Steve Biko: The Intellectual Roots of South African Black Consciousness

This research project examines the intellectual influences of South African anti-apartheid activist and Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko using a history of ideas approach. Central to the project is G.W.F. Hegel’s ‘lord – bondsman dialectic ’ and how Biko applied the dialectic to the situation of blacks under apartheid. The lord – bondsman dialectic, introduced by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit, involves a struggle for recognition when two independent self-consciousnesses meet. The consciousness that succumbs to fear of death becomes the bondsman, while the consciousness that overcomes this fear becomes the lord. The lord desires recognition of his freedom through the bondsman’s consciousness but this desire is self-defeating because the lord’s consciousness cannot be recognized by a consciousness that has no freedom of its own. Biko’s principles of Black Consciousness directly drew from this concept as he viewed psychological liberation as the first step towards black freedom. Viewing blacks ’ consciousness as dependent on white recognition, Biko viewed Black Consciousness as a means of developing a black way of thinking that would instill pride not contingent upon white recognition. Hegel’s dialectical method was central to how Biko organized his anti-apartheid group, South African Student Organization (SASO). In this dialectic, the thesis is an accepted intellectual proposition that is actually incomplete or contradictory. The antithesis is the negation of the thesis, but it is also inadequate. The synthesis resolves th