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| Steve Biko provided his people with education and medical help. |
We are going through
depressing times, watching the promise of our liberation struggle
receding with each passing day, month, year and decade.
We watch as the aspirations that
informed the heroism of so many of our martyrs dissipate like the
morning mist, scorched by an aggressively accumulating petit
bourgeoisie.
Under such circumstances, the
temptation to deify heroic figures such as Steve Bantu Biko might be
overwhelming, but Biko himself would be horrified by any attempt at his
deification. He would scream at us, the living, not to do anything of
the sort.
He considered himself an ordinary
son of the soil, with the same needs, talents and weaknesses as the rest
of us. Yes, he called himself “son of man”, but that was merely to
emphasise his belonging to his people and his availability to serve
humanity, not as a god, but as a son.
What have we been up to since his death and the attainment of a democratic dispensation?
Biko
distinguished himself among the leadership of the SA Students’
Organisation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He emerged as one of the
most prominent voices of the Black Consciousness Movement.
His death on September 12, 1977, entrenched him in the consciousness of our nation and the world.
His deep intellectual commitment
to the liberation of his people was matched by an equally unflinching
preparedness to live or die for truth, justice and freedom. He
sacrificed his medical studies for the Struggle. Biko could, like his
contemporaries at the University of Natal, have concentrated on his
studies, which would have led to a fairly comfortable life for him as a
doctor.
While under banning orders in
Ginsberg, and under perpetual harassment by the security police, he
initiated and participated in community development projects in health,
education, self-help and income generation for ordinary people. Like
Paulo Freire, he believed in the power of the masses to liberate
themselves, provided they are sufficiently empowered.
Earlier in his student days, he
was among those of us who took part in literacy projects around the
country using the Freire method.
While he was a hero to the
oppressed, he was a dangerous villain to the regime, which detained and
tortured him many times, before he was fatally beaten in Port Elizabeth.
We, the
living, intensified the struggle after his death and ushered in a
democratic order that is anchored in a constitution that guarantees
justice, equality, fairness, freedom and human dignity.
On the back of that constitution, we enacted laws that sought to cement our democratic credentials.
But we are a schizophrenic
society, one that liberators in the mould of Biko would consider
candidates for mobilisation for another revolution. Our reality on the
ground and what the constitution provides are far apart.
We strut around extolling the virtues of our constitution, yet we live outside of its letter and spirit.
Since his death, our society has
become one of the most unequal in the world. Poverty has increased under
our much-vaunted democratic dispensation.
The black intelligentsia, of which he was a member, has betrayed the masses. It is as simple as that.
Generally
speaking, this class has embarked on a path of avaricious accumulation
of wealth, which it does through theft, corruption and short-changing of
the very masses it led to political freedom.
It has simply joined its white
counterpart in the economic stakes, except that it is a junior partner
in the enjoyment of the fat of our country.
Under its watch, public education
has gone to the dogs. While its children can get a decent education in
private and suburban schools, the children of the majority cannot read,
write or calculate as they should. The recent Annual National Assessment
results have just confirmed that. Our children are beaten hands down by
kids in neighbouring countries with a gross domestic product much
smaller than our own.
We do not suffer from a dire
shortage of resources, but there is an appalling lack of solidarity,
empathy and application to the liberation project. Instead, many who
occupy positions that should enable them to help pull the majority out
of poverty are preoccupied with looting.
Every day, the public protector or
Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts or the
auditor-general or the Hawks or the media feed us a bitter staple diet
of corruption in high places.
Alongside that are frequent protests by the poor against the non-delivery of services.
Seventeen
years after the attainment of freedom, our children still learn in mud
classrooms, under trees. Often their feeding schemes collapse due to
massive pilfering and, in Biko’s home province, the education system has
collapsed under the weight of graft and maladministration.
For those of us who believe that
education is the most potent and sustainable weapon against poverty,
this state of affairs is excruciatingly painful. Through education, poor
children are given an opportunity to escape the clutches of poverty, at
the same time as the country gains skills to grow its economy and so
create wealth and jobs for many.
Biko himself is an eloquent
testimony of the efficacy of education as an intergenerational mechanism
to defeat poverty in families and communities. He and his siblings were
born of poor, working-class parents, but through education he could
easily have become a doctor. What is more, his children and
grandchildren have received, or are receiving, a good education and that
lineage is unlikely to fall back into poverty. This confirms that
children of educated parents are more likely to be educated and partake
wholly in the economy.
Thus, we are more likely to defeat
poverty if we educate our young than when we do not. Doling out social
grants is nice, but it does not take people out of poverty, it merely
freezes them in that state.
And we cannot build a stable
society on a foundation of widening inequality. Sooner or later,
something would have to give – possibly another revolution.
Our people go to public health
facilities with trepidation. These are sites beset by gross
inefficiencies and shortages of medicines and health professionals. The
abuse of patients is commonplace.
This is because unqualified managers are employed and because merit gives way to connections of one description or another.
Under conditions of incompetence, maladministration and connections, graft simply runs amok.
Make no mistake, we have appropriately qualified and competent people.
But when vacancies come up, very
often many applicants are found to be of the wrong colour, sex,
political party, family, business associates, or they are too honest and
upright. So, appointments are made on the basis of something other than
ability. The people who suffer the consequences of the shambles in
public health institutions are the masses. Members of the petit
bourgeoisie have medical aid schemes that enables them to receive
medical care in private institutions.
We may start hoping that things
might change for the better when the political and state administrative
leaders go to public health facilities for their medical needs. They
avoid those institutions like the plague.
The health of the poor was very
close to Biko’s heart. There can be no genuine freedom without decent
health care. To that end, he and his colleagues established and
successfully ran Zanempilo Clinic in Zinyoka village. This they did
despite efforts by the regime to sabotage the project. Yet, we, the
living, with the state under our control and billions of rand allocated
to health, run the public health system into the ground.
Nowhere
does our schizophrenia manifest itself more than in our commitment to
gender equality. We set aside a public holiday to affirm the rights of
women, and yet we are probably the worst country in the world when it
comes to the safety of women. Women in countries that do not shout so
much about gender equality can walk the streets safely. We do not seem
to mean anything we say.
Black Consciousness envisages the
creation of an anti-racist society in our country where the colour of
your skin, origin, culture or language would not be a point of
reference.
Its adherents punt this position with their voices and in the many official documents of their organisations.
Such a society is naturally inconceivable under conditions of institutionalised racism, as we had in this country.
Further, this philosophy holds
that such a society cannot be built under circumstances where one of its
sections has internalised notions of superiority while the other
section has an internalised inferiority complex.
A lot of work needs to be done to
disabuse black and white people of these complexes which they acquired
simply by living in a racist society for centuries. Black Consciousness
seeks to restore black people’s dignity, pride and humanity.
It held
then, and we still hold now, that physical freedom without
psychological liberation is problematic. It is clear to some of us that
most of those among the black petit bourgeoisie do not rate themselves
highly; their self-esteem is highly suspect, and therefore do not,
subliminally and otherwise, believe that black people deserve better.
You cannot take pride in your work
if your self-esteem is low. Similarly, you cannot be ashamed of your
shoddy and substandard work if you do not rate yourself highly.
Why are black people not bothered
by the fact that they cannot teach their own children? Why can’t we
create excellence in our neighbourhood schools?
Why do we have to go and look for
excellence somewhere, at the former Model C schools, perhaps, when we
can create the same standards or better in the schools next to our
homes? There is no Verwoerd to hold us back any more.
We are in charge of the education budget and state machinery. Who or what is holding us back?
Why would black professionals
gladly take their cheque home at the end of the month if they didn’t do a
decent day’s work to earn their salaries? If you do not love yourself
and, therefore, your people, sufficiently, you will not do your best for
them.
The
difference between the black petit bourgeoisie and its counterparts in
this country and elsewhere in the world lies in consciousness,
self-esteem and firm connection, spiritually, socially, culturally and
otherwise, to their people.
The attainment of political
freedom 17 years ago was a great advance for us on the road to total
emancipation. But it is abundantly clear that psychological oppression,
particularly of the black intelligentsia, is a major obstacle in our
march to a truly liberated society.
A sufficiently conscientised black
petit bourgeoisie would ensure that municipalities, education, health
and other social services are properly run for the benefit of all our
people.
In addition, it would ensure that
land, mines and other forms of wealth are spread to our society as
fairly as possible. Continued grossly skewed ownership of the wealth of
the country is as unjust as it is unsustainable.
Then, and only then, would our
quest for the creation of a truly open society where your race, point of
origin or language do not constitute a point of reference, be realised.
Let Biko, our unequal symbol of
liberation, the excellent patriot, continue to inspire us, the living,
as we work towards a sustainable democracy.
This is an
edited version of a lecture delivered at the Nelson Mandela
Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth on the 34th anniversary of
Biko’s killing.
