When I think about Steve Biko, I am reminded of the profound lessons of the struggle for freedom by a thinker, struggle icon, philosopher and realist who was brutally murdered 46 years ago. I am reminded of the Biko family. I am reminded of the Ginsberg community shared Bantu Biko with South Africa, the African community and the world. I am reminded of Nelson Mandela University, which has cemented its commitment through the annual Steve Biko Memorial Lectures to honour, celebrate and remind us of the foundations upon which our freedom is constructed.
On September 12 1977, the day Biko took his last breath, I dropped everything I was doing in Lesotho and rushed back to South Africa, where Biko shared both his pain and great hope. Later, with more than 20,000 mourners, Archbishop Desmond Tutu presided over his funeral. At the time, I was a second-year student majoring in statistics and economics at the National University of Lesotho. Little did I know that 46 years later I would carry the burden of memory of that monumental day, one that changed our struggle trajectory and raised immense hope. Regrettably, 46 years on, this moment of insatiable hope in despair has metamorphosed into the unbearable disappointment of morbid interregnum.
The dying refuses to die and the to-be-born does very little to leave its mother’s womb. Worse, society is anxious about what the birth might deliver — a stillborn or a moron. The big question is whether we are going to implode as a nation. I continue to echo that we are if we insist on fiddling while Rome burns. Through the theme “Activating the agency of the people to free the land, mind and the spirit”, we seek to capture our moment of despair that, 46 years ago, mobilised the swathe of mourners who followed the ox-wagon that carried Biko's remains to his resting place. The address by Archbishop Tutu, specifically his elevation of Biko to a Jesus-like character, irked the apartheid regime. So offended was it that it returned the favour by elevating the man of the cloth to enemy of the state.
Land is the sum total of life as a geometric feature of Earth and giver of life. Land cannot be seen outside ownership of livestock and beasts of burden with which we plough, plant and engage the seasons of our time in productive work. We are tied to land for meaning. It is where the umbilical cord is interred after birth and where the final remains are deposited when we take our last breath. In a Setswana idiom, land is tied to cattle. It says, Ka e tlhoka (kgomo) ka tlhoka boroko, ka nna le yone ka nna ka tlhoka boroko (If you own cattle, you will lose sleep, you do not own cattle, you will lose sleep over that as well). It is this responsibility that life demands from us to fulfil our life's mission. It is an endeavour that, by all counts, Biko fulfilled with excellence in the mere three decades of his life. He remains a towering figure in our heads and hearts. He brought the chemistry of theory, practice, empathy and revolutionary spirit with such political dexterity that advancing the cause and course of the struggle became second nature, despite all the dangers it entailed.
On the birth of black consciousness, he ably advanced the idea of cultural and political revival as an important first step for oppressed people to liberate themselves. He emphasised the cultural depth of black consciousness in that it forces black people to ask themselves, 'Who am I? Who are we?'
Zylstra interviewed Biko three months before he was murdered by apartheid police. The nuggets of the interview provide important pointers towards understanding the biggest precipice of our time: black consciousness; black consciousness and Christianity; the Black People's Convention; the homelands; communism; South Africa and the US; black communalism; the role of foreigners; the future of America; 10 Dr Beyers Naudé; and the human bond. Biko cut through the subjects with incredible clarity of mind. Delivering on the complexity and pathways to addressing these massive challenges became his oyster.
On the birth of black consciousness, he ably advanced the idea of cultural and political revival as an important first step for oppressed people to liberate themselves. He emphasised the cultural depth of black consciousness in that it forces black people to ask themselves, "Who am I? Who are we?”. This is especially so in the context of the demise of the invincibility of white people. When the façade of whiteness fades, the nakedness of their brutality and acquiescence is revealed — their birth nakedness demonstrates that “people are people”, therefore, let us be people.
On black consciousness and Christianity, Biko said regarding our fundamental orientation in life, it was troubling. Christianity for most black people is a formal matter. In that respect, Christianity, as the bedrock of colonialism, dispossession and injustice, meant natives had to abandon cultural practices, including abandoning dress codes in favour of the coloniser’s dress, food and means of livelihood. This reminds me of how King Moshoeshoe, founder of the Basotho nation, brought in French missionaries to introduce education and military innovation. But when the missionaries wanted to abolish polygamy, which would have forced him to divorce his wives, he refused to be a convert. He then asked a pertinent question about his responsibility over the covenant he had with his wives. Biko, as a Calvinist, navigated this with excellent dexterity, especially deploying Beyers Naudé’s contradictions as he traversed this transformational journey of apartheid.
On the Black People’s Convention, Biko aimed to connect black aspirations with action by intellectuals, but was mindful of the propensity of intellectuals to be manipulated by the dominant white system.
Regarding homelands, Biko concluded this matter was a mixed bag of sympathy for people and dilution and division of the struggle. He affirmed that the latter was in the hands of the colonising agent and concluded this to be a betrayal of the struggle. To this end, he was particularly worried about Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi's stance. He said, “Some blacks support the government policy of separate development in the homelands for the sake of peace, but not as a movement. Here we will have to look carefully into the kind of support that Gatsha Buthelezi gets. He has a tribal following among the Zulus. He has managed to combine many elements as a traditional chief in a nonurban setting. For a long time he opposed apartheid, but today he is the governmentally paid leader of the Zulus. In this way he managed to gain a following. We oppose Gatsha. He dilutes the cause by operating on a government platform.” Shenge left this world on September 9 and was buried on Saturday after a long and colourful political career.
On communism, Biko said as a banned concept it was not possible to administer in practice because it confronted strategic options such as conscious choice and operating within the law.
On South Africa and the US, he asserted that the former was a pawn in the politics of pragmatism and in the game of power between the latter and Russia. The US is waking to the reality that it is losing power, with Russia ascending in postcolonial Africa.
On black communalism, Biko said in contradistinction to capitalism vs communism South Africa had to seek what best suited it. To this end, while the details of an alternative are not clear, the true north is the search for a just system and black communalism captures this ideal.
On the future, he saw it as embedded in escalating hostilities. This because Afrikaners cornered themselves by hoarding power. If they backtrack from that position, they will lose credibility with their constituencies.
On the role of foreigners, Biko contended that though the role of individuals abroad was limited, they had the privilege of analysis and insights that could influence, among others, policies in South Africa.
On the future of the US, he said it could support the struggle as a legitimate instrument for universal human rights or it would continue to lose ground to Russia.
On Beyers Naudé, Biko said though he might be seen as a turncoat, there was a remarkable consistency in the way he changed — he listened to the scriptures and those influenced his propensity to change. So he was worth listening to, Biko concluded.
Finally, on the human bond, he said it was about identifying and unifying on elements of struggle.
In that powerful interview three months before he was brutally murdered, he provided a laboratory of 11 pointed issues that vex us today. Biko the thinker was very much aware of the oppressors' weaknesses and recognised the limitations of arrogant ignorance of oppression. This included their vulnerabilities. He left police minister Jimmy Kruger paralysed regarding confrontation and violence. He agitated for confrontation and saw no violence therein.
Today, we are in that space where we must confront our demons in relation to a lack of system design and paucity of design thinking, which are largely responsible for corruption, bribery, poor service delivery and unemployment. To that end, we must anchor our discourse in what our ancestors bestowed upon us in words that reflect experience of practice. I interpret Biko’s life of struggle through the prism and vantage point of the high mountains and generalise his principles in the light of the condensed views he highlighted in his time with Zylstra.
I asked myself several questions on why I was invited to deliver this lecture. In my search I found a strange correlation and, left with no clarity, committed a cardinal statistical sin of turning one fact of correlation into causality. Having done so, I suggested to myself some answers to what could possibly anchor Biko’s thoughts in the interview with Zylstra. One is that Archbishop Tutu was at the National University of Lesotho when I was a student there. I would like to interpret Biko’s life of struggle through the prism and vantage point of the high mountains and generalise his principles in light of his condensed views with Zylstra. As a Mosotho, I tried to dig deep into the language, coming up with crucial nuggets that may serve as points of departure and generalisation to help me interpret the legacy of struggle through Biko's eyes.
In his life of struggle, he gathered instructions from a principle in the Sesotho language: Moro khotla ha o okoloe mafura (the fat floating on broth cannot be skimmed off, it must be drunk as hot as it is). Biko stuck to this principle but was a pragmatist who saw in Beyers Naudé a person whose path of change was intriguing in its consistent inconsistency. To this end, Biko could have been drawing from Sesotho, which says one who offends or talks out of turn in court cannot be persecuted because he enjoys the protection of the court. Or Moa khotla ha a tsekisoe, after all, letlaila le tlailela Morena, which means any discordance in song is welcome when it favours the king's ears — that is, our intentions must be intentional.
On the question of the system. Biko was clear that it could not be capitalism or communism, but African communalism, the most appealing. We have to seek it out in practice and theory, and on the basis of such, advise our economic system accordingly. In this regard, being your brother’s keeper is an essential and core principle. The Sesotho idiom captures the principle.
We cannot exhaust the qualities of Biko as an architect of the Black Conscious Movement, a Christian of Calvinist orientation and a humanist and humanitarian. To sum up all these virtues, I found the book he read, the Bible, quite revealing: Numbers 23:19 summarises his qualities aptly: “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?” Biko was not prone to lying, living like a candle in the wind or following the herd. He followed the truthfulness of being human. To this end he always ensured he was continuously human. He did not lie, except by agreement with Jones on something that was revealed during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission — on August 18 1977 they agreed on what to do should they be caught. They were, and both stuck to the agreement — they would never betray the cause of the struggle. He did not speak and not act.
In an article in The Independent, Cooper said Biko was the spark that ignited our open resistance to physical, mental, social and economic subjugation on the southern tip of the African continent. We have yet to fulfil Biko's mission by deepening and safeguarding our democratic gains; building the necessary bridges in a sea of tumultuous contestation, divisive rhetoric and intolerance; consciously escaping the marks of our origin, our historic limitations, rising above ethnicity and ideology; and finally, working together to restore our common humanity while building a country that works and forging a nation of which all of us can be proud.
The 2023 memorial lecture's theme was grounded in this Setswana idiom, “If you do not own cattle you lose sleep and if you own them, there too you lose sleep”. As it is true for cattle, it is true for freedom. When you do not have freedom, you lose sleep; equally, when you have freedom, you lose sleep. The question freedom asks of us is how diligent or reckless we are with it. For Biko to have sacrificed his youth, for us to be who we are today, 46 years on, we ought to hold our heads in shame. There is no excuse for us to be where we are. Some apologists for our failure argue that apartheid catered for few. That might be true, but in the knowledge that the struggle was about catering for more, but failed to do so, is inexcusable. It reflects absence of design thinking and system design.
These bastions of disadvantage are now man-made factories churning out the deplorable situation we are in today. They have become an irritant to our newfound freedom that funnelled only a few to hold the crumbs at the master's table.
Biko talks of African communalism being essential. Ours is to develop this communalism that anchored our struggle. Our failures are a sign that we did not follow through on Biko's 11 core principles, key among them being interrogating the notion of African communalism. Instead, our approach as a country today reflects a deformed architecture. It suggests the development model we adopted continues to produce and reproduce designs made for the few, in full knowledge that we are many, many more. We walked into that architecture with our eyes wide open and defined the "more people” as surplus, thus relegating them to oceans of poverty, leaving them to swim in sewage daily and contend with poor education and unemployment.
These bastions of disadvantage are now man-made factories churning out the deplorable situation we are in today. They have become an irritant to our newfound freedom that funnelled only a few to hold the crumbs at the master's table. We have refrained from talking the language of the "many”, a challenge of the struggle. Those who attended Biko's funeral must continue to define what freedom means, which must be freedom for all. The tools we deploy must therefore change so all constraints can be removed. It cannot be that for almost three decades we are given reason after reason we cannot afford free higher education.
Fifteen years ago, at the ninth memorial lecture, then finance minister Trevor Manuel concluded: “This moment could define our collective future. Let us utilise it for a national catharsis. Let us work together as advised by Unger, who writes, ‘Social solidarity must rest (instead) on the sole secure basis it can have direct responsibility of people for one another. Such responsibility can be realised through the principle that every able-bodied adult holds a position within a caring economy — the part of the economy in which people care for one another — as well as within the production system.’ To dare any less would be to abandon the vision of leaders in the mould of Bantu Steve Biko.”
In October 2011 I led the national census in which residents of Silvertown, Kwazakhele, in the Eastern Cape, were not going to participate. They raised service delivery as a concern and made three demands that are as relevant today, except conditions have deteriorated further: “Bring our councillor back. Get us corrugated iron to fix our homes. Fix our roads.” I responded to them with the usual bureaucratic nonsense that my responsibility was confined to counting and not delivering on demands. They retorted that they had previously seen me with President Nelson Mandela and that I must possess power because their attempts to be seen and heard by decisionmakers had been futile. I realised that my responsibility was not only confined to being a statistician-general, but also that of a councillor or municipal manager. Faced with this dilemma, I knew I had to give a response that would ensure the bureaucracy was seamless and delivered to citizens. This meant holding other bureaucrats to account through the data and systems of evidence. I convinced the residents to allow me to count them, which would ensure I could deliver results and contribute to getting their councillor back. Twelve months later, in October 2012, I was back in Silvertown with results that aggregated their collective voice of misery. They compelled the Silvertown councillor, mayor of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan and premier of the province, to examine the searing power of evidence. This is not how public policy should be directed. It cannot pit a statistician-general against the system unless in extreme cases such as Silvertown. At the heart of public policy is design thinking and system design within which evidence co-locates. This is the type of space in which Biko led. But South Africa as we now know it has become a place where Silvertown is witnessed everywhere.
I concluded by affirming the recent statement of the Interfaith Forum of South Africa (Tifsa). It articulated deep concern about the social and moral crisis in our country. It concluded by stating that “the solutions to our challenges lie with the citizens of this country. South Africa is our nation, our responsibility. As communities we have what it takes within us to work together to reconfigure the trajectory of our nation. Let us come together to craft the pathway from a divided and racially and ethnically polarised past to one South African for a dignified and secured living! This is the South Africa we want; this is the South Africa we pray for!”
This and many initiatives in this country should keep the spirit of Biko alive. Again, the book of Numbers 23:19 summarises his qualities aptly: “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?”
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at the University of the Witwatersrand and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa.
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