passion of purpose: Reflections on Bantu Biko Street

Though my purse is empty, I will carry it when I walk down Bantu Biko Street. He said my pride should emanate from within first.

I am not an art critic; my interest is not confined to the “object” of art. I am more interested in the question of “the subject” of art. If the work discussed elsewhere sheds light on the possibilities of production, then it becomes important to now discuss the subject of production. The subject of production is a being of the world; a particular world. A being is a product of an unconscious and complex interplay of the human psyche with historical forces such as politics, economics, ideology, religion, culture, tradition, knowledge, and so on. A being who is a “subject” of production is, however, not a mere product of external historical forces. The subject of production will consciously seek to stamp herself on the very forces of history through creative transformative work. She is not merely at the receiving end of historical forces. She seeks to influence the very operation of the forces.

But for her, politics in a narrow sense of party politics is not the only arena for historical change. She is engaged in creative transformative work influencing the course of history wherever she is. This engagement stem from a deep sense of purpose she has found and she now lives by. Purpose does not erase emotions of frustration, anger, sadness, and pessimism the subject sometimes experiences. She experiences a deep sense of frustration over the selfishness she witnesses, the suffering she sees, the cowardice that surrounds her, the exploitation she experiences and so on. Her frustration is, however, transmuted into a source of energy needed for the creative work of transformation and self renewal. It is only a deep sense of purpose that makes it possible for the subject to move from a feeling of frustration to a renewed sense of hope and power. Purpose turns the emotion of frustration or pessimism or even helplessness into a source of energy for the creative work of transformation and renewal.

Simphiwe Dana’s album, The One Love movement on Bantu Biko street is one of the few projects that explicitly links the subject’s sense of purpose to a creative transformative work. But what of purpose?

It’s purpose that gets me up in the morning.
It’s purpose that wakes me up
It’s purpose that gives me that thing (I wont give up)
It’s purpose when I climb my mountain
It’s purpose that I sometimes find myself in the mix

In trouble, the subject sometimes finds herself; for she refuses to be reduced to an object, a tool to be used, misused and abused. In trouble, the subject sometimes finds herself; for she refuses to be treated as a lack, a nothingness, an emptiness, a hollow to be filled by another claiming substance. In trouble, the subject sometimes finds herself, for she fights for her authenticity; her essential right to create in accordance with her convictions. In trouble, the subject sometimes find herself, for she refuses to prostitute her work, her message, her life-cause to some soulless market forces for the sake of popularity, higher sales and personal wealth. In trouble, the subject sometimes finds herself, for she challenges distorted claims made by power about her world, herself and her work. A sense of purpose will carry her still.

Purpose has shown me The Way…
It’s purpose when I am down and out

Though a sense of purpose enables vision, it does not necessarily suggest arrival. For the subject, once again, finds herself “down and out.” For, despite her own personal strength, she is forever confronted by negative forces in her world – external and internal forces that reduces a people to the level of objects; things to be used, controlled, dominated and discarded to die as things that have never lived for anything of significance. She feels the effects of these forces in the marrow of her bones, for her project is tied to a history and destiny of a people. The subject admits to a moment of suffering stemming from a sense of helplessness. She reflects on her experience and her past and that of a people whose life and history is tied to hers. She seeks answers:

We left poor
Leaving behind famine
Carrying tears years and years old
We ask why the Afrikan nation suffers
Why we suffer

In such times she cries before the divine – a presence of renewal:

Look you have forgotten us
The nation is dying

The subject is not destroyed by a sense of helplessness. Purpose constantly leads her to a presence of renewal. She cries her confusion and sense of helplessness; for answers are not easy to find:

You who is forever
Only you know why
You who stand forever
Only you know why
We are like this
Our homes are like this

Answers are not easy to find. But then answers, in the form of word statements will not suffice. It is a spirituality that is most urgent now. It is a frame of mind; a way of life; a commitment to a higher ideal; an awareness of the interconnectedness of the self to other selves and realities; a consciousness that one's choices in relation to the use of one’s resources such as one’s time, one’s talents, one’s money, and one’s energies has far reaching implications for a beautiful type of life aspired to. It is the depth of beauty engendered by a spirituality that matters now.

Drawing from musical traditions of Africa and its diaspora ; the ngoma, the blues and the jazz traditions, the subject will compose a song. A prayerful and beautiful song that will give hope to a people. Hope for a beautiful future. Hope for the dawn of a beautiful reality in the realms of contemporary politics, business, and social relations where a culture of decadence, of self service and of self indulgence has come to prevail.

A beautiful song will also become a source of hope for a beautiful mode of existence. For the historic black struggle was also a struggle against the ugliness of oppression. It was a struggle for a beauty that was denied expression, exploration and realisation. It was a struggle for a beautiful society. It was a struggle for a beautiful humanity. It was a struggle for the beautiful ones of Ayi Kwei Armah. A beautiful song will inspire a people to aspire to a truly beautiful life where their humanity is not determined externally by the material possessions they own but by the people they are.

The hope inspired by the artistic project of creation is not merely about the consolation of a troubled heart. It is a transformative spiritual project that seeks to open up spaces in the heart, in the mind and in the world for the revival of an authentic self and an affirming history. Solutions may still be found. Solutions must be found. A people should continue to look for the way.

May we always look for The Way.
In our thoughts and in our religious spaces.
It would do us good to look for The Way.
So go on.
Do not be afraid.
Cause it must be done.
Hurry up before the sun sets.

There is no room for resignation. Purpose is calling for agency, for authenticity, for thought, for reflection, for imagination, for hope, for unity, for prayer, for redemption, for action, for something. Purpose calls for urgency. It calls for a spirituality. It calls for the transformative work of renewal.

Purpose says forward. Forward…

The subject charges forward. Forward, in spite of obstacles. She creates a piece, a beautiful song that elevates a people’s experience and inspires their commitment. She creates a history. She will finally find herself, not as someone’s object, but as a subject in the making of a different and affirming reality.

Conversations with Biko

Conversations with Biko


"Conversations with Biko"
Creative Writing Competition
16 June - 30 September 2007
(The dateline has been extended to the end of September to allow contributors more time to refine their entries!!!)

The Steve Biko Foundation and Xarra Books
launch
the Biko 30:30 Youth Creative Writing Competition
On 12 September 2007, South Africa will witness the thirtieth anniversary of the murder of Steve Biko. The Steve Biko Foundation is organizing a series of commemorative events to mark the thirtieth anniversary of this leader who died at the youthful age of thirty years. Dubbed Biko 30:30, this occasion will examine the contemporary meaning of Biko in Africa and the Diaspora through a number of events from June to September 2007 which include:
· A conference entitled Consciousness, Agency & the African Development Agenda
· A series of music concerts
· Community festivals including visual, literary and performance arts
Biko made an important contribution to the freedom that many fought for, and which is enjoyed today by all South Africans. In his brief life, Bantu Stephen Biko raised the hopes of the people by cementing the foundations of the liberation of South Africa. Through his death he showed the world the brutality of the apartheid regime, and helped to bring about its ultimate downfall.
For a new generation of South Africans, born in freedom, it is necessary, not only as part of history but as part of our identity to engage with the ideals and consciousness of Biko.
The Steve Biko Foundation, in partnership with Xarra Books will start a wave of discussions about Biko through a national writing competition. We call for aspirant writers to submit a poem or a prose piece (short story, essay) to enter the competition.
Rules of the competition:
· The piece should be about the relevance and impact of Biko’s ideas today or as if the writer were in conversation with Biko.
· Poems should be no longer than three A4 page and prose not more than 10 pages (3000 words). Any pieces that are over the length indicated will be disqualified.
· The piece must be submitted in English.
· The competition is open to anyone from age 14 - 36 years old.
· The piece must be sent via email to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it">

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writingbiko@xarrabooks.com
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
by midnight on 30 September 2007. No late entries will be accepted.
· Every entry must have a REGISTERED NAME (not pseudonym/alias), AGE, CONTACT NUMBERS and EMAIL ADDRESS.
· The competition is open to young people of the African continent.
· The judges will select the top 10 writing pieces.
· A piece submitted for the competition may be used in any of the publications of the Steve Biko Foundation, or for the purposes of the 30:30 campaign, or for the Steve Biko archives. It will be taken that the writer accepts this as one of the conditions of the competition.
· The winning entries will be published in a Book with the working title “Biko Today - Conversations with Biko”. Copyright will belong to the Steve Biko Foundation. 10 established writers will also contribute creative writing to the same book.
· The winners will be invited to either of the 30:30 campaign events for readings and to the book launch.
· The judges’ decision will be final and no correspondence will be entered into with the entrants.


Through this series of commemorative activities, we are reminded that history shapes the future and we must look back in order to go forward.
A celebration of creative writing, freedom and the lives of those like Steve Biko.
Let your pen speak!
For more information check http://www.sbf.org.za/ or http://www.xarrabooks.com/

Yesterday’s heroes speak to today’s world

Simphiwe Dana wrote:

THERE had been fleeting references to Steve Bantu Biko while I was growing up, but nothing concrete.
I was born three years after his death. I was not one of the lucky ones who grew up with a politicised family member or teacher. It was not a place for a person with the kinds of ideals that Biko had. It was a place where the Bantu education system had worked.

When I moved to Jozi, my housemate knew where there was live poetry. The minute I stepped into that space, my life changed. Here, everything was music to me, like I had grown up knowing music to be.

And I was properly introduced to Biko for the first time. Not from a book but from the people who had been influenced by his teachings.

Some want to water down the brilliance of his mind by saying that he just read other African writers in the diaspora and was mouthing their words. For me it seemed that at some point in his life he came to the same conclusion before he was exposed to other writers. He was spot-on with his understanding of how our world should work.

Finding the little messages he left behind saved me. For me he is the embodiment of the modern African.

They say he worked hard and pushed his people to work hard. They say he went beyond words and implemented structures to help and empower his people. They say he would not allow anyone to look down on him or beat him up unless he was tied up.

They say he acted the fool at the end of the day to make people ease up and laugh their problems away even for a moment. They say he was a good listener and thus he was wise. He said life was not so important if it was not free. This is why he risked and lost his in his quest for freedom.

Who are we? What makes up our belief of who we are? Is it the truth or is there another truth we are not aware of? ­Today, most people do not seem to care as long as their bread-and-butter issues are taken care of.

Those who do will probably die lonely, poor and miserable. Everyone will be bored by their silly politics and not realise the effect that their ignorance has on our progress and respect from nations.

The difference between the times of Biko and our times is that people then rallied around a cause that was central to their survival. They had a common passion that united them, a dream that surpassed their selfish individual needs. The dream to be free one day. Today, people believe we are free and don’t need a cause to rally around.

So what is freedom? What state of mind is the acquisition of freedom supposed to result in and how do we achieve it? Is freedom only about a state of mind, of being?

Everyone wants to turn us into saints who forgave and embraced with open arms. Yet they read the stories daily of the violence we face.

We celebrate June 16 and do not see the significance of the person who attended the celebrations being the same one who later sneaks into your home, steals from you and kills you. Surely something is crying to be fixed.

Who are we? What makes up our belief of who we are? Is it the truth or is there another truth we are not aware of?

What we possess as Africans is our amazing history. It sounds clichéd but we need to know where we have been so we can have a better idea of where we should be and how to get there.
We need to have heroes from way back then so they can now make sense to us.

There is a quote from Biko that we need to remember: “The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the greatest gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face.”

The article was first published with the City Press (19/08/07). Dana’s second ­album, The One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street, won four Sama awards this year.

Project Zabalaza

A wise man once declared that there could be no originality except on the basis of tradition.

He could not have been more correct for all the words we have, all the sounds, all the melodies, all the contemporary practices stands firmly on the shoulders of everything else that “was” said, sang and done.

Contemporary life requires a tradition; a heritage for its meaningfulness. But why then is a black person denied her heritage? For denying her a heritage amounts to denying her a claim to originality and authenticity. It amounts to denying her a “subject” status in history.

Yes, a black person is forever confronted by the fact that the traditions imposed on her, for all their claims to universality, have place in space. And this place is not the one she can claim without contestation and without her appearing a fake and a mockery to humanity.

On the other hand, her invocation of her culture, her own heritage, is forever met with resistance and hostility in much of Africa and the world over.

Those who believe in the goodness of progress brought about by modernisation are insisting that anything indigenous to Africa represents backwardness and, is therefore, detrimental to the developmental needs of Africa and its inhabitants.

The negative view towards indigenous African culture has, also, historically, been reinforced by the dominant Christian theology that has associated indigenous cultural beliefs and practices with danger and evil.

In time, entire theories and theologies have developed to demonstrate the causal links between the practice of African culture and the poverty encountered in Africa.

Exclusion of African indigenous culture in important institutions of our society has also suggested that African culture is not of high value relative to the cultures celebrated in these institutions.

All these factors have historically conspired in the formation of a negative and condescending attitude towards things local and indigenous. The negative attitude is passed to everything associated with African tradition and culture; the ritual, the belief, the philosophy, the aesthetic, and so on.

What is worse, the younger generation has also come to despise the older; the elders in the community, their parents, ancestors and all those who are minimally assimilated into white culture.

Along came Thandiswa Mazwai with her debut album “Zabalaza.” The album is rich with indigenous Xhosa sounds, long rendered archaic by white culture.

One of the songs decries the soul of youth colonised by the white middle-class culture and its values of individualism, indulgence and consumerism.

The song puts into lyrics a reality of rootlessness and centeredlesness among South African black youth: nizilibele ukuthi nizalwa ngobani! With her mellow voice, Thandiswa makes the old sound so new and fresh.

Sounds in the album represent a counter-hegemonic aesthetic rooted in African Xhosa culture. This aesthetic emancipates perception and consciousness about African culture.

No longer are the elders and their culture seen as sterile, static and immobile. There is rhythm, innovation, elaboration and mutation in African indigenous sounds.

What is in the sound evokes an essence; the productive essence that has historically, not only created sounds but has also enabled the elders to survive the harshest conditions under white supremacist powers bent on destroying a people, their culture, their humanity and their very being as subjects participating in the making of history and social reality.

The realization of vital essence; the awareness of creativity and innovativeness in one’s cultural lineage brought about by sounds in the album removes a wedge between sons and fathers, daughters and mothers, that has, in time, developed, when black youth began to associate the capacity to be a subject with white culture.

Sounds in Thandiswa’s album transforms perception about the elder and her culture. The elder emerges as a subject; a being with a sense of the aesthetic and a capacity to create. The young begins to see the elder in a different light. She is now someone they can look up to as they seek to become fully human.

But this emerging vision of self in relation to the culture of the elders and ancestors also affirms the young person herself. Though the colonial enterprise has put a wedge between youth and their elders, it didn’t completely erode the collective cultural unconscious connecting black youth consciousness to the cultural outlook of the elders and ancestors.

The sounds in the album has, in essence, prickled that layer between the repressed collective cultural unconscious (historically repressed for the purpose of survival within a world that rewards assimilation into white culture) and the everyday consciousness among youth, evoking an immediate, instant and excited response.

This response emerges from a sense of affirmation of one’s cultural heritage that the song evokes; a sense countering the pressure to assimilate into the dominant culture. The elders, hearing the sounds, smilingly nod their heads in approval. And I, will only say; Sana!

Black Consciousness: A Critical, Relevant and Liberatory Angle of Vision

Biko defined black consciousness as:

“the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. It seeks to demonstrate that black is not an aberration from the normal, which is white. It is a manifestation of a new realization that by seeking to run away from themselves and to emulate the white man, blacks are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black. Black consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating black people black. It seeks to infuse the black community with a newly found pride in themselves; their effort, their value systems, their cultures, their religion, their outlook of life.”

Now Biko rightly perceived (as many of us have come to understand in time) that his South Africa was a world characterized by unequal power relations among its inhabitants. It was a world of white domination and black subordination. Power relations were marked along racial lines making South Africa a white supremacist society.

It is now a well accepted fact that white supremacy as it found expression in South Africa was not a natural occurrence nor a result of the inherent superiority of the white people but a reality that was brought about through coercion and persuasion. The state apparatus was used to enforce laws and policies that opened up opportunities for white people at the expense of black people. The laws were designed to place a black person at the position of subservience relative to a white person. If I may be blunt, these laws were meant to produce white masters and black servants. To be sure, by and large, these aims were achieved, as we still live in a society where whiteness is associated with privilege and power and blackness with subservience. This reality, is thus a result of coercive measures that were enforced by a white supremacist Apartheid regime.

The white supremacist Apartheid system did not only resort to coercion to enforce racial inequalities but also to persuasion. It was, arguably, Biko, more than any other thinker and activist before who diagnosed this element in the system. The diagnosis is captured by one of his most celebrated and equally hated remarks:

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

This remark, suggests that to Biko, domination was not just a matter of laws and policies, but also operated at the realm of ideas, beliefs, values, aesthetics and so on. In South Africa, persuasion, or what you may call ideological domination, was advanced through historical literature, fiction and all other forms of literature you find in institutions of learning whose content was, and still is; dominated by Europe and its achievements and capturing Africa only as an appendage, sending the message to a black learner that the only past that matters is that of a white person. White supremacy was, and still is, reinforced by the Christian religion that represents African religious beliefs and practices as demonic and that associates them with Europe's past pagan practices, sending the message to an innocent black congregant that Africa and the black person in particular is still at the bottom of the ladder of evolution. Furthermore, White supremacy was, and still is, reinforced at the realm of the arts. The white supremacist world still speaks of black artistic products steeped in an African tradition as “valuable” traditional artifacts evoking fascination and wonder, suggesting that indigenous work can never achieve the “art” status attributed to work produced in the tradition of Europe. What about the white person’s language as the language of opportunity, privilege, and status? Ask the black middle class why they put so much pressure on their children to achieve fluency in a white person’s language.

All these factors have historically conspired to send the message that blackness is inferior to whiteness and that in order for one to achieve a better life one has to reject everything in the tradition of her ancestors and place herself firmly in the tradition of Europe.

Where the liberal sense of freedom is defined in terms of freedom to participate in institutions and structures; as in being a student in a university, if you so wish, and studying a course of your choice, Biko’s notion of freedom is more radical and substantive. It challenges us to go beyond issues of access and participation in a conventional sense, as of being students and learning or being lecturers and lecturing. It challenges us to think ontologically and enquire: "what" is the nature of the reality/knowledge we are meant to "access" and "participate" in? We are also challenged to think epistemologically and probe: how do we come to know and accept that reality/knowledge as valid? Black consciounsness, furthermore, challenges us to grapple with the question of power; who defines the reality/knowledge presented to us and according to whose terms are we supposed to access and participate in that reality? Thus, it is not just about whose learning and whose lecturing in the university; it is also about whose knowledge, whose values, whose traditions, whose ideas, whose mythologies, whose experiences are captured in the prescribed reading and the recommended text as well as in the broader curriculum.

There is a growing awareness that what passes for knowledge is, for the most part, legitimated by power. Knowledge doesn’t legitimate itself. The knowledge that has passed for superior knowledge in South Africa has historically been legitimated by colonial powers. This knowledge has, in turn been used to determine and test what is accepted and what is acceptable in institutions of higher learning. Through these processes of testing and determining the acceptability of knowledge claims, intellectual traditions from the margins dominated by blackness have been marginalized. It is these realities that Biko was critical of when he said that Black Consciousness:

“seeks to demonstrate that black is not an aberration from the normal, which is white”

Thus to Biko, freedom starts with the realization; that angle of vision: that black is not an aberration to whiteness. From a Black Consciousness perspective, a liberatory experience is not constituted by the instance of merely being a student in Wits University and gaining access to the eurocentric canons and knowledge systems that, as a precondition, requires you to push aside everything you have learnt from your experiences, sages and acclaimed authorities in your community and start afresh on a clean slate by studying Marx, Hegel, Kant and the eurocentric list goes on and on.

Black Consciousness provides one with an angle of vision; that realization that the knowledge we receive is not universal but is steeped in specific traditions. It enables us to call into question the dichotomies between academic and non-academic ways of knowing, between universal and local knowledge, between expert and non-expert ways of knowing. It offers us opportunities to consider historically black spaces as legitimate sites for knowledge production. It enables us to value African intellectual traditions (in that I include values, mythologies, beliefs, idea and so on). Black Consciousness further enables us to attach value to African traditions, historically interrupted and disrupted by the colonial machinery. We can now see the tradition of the elders as very important for our survival as the black people and the survival of the human species. We can now boldly say that for clarity of understanding within the African context, you need to place your ideas within particular African knowledge traditions. These traditions start to become an important angle of reference for us. The challenge that Black Consciousness further poses for those who dare to be conscious is that of weaving up all the broken pieces and fragments in the disrupted black people’s traditions into coherent discourses that can liberate how we, black people, firstly think about ourselves and about the broader reality. This resonates with what Biko’s remark:

“Black Consciousness… seeks to infuse the black community with a newly found pride in themselves; their effort, their value systems, their cultures, their religion, their outlook of life.”

It must be said that this is not about going back to a primordial past or a golden age but more than anything about affirming our heritage (in the process, affirming ourselves); the importance of heritage being something that is universally accepted. This should also ultimately liberate conceptions of reality and systems of knowledge that, up to so far, have been impoverished by the marginalization of African intellectual traditions.

It was these realities that Biko was responding to when he campaigned for self definition. Thus to Biko, defining oneself as a black person is an act of resistance. It's an attempt to resist external oppressive notions and definitions of black people that were advanced by the white supremacist powers. It is also about agency, the agency to create rather than be created. It is only through her agency, when a black person has become a subject in history that a true synthesis can be achieved. In a world of Black Consciousness, we are not exotic objects of white men’s fascination, but people with a sense of past, a sense of history and a substantial sense of self.

The issues raised shouldn’t be taken to suggest that no gains have been achieved so far in the struggle for socio-political change in South Africa, certainly, the laws of the country have changed and a black person can live and study where she wishes if she can afford it. Nonetheless, the black person is still not a subject and thus, in a post Apartheid South Africa, a black person still hasn’t achieved substantive freedom. In “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” Freire, the Brazilian educationalist warns us:

“We cannot enter the struggle as objects in order to later become subjects”

This quotation captures Biko’s emphasis on the primacy of ideological freedom in capsule form. And there lies the power of black consciousness; in the realization that true freedom lies in a black person being a subject in history rather an object. And this is not just a matter of laws and policies but A Frame of Mind, and An Angle of Vision.