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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 based on the appearance of physical (or external/superficial) features and, with them, 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 self-image that is reflective of God’s love, divinity, beauty, and salvific plan while challenging systemic social structures that oppress, subjugate, and exploit people of color.

Biko (1978) describes black consciousness thus:

An attitude of mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression—the blackness of their skin—and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. It is based on a self-examination, which has ultimately led them to believe that by seeking to run away from themselves and emulate the white man, they are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black. The philosophy of Black Consciousness therefore expresses group pride and the determination of the black to rise and attain the envisaged self. (pp. 91–92)

It is a holistic message to challenge the thinking of blacks to see themselves in the humanity and beauty of their blackness as created by God and not in a spiritual and social Eurocentric inferiority context. So black consciousness is a way of living and thinking that elevates oppressed blacks beyond fear to a liberated way of life where they are able to walk in their true humanity.

White Christianity for Biko is Christianity practiced and preached by some Europeans in South Africa who interpreted, imposed, and lived out the scripture from racially skewed lens, viewing themselves as superior and blacks as inferior. Basically, even for the best-intentioned white Christian, white Christianity’s relationship to blacks was still compromised because of the systemic superior-inferior complex inherent in society through colonialism and apartheid. Whether the white Christian was liberal or racist, he or she was still part of the oppressor’s regime.

Statement of the Problem

In South Africa, during the late 1960s and 1970s, blacks were oppressed by white governmental institutions that were built upon a white supremacist interpretation of Christianity that needed to be liberated by a message that would empower and connect blacks back to God. In an effort to liberate blacks from white oppression, many black church leaders came to know and understand that theology could no longer be from a white Christian perspective but had to be born out of the black experience. It had to be relevant and liberating to the people to whom it was being preached in both South Africa and the United States. Black theology was born out of the struggle against racial injustice and an oppressive situation. Therefore, it is considered to be a “situational theology” (Moore 1973, p. 5). For blacks in America, the situation was the Civil Rights era of the 1950s–1970s (Hopkins 1989), and for blacks in South Africa, it was during the Black Consciousness Movement of the 1960s–1980s (Hopkins 1989). These two time periods are mentioned because black theology, though not new in practice, was new in academic thought and labeled in the early 1960s.

Black theology was coined in the United States by a black theologian named James Cone, who would later be known as the father of black theology. He argued that Jesus was compassionate to and on the side of oppressed blacks because he (Jesus) underwent the same oppressive situation as a Jew under the Roman regime. Cone (1997) compared the experiences of Jesus with those of blacks, pointing out striking parallels in their lives and sufferings. He argued for the blackness of Jesus based upon and identified by his struggle, which showed Jesus’s solidarity with black people against white oppression. Jesus was seen as a strong liberator of the oppressed, fighting against the injustices of his time to free his marginalized people.

On the other hand, Biko was the father of the Black Consciousness Movement, which emerged out of a Christian student organization. Biko was not a preacher necessarily, but he was one who believed that faith was the undergirding strength of a message of liberation for the black people in South Africa. Biko espoused that although it was understood that white people were not superior, black people needed to unite and change the way they thought about themselves and the God they served. Black theology was a way of uniting the black man with his God, overcoming the confusion brought about by the white missionaries’ version of Christianity (Moore 1973, p. 43). There were two faces to Christianity in South Africa for Biko—the old white missionary version that was born out of colonialism and used to subjugate and oppress people of color, and a new emerging Christianity known as black theology that emerged from the struggle of blacks against white oppression.

Black theology would shift the lens of blacks in South Africa from inward moral convictions to outward commitment against major social sinfulness that caused childhood deaths due to starvation, diseases, thuggery, poverty, and other types of socioeconomic struggles that plagued South Africa (Biko 1978). Simply stated, black theology was liberating because it met blacks where they were in their situation, giving hope, identity, solidarity, and reconnection to a God that would fight for and be compassionate toward their sufferings. Black theology is critical in helping blacks create their own worldview, one that captured the spirit, heart, struggle, and history of their people. It is this view that would bring about a new Christian social ethics that blacks could use to support and be the cornerstone of their efforts toward liberation.

Biko had witnessed and studied enough to know that Eurocentric Christianity was a founding part of the colonial system and its institutions (Biko 1978). Justification of this European brand of Christianity was forcefully imposed based upon the faulty misnomer that black South Africans were evil, savage, barbaric, and uncivilized. To Biko, the liberal white Christians showed more witchery than nonliberal white Christians in that they befriended some of the black intelligentsia and accepted them in their elite circles to show a Christian “love of inclusion” while at the same time silencing them by using platforms of multiracialism and nonracial ideology to keep them in their organizations where whites had control and were the dominant voice.

This was a problem since Biko was convinced that too many blacks did not understand that whites looked upon their situation with sympathy and therefore could never truly relate to the black situation without having experienced the black man’s burden. Whites did not comprehend the urgency of black voices and reactions to racial oppression because they were accustomed to experiencing societal privilege and unknowingly carrying out the message of the oppressor. Therefore, the black students needed their own platform utilizing their own voices to fight racial injustices, not a white Christian sponsor and mouthpiece. Biko became that black voice, along with other blacks, to fight against the racial oppression imposed by the apartheid regime. Of course, his activism, mobilizing of black people, and speaking truth to power made him an enemy of the state, which eventually led to his illegal execution while in police custody.

Aims and Objectives

This research aims to highlight, describe, and analyze Biko’s gospel message of black consciousness and its radical approach to liberating black people through a spiritual and mental awakening of black identity. The goal is to examine the most essential elements of his overall message in a quest toward humanizing blackness as well as analyzing how he targeted different audiences in his message to elevate their consciousness toward envisioning true humanity. The research also shows how critical religion, specifically black theology and white Christianity, was in formulating social ethics and informing politics during apartheid and the development of black consciousness.

Additionally, this study highlights Biko’s contributions to black theological liberation among South Africans and the relevance and staying power of his message today in the context of continued struggles by black people in Africa, America, and around the globe against racial injustice, poverty, police brutality, educational inequality, health disparities, lack of housing, and unemployment, not unlike those of the period of apartheid in South Africa.

Research Questions

This study is guided by the following question: in what ways did Biko’s life, while proclaiming black consciousness as a means to conscientize blacks toward their own liberation, resemble Jesus Christ in life, deeds, words, suffering, and death?

In answering this overarching question, the following subquestions must be employed to get to the core of who Biko was, his message of black consciousness, the events that led to his death, his understanding of Christianity, and its use within the Black Consciousness Movement.

Who is Steve Biko? What is his Christian background (i.e., upbringing, spiritual experiences, church affiliation, education)? What was Biko’s Christian message, and how did he demonstrate or embody it? What was his message to the white Christian liberal? What events led Biko to believe that Christianity in South Africa, especially among students, needed to be reconceptualized? How did those who believed in a multiracial and nonracial utopia respond to his message? What was his message to black intelligentsia who bought into the liberal message of inclusivity and multiracialism? What was his Christian message of black empowerment to awaken black consciousness and breathe life into the souls of colonized and oppressed blacks? How did he challenge and speak truth to white supremacist power in the apartheid government with black consciousness? In what ways does his message speak to the black situation today in South Africa?

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical frameworks of this dissertation draws on the work of a number of scholars, such as James Cone (1969, 1970, 1997, 2011), Paulo Freire (2000), Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986), Frantz Fanon (2004), and others who have developed concepts and theories on the relationship between religion and society with a particular focus on race, oppression, struggle, liberation, and social justice. Specifically, Cone’s theory of black theology, as well as similar articulations, such as liberation theology from Latin America, are employed to ground descriptions and an analysis of Biko’s thought and practice of struggle and liberation in South Africa.

James Cone’s concept of black theology is pivotal in helping to understand and analyze Biko’s two views of Christianity: one black and one white. Cone has several books on this topic: The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011), God of the Oppressed (1997), A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), and Black Theology and Black Power (1969), to name a few. Under an oppressive apartheid government, Biko realized there were two types of Christianity that developed during this segregated era—that of the oppressed and oppressor. Black theology, which became an integral part of Biko’s black consciousness ideology, had picked up momentum in South Africa among young blacks in their resistance movements.

In considering theoretical frameworks, James Cone’s concept of black theology is useful for explaining how blacks and whites interpreted the scriptures differently, which produced different social beliefs, responses, and actions. Black theology creates a platform that reconnects God to black people and their collective experiences. Jesus experienced oppression, pain, suffering, and even death but found victory beyond the cross as a resurrected King and Savior, which is relatable to the black experience of slavery, torture, lynching, and execution at the hands of whites in the Americas and Africa.

Cone (2011) juxtaposes lynching with crucifixion upon a cross: “Both the cross and the lynching tree represented the worst in human beings and at the same time ‘an unquenchable ontological thirst’ for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning” (p. 3). Cone states that experiences of blacks as a people in history and culture caused us to approach, analyze, and interpret the scriptures out of our collective experiences. So with blacks being an oppressed, abused, and exploited people, black theology would differ from the theology of white Christians, who were privileged, superior, and of the oppressive regime in society.

Cone (1997) further asks:

What is the connection between life and theology? The answer cannot be the same for blacks and whites, because blacks and whites do not share the same life. The lives of a black slave and white slaveholder were radically different. It follows that their thoughts about things divine would also be different, even though they might sometimes use the same words about God. The life of the slaveholder and others of that culture was that of extending white inhumanity to excruciating limits, involving the enslavement of Africans and the annihilation of Indians. The life of the slave was the slave ship, the auction block, and the plantation regime. It involved the attempt to define oneself without the ordinary historical possibilities of self-affirmation. Therefore, when the master and slave spoke of God, they could not possibly be referring to the same reality. (p. 9)

During the apartheid era, the experience of blacks was extremely different from that of whites in society; black experience was focused on fighting for liberation within a white racist society. It is not surprising that Biko would see the need for the development of a Christian experience that was not forced upon them by European Christian belief systems or taught and interpreted by whites, but a black theology born out of the black South African experience that spoke of freedom in the here and now. The “truth,” as espoused in the gospels, had to speak to their situation, history, and culture.

Cone (1997) states:

There is no truth for and about black people that does not emerge out of the context of their experience. Truth in this sense is black truth, a truth disclosed in the history and culture of black people. This means that there can be no black theology which does not take the black experience as a source for its starting point. Black theology is a theology of and for black people, an examination of their stories, tales, and sayings. It is an investigation of the mind into the raw materials of our pilgrimage, telling the story of ‘how we got over.’ For theology to be black, it must reflect upon what it means to be black. Black theology must uncover the structures and forms of the black experience, because the categories of interpretation must arise out of the thought forms of the black experience itself. (pp. 15–16)

Thus, America’s Black Power Movement involved redefining black identity in a white world and fighting against systemic oppression socially, economically and politically. Comparatively, black theology introduced God into the mix from a black perspective, bringing his liberating power into the equation void of a European context. As Cone explains, “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).

James Cone’s theory helps explain Biko’s desire to focus on black theology, which uplifts the black populace, as opposed to an oppressive view of Christianity from the perspective of white individuals with good intentions. Whites and blacks were born into and nurtured by two different experiences; therefore, black people needed to have a view of Christianity that provided a truth that would nurture and promulgate their freedom.

Additionally, answers to the following questions help clarify this theoretical notion: Was Biko correct in seeing and drawing a distinction between a white and black Christian experience? How and why did Jesus and his experiences relate to the black experience? Did blacks and whites of that time period and even in today’s society see God and interpret the scriptures differently?

While Cone showed how blacks related to Jesus through shared experiences of oppression and suffering, Obery Hendricks (2006), in his book The Politics of Jesus, portrays Jesus as a revolutionary, a radical fighting God, one who was on the side of the oppressed and spoke truth to power, disrupting systemic oppressive institutions of his time. Indeed, Hendricks explains that Jesus fought from the temple to the imperial courts. His message was economic, social, and political just as much as it was spiritual. Hendricks’s perspective helps lay the foundation for understanding spiritual power emanating and empowering a social, economic, and political movement for blacks in South Africa. Invoking the scriptures (Luke 4:18–19), Hendricks argues:

Jesus announces that the reason for his anointing by God and the purpose of his mission in the world are one and the same—to proclaim radical economic, social, and political change. (loc. 179)

Biko used black theology and liberation theology as a strategy to aid in changing the European paradigms that existed among blacks. He wanted to sharpen their consciousness by presenting Christianity in a way that combated the white paradigms inherent in their interpretation of Christianity. Hendricks and Cone relate Jesus to blacks by arguing that he was on their side because he could empathize with their sufferings. Hendricks (2006) explains that Jesus was not meek and mild with blue eyes; rather, he vehemently opposed the power structures of his day that were guilty of oppression and subjugation. Jesus spoke loudly, turned over tables, and taught others how to fight against Roman oppression.

Hendricks expounds:

To say that Jesus was a political revolutionary is to say that the message he proclaimed not only called for change in individual hearts but also demanded sweeping and comprehensive change in the political, social, and economic structures in his setting in life: colonized Israel. It means that if Jesus had had his way, the Roman Empire and the ruling elites among his own people either would no longer have held their positions of power, or if they did, would have had to conduct themselves very, very differently. It means that an important goal of his ministry was to radically change the distribution of authority and power, goods and resources, so all people—particularly the little people, or “the least of these,” as Jesus called them—might have lives free of political repression, enforced hunger and poverty, and undue insecurity. It means that Jesus sought not only to heal people’s pain but also to inspire and empower people to remove the unjust social and political structures that too often were the cause of their pain. It means that Jesus had a clear and unambiguous vision of the healthy world that God intended and that he addressed any issue—social, economic, or political—that violated that vision. (loc. 104).

Another framework to help guide my research is the liberation theology of Latin American theologian Gustavo Gutierrez (1983), which he expounded upon in his book Power of the Poor in History. He believed very strongly in Jesus as a liberator for and on the side of the poor. Gutierrez argued that the Bible must be interpreted through the life experiences of the poor, with the understanding that the gospels were written with the poor in mind. And Jesus was orchestrating and acting throughout history to intervene favorably on their behalf.

His idea that one interprets the Bible based on one’s socialized experiences is directly relatable to Biko’s ideas about Christianity as being different in how it is understood, preached, and lived by whites and blacks in South Africa. Therefore, with Biko, among whites and blacks, there are different life experiences and different ways of understanding and interpreting the Bible. To establish this perspective, Gutierrez (1983) states in his book Power of the Poor in History:

We reinterpret the Bible, from the viewpoint of our own world—from our personal experience as human beings, as believers, and as a church. This approach is more radical. It goes more to the roots of what the Bible actually is, more to the essence of God’s revelation in history and of God’s judgment on it. (p. 4)

For Gutierrez (1983), God came to liberate the poor and oppressed. Liberation theology to him was radical, situational, and used to empower and free the oppressed. The Bible was to be interpreted and lived based upon the liberating message of Jesus Christ. Justice practiced in favor of the poor was the true sign of belief in Jesus. To oppress, enslave, hate, and perpetuate any type of injustice in society was sinful and an indication of a knowledge of Jesus. In his words:

One must keep in mind that the God of the Bible is a God who not only governs history, but who orientates it in the direction of establishment of justice and right. He is more than a provident God. He is a God who takes sides with the poor and liberates them from slavery and oppression. (p. 7)

Furthermore:

To sin—not to love, not to know, Yahweh—is to create relationships of injustice, to make an option for oppression and against liberation. Still worse, if persons feign a belief in Yahweh, and proclaim that he is in their midst, the truth will come out in their practice with regard to the poor. (Referenced Micah 3:9–12, p. 9)

Gutierrez’s theological and philosophical views regarding oppression and racism are very useful in analyzing and arguing that Biko had two different views of Christianity. Along with other activists, theologians, and philosophers from around the world, Biko’s black consciousness ideology highlighted and raised questions of what true Christianity and justice were in South Africa and throughout the world. These theoretical frameworks were pivotal in guiding my research in understanding the necessity and existence of black theology and its practice among black South Africans to counteract a Christianity that supported apartheid, as expressed by Biko’s rhetoric in the Black Consciousness Movement.

Also, in the Latin American world, there is Paulo Freire (1970), who—in his popular book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed—analyzes the teaching methods to be instituted to liberate oppressed people from poverty and from the bondage of the oppressor. He focuses on helping marginalized people come to a new awareness or consciousness of their existence and power to overcome oppression. While the book is not necessarily focused on one’s spirituality, it does focus on the importance of mental enlightenment that is necessary in viewing oneself in relationship to others, with an understanding of the power to change one’s circumstances and define one’s purpose within them.

Freire’s (1970) concepts centered on liberation theologies and philosophies that constitute useful and helpful grids through which better understandings and analyses of Biko’s thought and practice can be generated. Historical events and cultural norms based upon the theories of Hendricks and Cone help understand why Biko identified a separate black and white Christianity but proclaimed a message that addressed them both.

Assumptions

This research assumes that Biko admired the core truth of Christianity but not its oppressive application by whites toward blacks within a colonial and apartheid South African context. It equally assumes that Biko’s mission was to proclaim and personify a holistic message of liberation inclusive of economics, politics, and religion by incorporating and repurposing black theology and black power within a South African black consciousness paradigm, which was influential in the emergence and development of the Black Consciousness Movement. Further, the research assumes that due to the socioeconomic and political situation of oppressed blacks under the apartheid regime, there was an environment or platform that was conducive to the emergence of black theology on African soil in contrast to its prevalent white missionary theology.

Consequently, certain types of value systems or ethics within two different interpretations of Christianity resulted in perceiving and advocating on behalf of blacks in antithetical ways. Given the unfinished struggles of black people, there is still a need for black consciousness in the spirit and practice of Biko to help liberate black people whether in South Africa or other parts of the world. Lastly, it assumes that there are several aspects of Biko’s life that closely resemble those of Jesus Christ’s, not in the divine position of Christ, but as a human being who suffered for trying to restore the people’s hope in God and create a more equitable society through civil disobedience.

Scope and Limitations

The scope of this research is limited to a critical analysis of the ways Biko perceived and practiced Christianity in South Africa during his activist years, the 1960s and 1970s. It examines and analyzes certain aspects of the rhetoric and practice of the black consciousness movement and how theological principles helped shape Biko’s ideology and practice of black liberation and struggle against a brand of white Christianity that hinders the progress and the spiritual, economic, social, and political freedom of blacks. As such, the present project is not an exhaustive study of the Black Consciousness Movement and apartheid in South Africa, and black theology, African theology, and black power in the United States. Neither does it focus on all the leaders and participants in these movements. Furthermore, the study would have benefited tremendously from extended field research in South Africa. Consequently, limited resources and time constraints gave primarily the option of library research.

Significance of the Study and Anticipated Contributions

The extant scholarly and popular literature on Biko, black consciousness, apartheid, black theology, liberation theology, and black power are abundant and significant. This research project builds on this existing literature and contributes to it significantly with a specific focus on the Christian message inherent in Biko’s thinking on and practice of black consciousness—a black gospel for a black people. This study is equally important because it points to the necessity and effectiveness of religion in society and how it influences the political and social arena. Lastly, the study is important because it produces a good understanding and appreciation of commonalities and parallels within South Africa and the global African diaspora over broad time spans in matters of race relations and struggles against political, religious, social, and economic injustice to attain liberation from an oppressive rule.

Literature Review

The goal of this study is to analyze Biko’s personification and proclamation of a radical gospel message as put forth in the Black Consciousness Movement. For him, these two groups—black Christians and white Christians—showed an evolution of behaviors based upon their interpretation of Christianity, specifically Christian social ethics. During the early 1960s–1970s, Biko’s writings show how both groups responded to the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and BCM’s interpretation of black theology (BT). Beyond his book I Write What I Like and Basil Moore’s The South African Voice, the review examines works and scholars that shed light on Biko’s Christian tenets professed and demonstrated in the Black Consciousness Movement. Biko’s books and the writings of other scholars highlighted in the literature review give insight into his life and the Black Consciousness Movement; however, none of them fully deal with Biko’s Christian tenets manifested and proclaimed in his message. The one book that speaks most directly to the Christian component within black consciousness, The Law and the Prophets by Daniel R. Magaziner (2010), mainly focuses upon the intellectual history of participants in the South African Students’ Organization yet falls short of fully focusing primarily on the Christian message developed, spoken, and demonstrated by Biko within the Black Consciousness Movement from 1968 to 1977. This research seeks to close this gap in the literature.

Black consciousness has long been thought of as a gospel for black South Africans. Biko and others who sought to focus on this aspect of the movement had to determine how to refocus Christianity without changing the heart of the Christian message, which was to show God’s love and validation of blacks. Black consciousness called South Africans to have faith in themselves and in the promise, ultimately, of a future that encouraged redress of the injustice perpetuated against them. Its adherents compared it to a religion and called it the “gospel” (Magaziner 2010, p. 57).

In an apartheid South Africa, C. R. D. Halisi, in his essay “Biko and Black Consciousness Philosophy: An Interpretation,” stated, “Steve Biko believed that black consciousness philosophy, by providing an alternative to psychological complicity with racial oppression, could expedite the subjective prerequisites needed for black liberation” (as cited in Hook 2014, p. 164). It was this very thinking among Biko and his peers that led to the development of the South African Students’ Organization.

The group was formed when Biko and the black students realized that “as long as the white liberals are our spokespersons, there will be no black spokesmen” (Woods 1978, p. 96). Black students “began to realize that blacks themselves had to speak out about the black predicament” (Woods 1978, p. 96). This caused a lot of tension, especially among white liberals found in two groups, one in which Biko was a member before breaking away and forming SASO. These groups were the National Union of South African Students’ (NUSAS) and the University Christian Movement (UCM) led by Basil Moore.

Xolela Mangcu (2012), in Biko: A Biography, shares that the black members of UCM began seeking ways to address the broader political challenges of the day rather than be part of the NUSAS goal of defining their theological identities. In fact, states Mangcu, Biko and his colleagues began to search for a theological framework that spoke to the practical needs of black people (p. 173). Many in NUSAS began to disagree with Biko’s ideology, like “liberal whites who felt that black consciousness was racist and anti-white. These liberals believed that the only way in which apartheid could be opposed was through integration between black and whites” (Price 1992, p. 17).

Biko was clear that there was a need to empower and liberate black people and this goal could not be accomplished by whites alone. Many of the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had been imprisoned and others executed while in police custody. Subsequently, the black social justice front experienced a sustained silence until the Black Consciousness Movement arrived on the scene. In her book Steve Biko: They Fought For Freedom, Linda Price states that the “Black Consciousness Movement was bridging the political vacuum that had existed in South Africa since the government tried to suppress all opposition to apartheid in the 1960s” (Price 1992, p. 14). Additionally, Halisi, in his essay “Biko and Black Consciousness Philosophy: An Interpretation,” similarly stated, “Black Consciousness philosophy openly confronted the pathology of racism in South African society and its impact on both black and white South Africans” (as cited in Hook 2014, p. 167).

Bishop Tutu took a spiritual view, explaining that blacks see themselves through a European lens. He stated:

Black Consciousness was meant to exorcise this demon, to make us realize, as he [Biko] said, we were human and not inferior, just as the white person was human and not superior. I internalized what others had decided was to be my identity, not my God-given utterly precious and unique me. (As cited in Steve Biko Foundation 2009, p. 96).

These views lead to a pivotal component of black theology (BT), which was that neither blacks nor whites are superior or inferior to each other.

Biko “called into question whether the so-called black churches were really black” (du Toit and Maluleke 2008, p. 62). Du Toit and Maluleke (2008), in an essay in The Legacy of Stephen Bantu Biko: Theological Challenges, stated, “Biko was unflinching in his conviction that as long as black people looked for and accepted white leadership in all spheres, including religion, they were not yet ready to take their future in their own hands” (p. 62). Dwight Hopkins sheds further light on Biko’s stance, in stating that “black Christians [according to Biko] could not wholeheartedly fight against the sins of the white church because they, in fact, had accepted and internalized white dogma” (as cited in Pityana 1991, p. 195). This was experienced and evidenced in the monopoly of white leadership in black churches excluding the Dutch Reformed churches. Biko (1978) asserted, “Blacks comprised 70–90 percent of lay persons, while at the same time 70–90 percent of the leadership of these very same churches was white” (p. 195).

Biko, in an interview noted in Donald Woods’s (1978) book, addresses this issue: “Although the social hierarchy within the church was a white/black hierarchy, the sharing of responsibility for church affairs was exclusively white” (p. 96). These problems within the black churches during this time caused young blacks to question the status quo and begin to look for a Christ that had a voice and theology that would lead to liberation for black people. There was a need for a God who could understand, relate to, and fight for the oppressed blacks in South Africa—a God who was in essence “black,” not just in the sense of ethnicity, but could relate to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic situations of those who were oppressed under the white man’s rule.

Shannen Hill (2015), in her book Biko’s Ghost: The Iconography of Black Consciousness, states, “Black theology has been called ‘an important aspect of black consciousness,’ and indeed it is, be it equally so is BC vital to black theology” (p. 42). Hill states that in 1971, Biko argued that it was ‘the duty…of all black priests and ministers of religion to save Christianity’ and Christians from the gross misrepresentation of Africa and Africans in the hands of colonial clergy” (p. 42). Hill further states that Biko, in an interview, made a profound statement “that we as blacks cannot forget the fact that Christianity in Africa is tied up with the entire colonial process. This meant that Christians came here with a form of culture which they called Christian but which in effect was Western, and which expressed itself as an imperial culture as far as Africa was concerned” (p. 96).

Furthermore, according to Hill (2015), Biko explains in the same interview the importance of black theology, specifically its role in black consciousness as a means to empower blacks and improve their self-image or self-identity. He states:

When an African became Christian, as a rule he or she was expected to drop traditional garb and dress like a Westerner…same with many customs dear to blacks…The question they ask is whether the necessary decolonization of Africa also requires the de-Christianization of Africa. The most positive facet of this questioning is the development of ‘black’ theology in the context of black consciousness. For black theology does not challenge Christianity itself but its Western package, in order to discover what the Christian faith means for our continent. (pp. 96–97)

Daniel Magaziner (2010), in his book The Law and the Prophets, argues that “Black theology was about politics, but it was not just about a nation; it was about an approach to God, but it was not only about religion…[although one can only argue that]. Black theology was deeply Christian because its adherents were but even more so because they consciously turned to Christ’s revelation in scripture to plot their own way forward” (p. 121). Different scholars took note of Biko’s stark view of the racial differences inherent in Christian teachings and practices in South Africa.

Clearly, Biko defined two types of Christianity at work: black and white. Dwight Hopkins, in Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko and Black Consciousness, describes and compares Biko’s contention with them by stating that the problem with black churches was that they “uncritically swallowed the racist doctrines of white Christian missionaries. In particular, black churches embraced a false notion of sin as primarily drinking, smoking, stealing, etc.…by directing attention…to these petty sins” (Hopkins 1989).

Other researchers explained that “white theology prevented them [black Christians] from comprehending a larger perspective on sin…a system of evil, a structural matrix in which whites lorded themselves above the black majority” (Pityana 1991, p. 195). They further expounded that black Christians’ failure to see the trickery made them susceptible and supportive of the apartheid system. Biko’s willingness to fight against this evil system at any cost was apparent in a letter to Bishop David Russell in 1974, published in The Essential Steve Biko. In this letter, Biko explained that his willingness to fight was in effect being obedient to God.

Biko stated:

It is a call to men of conscience to offer themselves and sometimes their lives for the eradication of an evil. To a revolutionary, state evil is a major evil, for out of it flow countless other subsidiary evils that engulf the lives of both the oppressors and the oppressed. The revolutionary sees his task all too often as liberator not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor…The revolutionary seeks to restore faith in life amongst all citizens of his country, to remove imaginary fears and to heighten concern for the plight of the people. (As cited in Malan 1997, p. 8)

Little did Biko know that he was predicting his own imminent fate.

As a revolutionary eradicating state evil, Biko died a very cold and cruel death on September 12, 1977. Du Toit and Maluleke (2008), in The Legacy of Stephen Bantu Biko: Theological Challenges, describes it this way: “The white policemen, in whose custody Steve was during his last days, were vicious and cruel—he was battered, kept isolated and for more than three weeks. In that state, he was thrown onto the cold floor of a Land Rover and driven for eleven hours, only to be dumped and left for several hours on a cell floor in Pretoria” (p. 61).

Bishop Tutu gives a chilling account as well in The Steve Biko Memorial Lecture: 2000–2008:

They tortured and beat Steve up in jail and heartlessly killed him. You will recall that he was driven, comatose, from Port Elizabeth, naked in the back of a Land Rover all the way to Pretoria, where he was shackled to a grate and left to expire, sitting in his urine. He was left to die a death that Mr. Jimmy Kruger later said had left him cold. (As cited in Steve Biko Foundation 2009, p. 94)

So interesting that like Jesus was executed by Rome for teaching a new way of life and advocating for the oppressed, Biko would be executed by the state for promoting a new way of thinking and believing in God amongst oppressed blacks in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Though they killed the man, they couldn’t kill the idea, not realizing it truly transcended time and space, literally like trying to shoot and kill a ghost. He embodied the Christian message, in thought and life, becoming “a way of life” in helping to liberate blacks and whites from the darkness and evil pervasive in a colonial Christianity that promoted and helped establish a wicked and demonic apartheid state system. I agree with Kortright Davis (1983), who writes in Foretastes of Emancipation in Third World Religion, “If Steve Biko’s name goes down in Black history as the Apostle of Black Consciousness, then there should be little quarrel with such an epithet—for it can truly be said that he paid the supreme price of proclaiming the Gospel of Black Consciousness even unto death” (p. 13).

Methodology

The research method used is qualitative, descriptive, and analytical; and the bulk of the data for the study was sourced from libraries in the Washington, DC, area, such as the Library of Congress and the Howard University Library System, which connects to universities and colleges within the DC Consortium of Universities, as well as universities and documentation centers in South Africa, such as the Steve Biko Foundation. These methods were selected because the study surrounds the significant historical events of apartheid, anti-apartheid resistance, and Biko’s life and death from 1946 to 1977, which requires reviewing and analyzing literature and life accounts from that time span.

The study uses two types of sources—primary and secondary sources. Primary sources consist mainly of speeches, letters, and interviews given by Biko and articles that he wrote, many of which are collected in his book I Write What I Like. Similar materials by Biko are also found in the collections of Gail Gerhart housed at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Steve Biko Foundation.

Secondary sources for this study consist of texts, journal articles, biographies, and essays written by scholars and persons who were related to and closely associated with Biko in his fight against apartheid, as well as materials such as films, videos, pamphlets, and lectures. Examples of these secondary texts include Donald Woods’s (1978) Biko, Basil Moore’s (1973) Black Theology, Mamphela Ramphele’s (2013) A Passion for Freedom, Barney Pityana’s (1991) Bounds of Possibility, Daniel Magaziner’s (2010) The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, James Cone’s (1969) Black Theology and Black Power, Dwight Hopkins’s (1989) Black Theology USA and South Africa: Politics, Culture, and Liberation.

Library research was conducted at the Library of Congress, including their online databases, and the Howard University Library System and DC area consortium. Also, during a short visit to South Africa in December 2017, I was able to visit and contact universities in South Africa for other resources and materials to assist with the research.

This study employs a close reading of primary sources and a content analysis approach in order to examine, describe, and analyze significant aspects of Biko’s thought and practice of black consciousness with a specific focus on his brand of black theology and critique of dominant white Christianity. Secondary sources are drawn upon for additional scholarly perspectives and analyses as well as for biographical and other contextual information, descriptions, and analyses and a timeline of major events leading up to his early death.

Organization of the Study

Chapter 1 consists of a general introduction, giving an overview of the dissertation and summarizing the problem, the aims and objectives, theoretical framework, definition of terms, literature review, and methodology. Chapter 2 attempts to answer the question “What is Stephen Biko’s Christian background?” This chapter provides a brief biography of Biko’s life, faith, education, and church affiliations, all of which helped shape his radical message of black consciousness. Chapter 3 gives an account of Biko’s gospel message of black consciousness, its origin and development in South Africa, and the Christian social ethics that emerged and evolved. Chapter 4 focuses on his message, his critique of white liberal Christianity, as well as his subsequent mission and charge to create a black student organization and birth the Black Consciousness Movement.

Chapter 5 explores Biko’s message to blacks who bought into the multiracial philosophy of white liberals and their argument against black consciousness as separatist, racist, and promoter of segregation. Chapter 6 analyzes his message to oppressed blacks in helping them to seek a true humanity free of fear, inferiority, and oppression. Chapter 7 focuses on Biko’s message to the white minority government oppressing the black majority through apartheid. Chapter 8 examines Biko’s execution in comparison to Jesus’s and his legacy as well as various movements, efforts, programs, and centers that carry on his work and legacy. Chapter 9 is the conclusion, which provides the aim of the dissertation, a comparative analysis of the theoretical frameworks used, and a summation of all the chapters.

Abbreviations

ANC— African National Congress

AZAPO— Azanian People’s Organization

BC— Black Consciousness

BCM— Black Consciousness Movement

BCP— Black Community Programmes

BPC— Black Peoples Convention

BT— Black Theology

CRC— Coloured Representative Council

DRC— Dutch Reformed Churches

EFF— Economic Freedom Fighters

Nats— National Party

NP— National Party

NUSAS— National Union of South African Students

PAC— Pan Africanist Congress

POQO— Armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress

SASO— South African Students’ Organization

SRC— Student Representative Council

UCM— University Christian Movement

UDF— United Democratic Front

UNNE— University of Natal Non-European

UP— United Party