WE are now approaching the end of December.
Many think of the Roman festival of December 25 which was known as Saturnalia and is now called Christmas.
This is not the day Christ was born but the day Saturn (Rome), Kronos (Greek) or Mithra (Persia), the sun and agriculture deity of the pagans was worshipped.
The term Saturnalia was called orgia in Greek which meant secret worship.
Orgia would eventually give rise to the word orgy, testifying to the numerous sexual rituals that were performed annually during this weeklong festival.
Saturnalia would begin around December 18 and peak on December 25.
December 25 was called Sigillaria or terracotta seals and involved gift giving, merrymaking and other traits that continue to be ignorantly practiced by Christians today.
Because of the pagan origins of Christmas, and the fact that Christ existed when pagan Roman festivals like Saturnalia were being practiced but did not partake in them, I personally do not celebrate or think highly of Christmas in December.
Rather I remember December for the birth of a great revolutionary called Steve Bantu Biko who was truly born on the 18th of this month in 1946.
The life of this promising black leader was tragically taken by the police of the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1977.
Biko was only 30 years old and his assassination was brutal.
But few understand why this martyred hero was targeted for assassination.
This is because he was rooted out prematurely as he had in his hands the answer to black South Africa’s problems.
In 1977, the apartheid regime was getting more and more fragile, owing to black movements led by the likes of Steve Biko since the mid 1960’s.
In the words of Nelson Mandela; “They had to kill Steve Biko to prolong apartheid.”
Under the leadership of men like Mandela and Biko respectively, blacks of South Africa gained confidence and made notable strides against settler regime.
The settler government would identify key players in the black revolution which whites termed rebellion and would move to oust them by way of long-term imprisonment or assassination.
Mandela was imprisoned in 1962 because he had been caught with a car boot full of weapons after realising that a nonviolent approach against the settler regime was ineffective.
Mandela was a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and had won a great following among blacks.
At the time of his arrest he was organising to wage a liberation war from Mozambique.
So it is clear how whites used imprisonment of a key black leader to prolong their stay in government as Mandela was sentenced to life in prison and eventually served 27 years in incarceration.
Mandela was interrogated, tortured and rewired so much that when he was set free in 1990, he was by no means the same Mandela that had been on the verge of fighting the settler government, but was reformed and made acceptable to the same regime which imprisoned him.
We shall address this outcome of Mandela later as it was a prophecy or calculation that was foreseen by Biko.
During Mandela’s absence in the early 1960’s, blacks were void of a voice.
Though they were unsatisfied and angry, they had no platform to speak out and were losing the momentum and direction of the struggle.
In 1963, the situation worsened for blacks when an act allowing detention without trial was enacted and would eventually victimise upcoming black activists like Biko.
Steve Biko, along with his brother, had a history of black activism.
They suffered expulsion and arrest respectively because of this revolutionary activity.
The revolutionary spirit had stemmed from their parents who had named Biko ‘Bantu’ with the wish that he would preserve humanness (ubuntu /hunhu) with his existence.
In 1965 Biko enrolled in the nonwhite section of the University of Natal to study medicine.
He, along with some likeminded revolutionaries, began what would be called the Black Consciousness Movement.
This movement was taught through university groups such as the South African Students Organisation (SASO) which was founded by Biko in 1968 and the Black People’s Convention (BPC) which Biko also founded in 1972.
The Black Consciousness Movement would spread within a short period of time.
Biko described it as the political and cultural philosophy employed by blacks in South Africa in an effort to shake off mental oppression and to reinstate the essential humanity and pride of blackness.
Biko and his colleagues had realised that there was no participation of blacks in the articulation of their aspirations.
Even more disturbing was the fact that the few groups that were fighting for black rights were essentially white.
For instance, the apartheid government had rejected giving South African citizenship to blacks.
Instead, they gave blacks citizenship to their apportionment of South African land called Bantustan.
This went on until the time of Kruger in 1985 and Bantustan had black representatives who were made to seem like they were addressing issues on behalf of blacks.
Examples of these men were Mutelezi and Matanzima who worked under this platform which was set up by whites for blacks.
In reality, blacks were dispersed, and voiceless while living in intolerable conditions that were deliberately set up by the settler government.
Whites were not only main oppressors of blacks, but were also main participants in the opposition to that oppression.
Biko described this as an anomaly and firmly believed that any changes to come should be from a programme planned out by blacks, not whites.
The Movement began with identifying why blacks were at the bottom so as to try and reverse the conditions and replace them with others that ensure a more favourable outcome.
They found that blacks had a strong psychological ailment of inferiority complex which was engraved in them by the white domineering system they were born into.
Whites also had a psychological feeling of being superior to blacks.
White culture was also imposed and South Africa was portrayed as a European island in Africa.
Also, the education they were receiving was meant to serve and empower whites instead of blacks. For example the use of Afrikaans in schools and at work was a tool meant to entrench white supremacy.
Besides this, blacks had been told they were subhuman and uncivilised.
In this period, this notion was being passed by Euro centrists all around the globe.
But Biko had a motto, ‘black is beautiful’ and would encourage blacks to love themselves as they are. He would say; “No race possesses a monopoly of beauty, intelligence and force; and in the case of a war, there is room for victory for all sides.”
By 1968, the Black Consciousness Movement had won many followers.
Blacks began protesting against many injustices that were formerly overlooked.
They now had direction and a black platform to channel their efforts to actualise their aspirations.
Average blacks began to understand why it was important for them to participate in rebelling against a system which does not favour them.
The apartheid government took notice of the developments that were taking place in the black community and they labeled it radicalisation.
As the black university students were confronting the system and condemning oppression and the corrupt education system, Government responded with violence.
This further entrenched the same oppressive acts that were being protested against by blacks. Armored police with dogs and armored vehicles would attack unarmed blacks and this led to casualties and arrests.
Biko taught that all these measures were meant to scare off and calm down the black masses.
Regardless of these provocations, Biko insisted that it was not in the nature of blacks to fight in resolving conflict but to hold dialogue.
Thus he was leading a nonviolent campaign against whites.
He was confident that blacks were not inferior and with their numbers alone, they were inevitably going to rule South Africa.
It was this reality that whites feared, but blacks could foresee especially under the stewardship of Biko.