Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid i ii Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid Ian M. Macqueen iii Published in 2018 by University of KwaZulu-Natal Press Private Bag X01 Scottsville, 3209 Pietermaritzburg South Africa Email: [email protected] Website: www.ukznpress.co.za © 2018 Ian M. Macqueen All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. ISBN: 978 1 86914 388 6 e-ISBN: 978 1 86914 389 3 Managing editor: Sally Hines Editor: Alison Lockhart Proofreader: Cathy Munro Layout: Patricia Comrie Indexer: Christopher Merrett Cover design: Marise Bauer, MDesign Cover images (clockwise from top): Aelred Stubbs (CR) (The Community of the Resurrection Collection, AB3181/C1, Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand); Rick Turner (Helen Joseph Collection, A1985, Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand); Steve Biko (photographer Fraser MacLean; Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand; permission to use this image was granted by the Steve Biko Foundation); Donald Woods (photographer: Fraser MacLean; Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand; permission to use this image was granted by the Steve Biko Foundation); Mamphela Ramphele (photographer: Fraser MacLean; Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand; permission to use this image was granted by the Steve Biko Foundation). Print administration by DJE Flexible Print Solutions, Cape Town iv Contents Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix Introduction: Putting Black Consciousness into Conversation with Progressive Movements under Apartheid 1 1 The Christian Roots of Black Consciousness 23 2 Black Consciousness and Student Protest in the Late 1960s 57 3 The ‘Durban Moment’, 1970–1974 99 4 Women’s Liberation and the Limits of Freedom 138 5 The Radicalisation of the Christian Institute 165 6 The State Responds 201 Conclusion: From the 1970s to Post-apartheid South Africa 222 Select Bibliography 241 Index 257 v vi Acknowledgements This book has been a long time in the making. It began in my Honours year at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2005 with a comment by Professor Catherine Burns and has taken me through a doctorate and a postdoctoral fellowship and sustained me into a full-time position at the University of Pretoria. The key image that caught my attention – the debates between Steve Biko and Rick Turner in Durban in the 1970s – has functioned as the main organising idea for the research that followed and the book I present here. It is my hope that such a relationship – fraught but productive – can inspire a new generation of students and activists to a radical but tolerant politics, which does not shy away from difficult discussions, but simultaneously never sacrifices the present treasures in the pursuit of the grand ideal, the ‘big idea’, which gives power to all ideologies. This book has developed through the support of many different people. It was made possible firstly by Professor Saul Dubow who took me on as a doctoral student at the University of Sussex in 2007. I was able to complete my doctorate in 2011, with Professor Alan Lester as my joint supervisor. A postdoctoral fellowship at the Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, under the care of Professor Karl von Holdt allowed me the space and time to rewrite the thesis into its current form as a book and to undertake additional research. Professor Zimitri Erasmus was generous with her time as well, acting as a research mentor. My thanks to Gerhard Maré, Richard Pithouse, Vashna Jagarnath, Nafissa Sheik and Stephen Sparks for input into Chapter 3 at an early stage of its writing. Thank you also to Professor Catherine Burns for her comments on a draft version of this chapter and to the participants of the Southern Africa Seminar, University of London, and the History and African Studies Seminar, University of KwaZulu-Natal, for their questions and feedback. My vii thanks to the anonymous readers for their critical input as well as to Sally Hines, Alison Lockhart and Cathy Munro for making this a better book. My main source of funding came from the National Research Foundation in the form of an Innovation Postdoctoral Award that made it possible to travel to Cape Town, Ginsberg and Durban to conduct additional research and interviews. My sincere thanks to those who entertained my questions and so generously gave their insights into the period. My doctoral studies at the University of Sussex were made possible by the Overseas Student Research Award Scheme, as well as from the European History Network project, Creating Links and Overviews for a New History Agenda. My family was my constant support through the whole process, from my aunt, Eona Macqueen, who provided the funds for my doctoral tuition, to my parents who supported me through some dark times. I had the privilege of meeting my wife, Marta, in 2011, following the advice of Saul Dubow that marriage could only follow the doctorate(!) and the following years have been all the richer for that relationship, gifting me with two sons. While acknowledging the rhetorical purpose of Turner’s use of the parable of the ‘eye of the needle’, it is my belief that hope remains only in such an ethics as that encapsulated in Jesus’s life and teaching – people require transformation as much as systems – an insight that I think resonates with Biko’s fundamental premise. While impossible to determine just how many of the activists followed this as a transcendental belief, or followed Christ (some explicitly refuted belief), it was nonetheless a powerful touchstone of transformative ethics. I acknowledge this Presence and Person in my life, and especially over the ten years of this study: Soli Deo gloria. viii Abbreviations ANC African National Congress ARM African Resistance Movement ASF Anglican Students’ Federation ASSECA Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of African People of South Africa AZAPO Azanian People’s Organisation BCM Black Consciousness Movement BCP Black Community Programmes BPC Black People’s Convention BWF Black Women’s Federation BWP Black Workers’ Project CCSA Christian Council of South Africa CI Christian Institute CR Community of the Resurrection DRC Dutch Reformed Church FEDSEM Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa FOSATU Federation of South African Trade Unions ICT Institute of Contextual Theology IDAMASA Inter-Denominational African Ministers Association in South Africa IIE Institute for Industrial Education MK Umkhonto weSizwe NCFS National Catholic Federation of Students NUSAS National Union of South African Students PAC Pan Africanist Congress SACBC Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference SACC South African Council of Churches SACP South African Communist Party SAIRR South African Institute of Race Relations ix SASO South African Students’ Organisation SCA Student Christian Association SPRO-CAS Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society SRC Student Representative Council TUACC Trade Union Advisory and Co-ordinating Council UCM University Christian Movement UDF United Democratic Front UNB University of Natal Black Section UNNE University of Natal [Medical School] Non-European Section WSCF World Student Christian Federation YCW Young Christian Workers YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association x Introduction 1 Introduction Putting Black Consciousness into Conversation with Progressive Movements under Apartheid n our current political dispensation, we are reminded again that Ithe past and present are deeply contested. As political parties and popular movements, such as Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall most recently, have sought sources of inspiration, history has become a valued strategic terrain from which to assert claims to the present, evident by the overt linking by present-day students of their protests to the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976, which is now celebrated as the public holiday Youth Day. This book seeks to engage with that history, particularly the decade that has most recently seemed to inspire popular imagination – the 1970s. In that decade, activists reignited the struggle against apartheid and reorganised the trade union movement after the Durban Strikes of 1973, Black Consciousness flowered under the iconic leader Stephen Bantu Biko, culminating in open rebellion in the Soweto Uprising. The legacy of that decade has taken many forms in contemporary South Africa. The trade union movement remains a powerful, if weakened, force. The young students of that generation are today’s leaders. Black Consciousness remains a vibrant yet underground stream of thinking, bubbling to the surface in radical social critiques and sometimes in open debate. Abuses by those in power and continued economic disempowerment have given added credence and power to fresh analyses of South African post-apartheid life, such as that presented by Black Consciousness.1 This book is part of an effort of a new generation of scholars who have re-examined the 1970s in South Africa. Beginning in 2010, with historian Daniel Magaziner’s bold reinterpretation of the Black Consciousness Movement as fundamentally an intellectual and religious