When I speak of my journey to get in touch with the pain of the past, I am not referring to a real experiencing of the pain that was felt. The reality is that Biko’s writing is articulate, powerful, tough, brash and direct. In many ways he was demonised through propoganda and the media. Some older whites may be surprised at my interest in Biko’s writing. How does a new generation get in touch with the pain of the past and the joy of the freedom they do not have to fight for? And so, we have 3 generations who have experienced every side side of a revolution: forced segregation, protest, freedom. Their teachers were serious about getting their students to understand the pain of the past and the amazing changes that have taken place in our country. Being directed by their Boomer teachers, these youths displayed an intruge in facing a world they have not grown up in. Standing in the Pieterson Musuem I was surrounded by a hundred black school children on tour. Now comes a new generation who have been born into the Rainbow Nation where apartheid is history. Instead, he was beyond his years as a social commentator and revolutionary. He wasn’t ahead of his time like most social revolutionaries. As a 20-something myself, I am amazed at how articulate and intellegient Biko was in his second language of English. This was the generation who protested against the teaching medium of Afrikaans on June 16th.īiko was in his 20s at this stage. This movement was embodied in Biko’s Black Consciousness philosophy where balck people “rediscovered their soul”. We then had young black who began to recognise this malaise and began to develop a renewed sense of self in their balckness. As the years went on, we had a new generation (Boomers) who were born into the system, who in a manner similar to my growing up in a new dispensation, never knew of the relative freedom enjoyed by the parents before 1948. As the National Party came to power in 1948 apartheid gained momentum with the 1st generation of blacks experiencing the effects of the inferiority complex manifested by the system. segregation resulted in significant emotional and psychological results that were the real intentions behind the regime. In wanting to get in touch with significant characters of the past few decades, I’d heard a little about Biko and thought this book would be a nice starting point to learn about the man who headed up the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa.īiko, under his pseudonym Frank Talk and through transcripts of his trial in 1975, speaks of how the physical manifestations of apartheid i.e. The Memorial requires a post of its own, but on the day I picked up a book called I write what I like by Steve Biko. I decided then to visit the Memorial before the 16th. Feeling surprisingly safe, I drove past a sign that pointed to the Hector Pieterson Memorial. I visited Soweto for the first time on June 10th this year. I grew up, and began my conscious awakening amidst the changes in South Africa, not really knowing where we had come from in terms of institutionalised apartheid.Īnd so, in recent years I have begun to explore my history as a South African … the history not taught to me when I was in school. And then, as Barrie would say, a fish does not know it is wet as it has no benchmark of dryness to measure against. In part, I was sheltered from the news and experience of emergency state-like events of the 1980s because of propogandised media and the comfort of white suburbia. Being a white 26 year old South African I have found the last decade and a half of transformation quite bland. Graeme posted earlier about the Youth Day public holiday on 16th June here in South African that commemorates the youth riots of 16th June 1976. In our Mind the Gap framework we speak of how Xers cannot remember insitutionalised apartheid.
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