Black Consciousness Movement

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Apartheid
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People Vernon Berrangé P. W. Botha Steve Biko Mangosuthu Buthelezi F. W. de Klerk Ruth First Bram Fischer Arthur Goldreich Chris Hani Bantu Holomisa Joel Joffe Ahmed Kathrada Albert Luthuli Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Mac Maharaj D. F. Malan Nelson Mandela Govan Mbeki Thabo Mbeki Raymond Mhlaba Benjamin Moloise Albertina Sisulu Walter Sisulu J. G. Strijdom Joe Slovo Robert Sobukwe Helen Suzman Adelaide Tambo Oliver Tambo Eugène Terre'Blanche Desmond Tutu H. F. Verwoerd B. J. Vorster Jacob Zuma
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The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960.^[1] The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.

[Black Consciousness'] origins were deeply rooted in Christianity. In 1966, the Anglican Church under the incumbent, Archbishop Robert Selby Taylor, convened a meeting which later on led to the foundation of the University Christian Movement (UCM). This was to become the vehicle for Black Consciousness.^[2]

The BCM attacked what they saw as traditional white values, especially the "condescending" values of white liberals. They refused to engage white liberal opinion on the pros and cons of black consciousness, and emphasised the rejection of white monopoly on truth as a central tenet of their movement ^[3] While this philosophy at first generated disagreement amongst black anti-apartheid activists within South Africa, it was soon adopted by most as a positive development. As a result, there emerged a greater cohesiveness and solidarity amongst black groups in general, which in turn brought black consciousness to the forefront of the anti-apartheid struggle within South Africa.

The BCM's policy of perpetually challenging the dialectic of apartheid South Africa as a means of transforming Black thought into rejecting prevailing opinion or mythology to attain a larger comprehension brought it into direct conflict with the full force of the security apparatus of the apartheid regime. "Black man, you are on your own" became the rallying cry as mushrooming activity committees implemented what was to become a relentless campaign of challenge to what was then referred to by the BCM as "the system". It eventually sparked a confrontation on 16 June 1976 in the Soweto uprising, when Black children marched to protest both linguistic imperialism and coercive Afrikaans medium education in the townships. In response, 176 of the child protesters were fatally shot by South African security forces^[3] and both outrage and unrest spread like wildfire throughout the country.

Although it successfully implemented a system of comprehensive local committees to facilitate organised resistance, the BCM itself was decimated by security action taken against its leaders and social programs. By 19 June 1976, 123 key members had been banned and assigned to internal exile in remote rural districts. In 1977, all BCM related organisations were banned, many of its leaders arrested, and their social programs dismantled under provisions of the newly implemented Internal Security Amendment Act. On 12 September 1977, its banned National Leader, Steve Bantu Biko died from injuries that resulted from brutal assault while in the custody of the South African Police.^[4]