just a q...
is it relevant for us to be putting the black counsciousness movement in these times?
currently the government is tryna do away with racism, and movement like these is basically reverse racism, we are becoming the WHITE oppressors.
i can dig it if the emphasis of the movement is more culturally motivated and helpin black kids to understand where they are from, and what has made them, not the struggle that BIKO was on.
My take:
You should know that aparthied was not merely white people saying that we are not as human as them, sparking fights based on this at clubs and at work places (in which case the TRC would have been very useful as a bunch of conflict resolution experts who try to show us that we are all human). Apartheid was way more than this for it systematically oppressed black people for the benefit of white people. What Black consciousness says today is that JUSTICE is not reverse racism as you put it Moff G but it is putting the victim in the position (especially the materail one) that he would have been had he not been wronged, concepts in the law of contract and declict support this.
Our fathers and forefathers were oppressed and many of us in our country are greatly disadvantaged because of this, now the corollary to this is that somebody is in an advantage because of their forefathers' oppressor status. Understanding this greatly negates any concept of "reverse racism" unless your understanding of justice is getting some supposedly heartfelt apology. But as Andile drew an analogy I ask you, if I forced you out of your house and lived there for many years enjoying the comforts would you simply accept an apology and "reconcile"
while you still living on the streets?
Now we can go on and on about this but as Frantz Fanon alluded to this effect, the "intellectuals" forever restructure the demands of the people. Check the freedom charter and the 94 settlement.
What Black consiousness is saying is that the 94 settlement was at the expense of true liberation, that having some Black kids in universities and black Mp's and chancellors only makes black people sit on a false hope while the system of apartheid is still intact and therofore stands to forever benefit white people. We are thereofore against concepts of reconciliation and the rainbow nation for they make black people complacent in their oppression as if their current state of things is natural.
I can't help but think that whenever someone suggests "get past the race issue" they are saying to me accept that black people live in Alexandra adjacent to a white sandton (with some black people though not wrong, who give legitimacy and a front to the world), that black people live in Diepsloot, that many of my friends never had relationships with their fathers who slaved in mines and got nothing at retirement as if all of this is natural, pardon the mellodarama but this depresses me and I reject any concept of reconciliation and a rainbow and therefore believe that an extension of Biko's ideas is highly relevent today without accusing anyone who thinks otherwise as being a coconut.
Now Ta Panic, though this is not the platform to discuss IsiDoda I believe some things about sona really need to be talked about. some of them are not part of the tradition per se but arise from them like a way of thinking I have noticed in my fellow dyaniz that amaXhosa have some monopoly over manhood and everyone else yinkwenkwe. This is saying that amaXhosa are superior which smells of tribalism.
Yo braz and sisters will write later....
