sins in a society, thereby ceasing to teach the people to ‘suffer peacefully’” (p. 59).
In essence, black theology is a way of understanding God and practicing religious beliefs in a culturally and socially relevant way that connects black men and women to God with language that reinforces a
