frank talks – on liberation and death (8)

You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can’t care

anyway.

We believe that in our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, just

the people. And those people will have the same status before the law.

Biko in Chapter 18 – Our Strategy for Liberation outlines what’s needed for liberation. Unity amongst the oppressed. Unity amongst black organisations in the face of white domination. Inter-generational unity. Vanguard leadership. People’s power.

He explains how the system rules by physical violence and psychological fear. Change, he says, can only come about -

…as a result of a programme worked out by black people – and for black people to be able to work out a programme they needed to defeat the one main element in politics which was working against them: a psychological feeling of inferiority which was deliberately cultivated by the system. So equally, too, whites in order to be able to listen to blacks needed to defeat the one problem which they had, which was one of ’superiority’.

In response to whether he believes an egalitarian society means a socialist one, he says -

Yes, I think there is no running away from the fact that now in South Africa there is such an ill distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless. The whites have locked up within a small minority of themselves the greater proportion of the country’s wealth.

If we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie.

Our society will be run almost as of yesterday. So for meaningful change to appear there needs to be an attempt at reorganising the whole economic pattern and economic policies within this particular country.

He discards the creation of what he calls ‘artificial’ minorities and majorities in an egalitarian society -

We see a completely non-racial society. We don’t believe, for instance, in the so-called guarantees for minority rights, because guaranteeing minority rights implies the recognition of portions of the community on a race basis.

We believe that in our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, just the people. And those people will have the same status before the law. So in a sense it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.

The final chapter of the book On Death is particularly poignant in light of the fact that it recounts an interview with Biko some months before his final detention and own death/murder.

In it he posits the fear of death, an irrational fear, as a final barricade to personal liberation.

You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can’t care anyway. And your method of death can itself be a politicising thing. So you die in the riots. For a hell of a lot of them, in fact, there’s really nothing to lose – almost literally, given the kind of situations that they come from. So if you can overcome the personal fear of death, which is a highly irrational thing, you know, then you’re on your way.

He recounts his own experience of being interrogated by the security police in this context – how he really remained “unbothered” by threats of being killed, how he told his torturers this, how it bothered them more than it did him, how he told them he would use their “rough stuff” methods of interrogation as evidence against them; and that…

…if you guys want to do this your way, you have got to handcuff me and bind my feet together, so that I can’t respond. If you allow me to respond, I’m certainly going to respond. And I’m afraid you may have to kill me in the process even if it’s not your intention.

Links: On this day 12 September 1977: Steve Biko dies in custody and I Write What I Like