I Write What I Like

Chapters 7-9 address The Role of Solidarity in uniting and organizing Black South Africans against the apartheid system. Chapter 7 lays the groundwork for the other two chapters by identifying the lack of unity among Black people as a prime obstacle to emancipation. Biko traces this fragmentation to the 1960 banning of Black political parties, which resulted in the withdrawal of Black people from politics. Biko uses examples to convey the scope of the problem. The apartheid government banned both the African National Congress and the Pan-Africanist Congress in 1960, creating a dangerous power vacuum among Black people. Biko describes the impact of the bans as depoliticizing Blacks through fear: “After the banning of the black political parties in South Africa, people’s hearts were gripped by some kind of foreboding fear for anything political” (34, emphasis added).

Not only were politics a closed book, but “at every corner one was greeted by a slave-like apathy that often bordered on timidity” (34). This meekness continued even after Black people reentered politics, as evidenced by Black leaders accepting to play subsidiary roles in white liberal organizations. Biko cautions that emancipation cannot come about if Black people work within the system. White people have implemented policies that fragment Black people, forcing Black leaders to fight separately for the groups they represent, instead of fighting together for all Black people. Biko compares South Africa to Nazi Germany to dissuade Black people from joining apartheid institutions, which he sees as a path to destruction: “In Germany the petty officials who decided on which Jews were to be taken away were also Jews. Ultimately Hitler’s gangs also came for them. As soon as the dissident factors outside the apartheid institutions are completely silenced, they will come for those who make noise inside the system” (37).

Biko draws a connection between the low Black morale he describes in Chapter 7 and The Importance of Pride and Black Consciousness that forms the bulk of Chapter 9. For him, changing Black people’s attitudes lies at the core of the BCM:

What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people (51).

Biko’s words are direct, which is typical of his writing, but they are also sympathetic because they were written for members of his organization. Equally direct, but entirely different in tone, is Biko’s description of the impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures: “Whenever colonisation sets in with its dominant culture it devours the native culture and leaves behind a bastardised culture that can only thrive at the rate and pace allowed it by the dominant culture” (46). For Biko, then, a political reawakening is only possible alongside a cultural reawakening.

Biko precedes his discussion of Black Consciousness with a chapter on African culture, two themes that are inextricably linked in his writings. Biko argues that Indigenous African culture did not end when Europeans first landed on the Cape. Contact with Europeans brought many changes—in customs, technology, and religion—but aspects of traditional African culture survived. Biko points to the love of music and rhythm, the strong sense of community, and the respect for the land as examples of precolonial African culture that continue to thrive among Black South Africans.

Biko presents African culture as something that survived against the odds and remains vibrant after centuries of foreign rule:

Obviously the African culture has had to sustain severe blows and may have been battered nearly out of shape by the bellingerent [sic] cultures it collided with, yet in essence even today one can easily find the fundamental aspects of the pure African culture in the present day African (41).

A central goal of Black Consciousness is to foster pride in Black history, culture, values, and accomplishments. By describing quintessentially African traits, then, Biko lays the foundation for practicing Black Consciousness.