The Generation of Steve Biko

"It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. - Steven Biko 

The generation of Steve Biko and of 1976 resembles a common factor for me, that is  the power of education. Education can either make or kill a country. They (the likes of the struggle icon Nelson Mandela) warned us Africans not crafting their children in their own image as they were fighting a brutal and oppressive system. 

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Madela 

I fear for Azania, the land of warriors, a seven today we still don't prioritize education, and we let other races craft our children in their own image, as in the past 20 years. The principles that our forefathers lived for, are being used against us to further narrow neo-liberal agendas and ideals that Tambo, Sobukwe, Mandela and Biko lived for are being used fro the perversion of the original doctrine. They are being misquoted to entrench their liberal ideology, to ensure that it retains hegemony, especially among-st the youth.

It saddens me that we have opened a vacuum by not preserving and utilising the ideals that Biko stood for, by not ensuring that the proper history of our leaders is told, and, most importantly, by not living by the ideals that they believed in. It saddens me that we are not taking one step forward and two steps back. 

"Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

I Write What I See; He wrote What he Liked: Biko Legacy

Born in South Africa in 1946, Steve Biko co-founded the South African Students' Organization in 1968, subsequently spearheading the nation's Black Consciousness Movement, and co-founded the Black People's Convention in 1972. Biko was arrested many times for his anti-apartheid work and, on September 12, 1977, died from injuries that he'd sustained while in police custody. Biography. Also known to be the founder of South African 'civil right' (movement) - 'The black Consciousness.  

Black Consciousness in 2013 - I write what I see; "I write what I like".

It's been 36 years since the departing of Steve Stephen Biko, a political maverick or hero, a leader, in what I have perceived his theory; yes indeed he was a visionary. Biko taught most of the 70s youth then that the Black Consciousness is in the essence the realization of the black man and woman of the need to rally with his brothers and sisters 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.  Bantu Biko, not only he was an anti-Apartheid activist, he had a belief in the power of the black 'oppressed'. The 'black mind is the most potent weapon' in the hands of the oppressors, he was also a visionary; he had a vision to empower the youth with knowledge to resist the oppression.

"The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed," but the saddening part, which is the mos potent, is that the idealss that Biko stood, lived, and even died for and which most young people appreciate so much, are not lived up to by today's leadership and youth. The ideals Biko stood for have turned into another form of sloganeering, as we remember them only twice a year, on his birthday and on the 12th of September, the day he passed away.

It saddens me because of all of us, we say, how much we love his books and ideals but we do not propagate them. Biko believed that a united force would always conquer, no matter what; that it can make South Africa a progressive country for us all. 

"Biko was persecuted as a leading exponent of Black Consciousness, the mixture of ideas and action which emerged in the early 1970's with the aim of uniting black people to oppose apartheid and white supremacy. "Thus the first aim of Black Consciousness was to conquer feel black inferiority, to inculcate black pride. Black Consciousness was declared of life, an attitude of mind, with the basic tenet that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity. - sahistory 

Liberation of the black man begins first with liberation from psychological oppression by himself through an inferiority complex'. - Steve Biko

But how will it happen when we see black-on-black violence everyday? However, crime affects every South African, despite the colours in a 'rainbow nation' #RedOctober, pardon the pun. When are we going to do everything in our power to empower one another in this beautiful diversified country? When we forget the root-native-mantra of this country; that 'Umuntu ngu muntu nga-bantu' [in Zulu] or 'mothokemothokabatho' [Se-sotho] - which means (you get you get your humaneness from interacting with others). When we no longer show the spirit of Ubuntu. 

Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) leader, South Africa’s most influential and radical student leader in the 1970s, law student, banned person, political prisoner. Biko was killed in detention. - SAHistory

It seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the "normal", which is white. It is a manifestation of a new realisation that seeking to run away from themselves and to emulate the white man, blacks are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black. 

As he once said "Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

"Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being" - Bantu Stephen Biko.

Black Consciousness therefore forces cognisance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating black people. Our generation who have read about him and his philosophical stance, they still recognises Biko as one of the best leaders in the country. He is still given that other Azanian leaders, Like O.R Tambo and Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, to name a few, are given. That means makes me smike. I always smile to see other young people like myself appreciating the contribution made by Steve Biko. Knowing that there are still 'conscious', who knows that to go forward we need o learn from the past. I smile :")) because I see a bright future for our country, Azania (South Africa).