Biko: A Biography. Xolela Mangcu
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were, to a degree, culturally disenfranchised at home.”[12]
As shall become apparent in Chapter 5, the reframing of Christianity through Black Theology was one of the signal achievements of the Black Consciousness movement.
Macqueen takes the liberty of saying that Biko was describing his personal experience when he wrote that “no wonder the African child learns to hate his heritage in his days at school. So negative is the image presented to him that he tends to find solace only in close identification with white society.”[13] However, I shall stop short of making Biko “a subjective projection of the mind of the biographer”.[14] It is indeed the temptation of many psychobiographers to seek to explain leadership in terms of some crisis that the individual must have undergone, either within the family or in the community. In my research, I never once found evidence that somehow Steve had a troubled youth, therefore explaining his leadership. As I shall argue in Chapter 5, Steve’s writings about religion may be as much of a window into his identity as it may be an attempt to reinterpret Christianity in the South African context.
The African response to European modernity has historically been multiple and multi-vocal, characterised by all manner of shifting alliances. Of relevance here is the social fissure between the Red People, those Noni Jabavu called the Ochre People[15] – the amaqaba; and those who accepted the civilising ways of European modernity – the amakholwa. Even on this point it is important to avoid watertight opposites. There were often alliances between the amaqaba and amakholwa. Jabavu writes: “I belong to two worlds with two loyalties; South Africa where I was born, and England where I was educated. When I received a cable sent by my father, I flew back to South Africa to be among my Bantu people, leaving my English husband in London.” She later lived in East Africa, and describes her book as “a personal account of an individual African’s experiences between East and South Africa in their contact with Westernization”.[16]
Sometimes the conservative elite joined forces with traditionalists for political reasons, as happened when John Dube – when challenged by a younger ANC leadership in 1917 – decided to join forces with the Zulu royalty. Indeed, Solomon ka Dinizulu had a close if ambiguous relationship with both Dube and Seme. One of the outcomes of the relationship between the educated elite and the Zulu royalty was the formation of the Inkatha Movement in 1924. The more radical elite joined up with the peasants against the colonial system, as happened in the case of the Bambatha Rebellion against the imposition of the poll tax.
Earlier in history, elders who did not entirely accept Western “civilisation” did not necessarily prevent their children from adopting Christianity or obtaining an education. Even as he remained sceptical, Tiyo Soga’s father, Jotelo Soga, allowed his son to be taken in by the missionaries to be taught at Lovedale College. The same is true of amaNtinde chief Kote Tshatshu, who allowed his son, Dyani, to be trained by missionaries at Bethelsdorp under the tutelage of James Read and Johannes van der Kemp (known to the Xhosa as Nyengane).[17] Donovan Williams is thus mistaken in saying that Tiyo Soga was “the first black missionary among Africans”.[18] Dyani was taken in by Read and Van der Kemp when he was still a ten-year-old boy in 1804. He briefly returned to his father but in 1810 went back to the mission to become a full-time missionary.
According to Levine, “by serving the mission, Tzatzoe operates from within the ambit of colonial society, and preaches in part as its representative. He makes the Word available. When he claims its power he does so on behalf of the mission, and not for himself, as individuals like Makana appear to do.”[19]
Dyani Tshatshu retained relationships with the Xhosa chiefs, who were angry at him for collaborating with the white church. He was at once a collaborator and an ally. Thus, unlike the earlier Soga who had refused to read to Maqoma the colonial letters the chief had acquired, Tshatshu maintained good relations with the chiefs. He even participated in the great Xhosa uprising of 1834-1835 – known as the Sixth Frontier War. He is reported to have said in response to colonial provocation, which included the shooting of Maqoma’s brother Xoxo: “Every Xhosa who saw Xo-Xo’s wound went back to his hut, took his assegai and shield; and said it is better that we die than to be treated thus . . . life is no use if they shoot our chiefs.”[20]
His earlier deference to Europeans notwithstanding, the later Tiyo Soga, mission-educated himself, admonished those who created a gulf between the Christians and the “heathens”: “You Xhosas, Thembus and Fingos who have accepted the word of heaven should not be accused of lack of respect to those who deserve respect as chiefs or lack of honouring those who deserve honour.” Soga disapproved of the use of foreign words in Xhosa, and he warned against “the Xhosarising of foreign words – especially in relation to addressing chiefs . . . we would suggest that words like molo – ‘good morning’, rhoyindara – ‘goeie dag’, rhoyinani – ‘goeie nag’ . . . should be eliminated from our language.”[21]
My concern here is to trace in this history of the Eastern Cape encounter with European modernity the lineaments of Steve’s political and intellectual thought – the continuities and discontinuities with the leadership tradition that developed over time between the educated elite and the people, without falling into the romantic search for a pure African past that Fanon warns against. Mostert observes how both Ntsikana and Nxele embraced Christianity but sought, each in his different way, to reframe it to serve their people: “While both Nxele and Ntsikana looked westward to colonial society for their initial inspiration, each in his different way began serving the emergent Xhosa nationalism.”[22] Before I go further into Steve Biko’s intellectual heritage, I want to draw a connection between the struggles of the Eastern Cape frontier waged by Xhosa chiefs and earlier struggles that were waged by the Khoi and San people in the Northern Cape frontier in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Steve Biko’s political articulation of Black Consciousness is reminiscent of the solidarities forged by the Xhosa and the Khoisan in the 17th and 18th century Northern Cape frontier and the Xhosa on the 19th century Eastern Cape frontier – in short, between Africans and the diverse communities that go under the term “Coloured”. Black Consciousness sought to overcome all of these separate identities and construct a hybrid political identity that included Africans, Indians and Coloureds. The creation of this common identity was yet another important achievement of the movement. We shall see in Chapter 7 how Steve was opposed to the formation of the Black People’s Convention because there had not been enough consultation with the Coloured and Indian communities. Steve Biko’s writings and new philosophy of action in the 1970s distinguish him; according to Magaziner he was “this era’s most famous political thinker”.[23]
And so, even though this chapter is primarily about Biko’s inheritance from the Xhosa warriors, both coloniser and the colonised were building on past precedents of oppression and resistance. It was in the 18th century that the “commando system” of cattle raiding was created by the Dutch, and later developed with force and ferocity by the British on the Eastern Cape frontier in the 19th century. In other words, the Northern Cape frontier was the training ground for the perfection of a brutal system of domination. Equally, it was in the San resistance to colonial attacks that we see the beginnings of Maqoma’s “guerrilla warfare” – which would later be adopted by decolonisation movements in the 20th century, drawing of course from the experiences of other countries as well. The earlier history foregrounds the formation of