8 the state of science in south africa
H U M A N I T I E S A N D S O C I A L S C I E N C E S
the psychologist, Chabani Manganyi’s 1973 In South Africa there were clear anteced-
book Being Black in the World. Its impact ents for Black Consciousness in Africanist
outside of its obvious political setting was movements of earlier periods which we
profound because, as Biko had argued: have already considered, and which were
identifiable with figures like Nelson Mande-
The call for Black Consciousness is the
la and Oliver Tambo
9
, and the Pan-African
most positive call to come from any
Congress
10
.
group in the black world for a long time.
It is more than just a reactionary rejec-
As the appeal of Black Consciousness wid-
tion of whites by blacks…The philoso-
ened, the country’s majority – confident of
phy of Black Consciousness …expresses
their ownership and power – played an in-
group pride and determination by
creasing role in setting political and, indeed,
blacks to rise and attain the envisaged
intellectual agendas. Our immediate inter-
self. At the heart of this kind of thinking
est is in the second, so we must record that
is the realisation by the blacks that the
in the field of English literature, David At-
most potent weapon in the hands of the
twell points out that the resulting upheaval
oppressor is the mind of the oppressed
marked “a serious rift … between liberalism
(Biko, 1978:149).
and radicalism” (Attwell, 2005:138).
This thinking had been brought to the hu- If the rise of Black Consciousness formed
manities in South Africa by what was later one of the strategic wedges that brought
(recklessly called) global change. The co- apartheid to an end, another came from
lonialism which had given birth to the very within Afrikaner ranks where, over time,
idea of South Africa was changing, and Pan- intellectuals abandoned the ideology. Un-
Africanism was emerging as a powerful derstandably, this did great damage to the
social idea. In the United States a new form idea of the volksuniversiteit and freed up
of nationalism – which affirmed blackness, room for adventure in the humanities – but
black pride, black solidarity, and (in some breaking away was not easy. In a convo-
cases) argued for no alliances with white luted fashion, the acclaimed poet NP van
activists – was on the rise. But other influ- Wyk Louw described how difficult it was to
ences were of longer duration: the Négri- escape the gravitational pull of Afrikaner
tude movement of Léopold Sédar Senghor nationalism. Effective criticism, he argued,
and Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and the “emerges when the critic places himself in
music of artists like Nina Simone (notably, the midst of the group he criticises, when
her track “To be young, gifted, and black”). he knows that he is bound unbreakably
9 Close friend and confidant of Nelson Mandela. They both studied at the UFH and set up a legal partnership in Johannesburg. Tambo
left for Lusaka, Zambia, in 1960 to set up the ANC in exile. He was the organisation’s President during his years in exile. Tambo died in
South Africa in 1994 shortly before the ANC was elected to power.
10 A political movement which was established in 1959 as a breakaway movement from the ANC; it was established by Robert Sobukwe,
a leading intellectual. The PAC (as it is known) supported Pan-Africanism and was greatly influenced by anti-colonial movements elsewhere
on the continent.
224
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