The question of why the poor who are always complaining about the ANC continue to vote for the organisation has always preoccupied my mind. I could never really comprehend how it is possible for multitudes of people who are being abused by the ruling party would vote it into power. I tried to rationalise it […]
Black Consciousness
Posted inEquality, Media
White writers writing black characters – a form of literary blackface?
White South African writers who create black characters are often challenged about the authenticity of their writing. If their main protagonist is black, this challenge intensifies, and if they write in the first person, it intensifies further. There is something particularly intimate about first-person narrative. It gets under the skin of the character in a […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Are we trapped in conversation?
With black consciousness thick in the air, old comrades smiling knowingly at each other, and images of the late Strini Moodley projected in front of us, those of us too young to be dynamic rebels against apartheid sensed a whiff of what it might have felt like to be at a secret activist meeting. The […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Should we boycott Andile Mngxitama?
By Kameel Premhid and Thorne Godinho “I’m robespierre (sic) I understand my fate … ” Andile Mngxitama, the controversial writer behind the New Frank Talk journal, recently tweeted this. This reference to the executed French revolutionary Maximilien de Robespierre followed the public outrage expressed by individuals when Mngxitama called on ”true Bikoists” to physically assault […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Why I no longer tell my brother to wear his pants properly
Saggy pants is a popular form of displaying rebellion to teenage respectability by young men who wear their trousers far down their waists, often times generously exposing their underwear. Saggy pants are mostly associated with black male masculinity, which has been highlighted by the imagery often associated with mainstream hip-hop culture. Of course today this […]
Posted inGeneral
Centre for Blackness
Exactly 100 years after Africans were dispossessed of their land and stripped of their identity and heritage, the ANC government has subsidised the opening of the new headquarters for blackness. This comes in the form of a legacy project worth more than R120 million to promote, protect and preserve the legacy of Black Consciousness visionary leader […]
Posted inNews/Politics
If whiteness can’t be unlearned then black oppression is permanent
Many arguments have risen out of Gillian Schutte’s “Dear White People” perhaps the most progressive provided by Jackie Shandu in “Black people, fight your own battles”. Shandu argues that because Schutte’s letter is addressed to white people, it ought to be dismantled and dissected primarily by the white community who it seeks to engage in […]
Posted inGeneral
Steve Biko joins the ANC
The ANC government deserves national applause for doing what it should have done a long time ago: honouring the legendary Black Consciousness visionary and icon, Steve Bantu Biko. Since 1994 the ANC has been accused of being myopic and self-serving in honouring men and women who have played a pivotal role in the struggle. In […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Liberating ourselves from unhelpful notions of struggle heroism
The theme for this year’s Heritage Month leaves me somewhat cold — even after carefully considering the major statements of the ministry of arts and culture in this regard. “Liberation heritage in honour of heroes and heroines of the liberation struggle”, that is the theme. Not that there is anything wrong with the idea of […]
Posted inGeneral
My consciousness is not up for discussion
It’s unofficially national Black Consciousness Month, the month when we commemorate the brutal and untimely death of Steve Biko on September 12 1977, and what an interesting month it has been thus far. Until Steve Biko’s “I write what I like” landed on my lap, I had been living in oblivion to how abnormal my […]
Posted inGeneral
Steve Biko is dead?
Someone recently said that when Steve Biko died 34 years ago, his philosophy of Black Consciousness died with him. They went on to charge that his inspiring and life-affirming psycho-political programme had been badly mangled by the Azanian People’s Organisation, which could not comprehend its essence beyond their obsession with the politics of skin colour. […]