By Catherine Murombedzi

I write what I like
By Steve Biko
Published by Picador Africa (2004).
40th Anniversary Edition 2017
ISBN 978-1-77010-510-2
eISBN 9781770105119

I WRITE WHAT I LIKE is a series of articles written by Steve Biko — the famous justice activist who died at the age of 30.
He wrote the articles from 1969 to 1973.
Born on December 18 1946, he died from brain damage while in detention, naked and shackled in chains on September 12 1977.
Today, Biko is one of Africa’s heroes.
As a medical student, he helped found a black student movement in 1969 — South African Students Organisation (SASO) — thereby awakening black consciousness.
Today, the world has an opportunity to reflect on the positive influence on the lives of the oppressed through Biko’s writings.
With the articles presented at university fora, in student newsletters, journals, columns in newspapers and through interviews, writing under the pseudonym ‘Frank Talk’, Biko was banned from writing, speaking in public and travelling in 1973.
He was expelled from university and took to community development work.
After expulsion, he studied law through correspondence with the University of South Africa (UNISA).
Biko wrote that as long as blacks suffer from inferiority complex — a result of 300 years of oppression, denigration and derision — they will be useless as co-architects of a normal society where man is nothing else but man for his own sake.
With such mentality, blacks have to learn to assert themselves through grassroots build-up to claim their rightful place.
University students, through the National Union of Students in South Africa (NUSAS), had a voice in student issues.
With whites in universities totalling
27 000 and blacks at 3 000, Biko did not see black opinion being fairly represented.
Issues negatively impacting black students would never be driven by the privileged white students.
Biko felt the urge to have blacks speak for themselves, hence the founding of South African Students Organisation (SASO) in December 1968, with Biko elected president in July 1969.
He cleverly presented the needs of SASO as a means to regroup and be more effective in striving towards the common ultimate aim of NUSAS.
Biko had at one time been NUSAS chairman of their local university, so his founding of SASO could never be seen as a ruse by one failing to ‘make the grade’ in NUSAS.
He remained friendly to NUSAS, defended SASO as non-racial, speaking tough and aggressively. His language remained statesmanlike when addressing both students and representative council presidents.
The sister universities were: University of the Western Cape for coloureds; University College of Zululand for Zulus; University College of the North for Sothos; the University College of Durban for Indians; while blacks went to Fort Hare University.
Biko had been admitted at the University of Natal — black section for medical studies.
In July 1969, he addressed all students councils of all colour, driving the point that as students, they were one.
He stressed that student ranks must not show division since they were now a power to reckon with.
Said Biko: “In a racially sensitive country as students we ought to be wary not to be divided on racial lines.
SASO recognises NUSAS and we are not a competitor.”
He rejected the basis of integration set by the white society since the terms favoured the whites, saying: “Does this mean I am against integration?
If by integration you understand a breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assimilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and code of behaviours set up and maintained by whites, then YES I am against it.
I am against the superior-inferior white-black stratification that makes the white a perpetual teacher and the black a perpetual pupil (and a poor one at that).
I am against the fact that a settler-minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people.
If on the other hand by integration you mean there shall be free participation by all members of a society, catering for the full expression of the self in a freely changing society as determined by the will of the people, then I am with you.”
One cannot ignore that the culture shared by the majority in any given society must ultimately determine the broad direction taken by the joint culture of that society.
This need not cramp the style of those who feel differently but on the whole, a country in Africa, in which the majority of the people are African, must inevitably exhibit African values and truly be African in style.
NUSAS’ credentials as a sincere and committed aspirant for change were found wanting.
The whiteman was, therefore, not in any way prepared to upset the status quo.
For example, the Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB), a culturally inclined organisation operating in predominantly Afrikaans speaking universities stressed on Calvinism and Afrikanerdom as criteria for membership. It held superiority of their culture as a right.
Biko condemned such thinking.
He underlined that solving issues affecting the blacks would not be a priority to the whites who enjoyed privileges.
This brings me to the current standing of Zimbabwe.
As a country, we have to trade with the global village and have normal relationships.
However, the mainstream opposition, through the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), still runs to Uncle Tom begging him to tighten the bolts on Zimbabwe through ZDERAA.
I digress.
Biko said: “The blackman has to understand that blackness is not just a colour, but an issue of mentality.”
The mind thus requires decolonisation.
Said Biko: “It will not sound anachronistic to anybody genuinely interested in real integration to learn that blacks are asserting themselves in a society where they are being treated as perpetual under-16s.
One does not need to plan for or actively encourage real integration.
Once the various groups within a given community have asserted themselves to the point that mutual respect has to be shown, then you have the ingredients for a true and meaningful integration.”
Biko’s writings awaken the blackman to the injustices of the apartheid system.
While Afrikaans was forced as the medium of instruction in schools, whites in South Africa were not required to learn the vernacular languages.
The oppressive system did not spare any blacks.
No wonder the coincidence of Biko’s several arrests, Nelson Mandela and other black leaders already in prison then awakened the black mind to apartheid evils with students in Soweto refusing to be gagged.
The Soweto uprising saw the butchering of innocent students by the police in broad daylight.
Black consciousness was indeed sweeping through.
Decolonisation of the mind remains vital.
Apartheid trapped the blackman in a prison of the mind.
Biko left behind a widow Nontsikelelo and two minor children.
Biko’s thinking continues to define national dialogue the world over.
“May his thinking continue to be part of the national dialogue as we continue to define ourselves,” Nkosinathi, Steve Biko’s son wrote on I write what I like’s 40th Anniversary edition addendum.