So recently i finished reading the book, ‘Biko: A Biography’ by Xolela Mangcu

It is not often that you get to hang out with the guy who authored the book you are reading [unless you have bought my book, ‘i, church’ and then hang out with me over an ice cold board game, of course] but this is how that happened.

tbV and i had been invited to a friend’s house for a meal and while we were waiting for them to arrive, Heidi brought me the biography of Biko that he had written [Xolela Mangcu is currently busy with a biography of Nelson Mandela] and so i started reading it. By the time they had arrived i was a good two chapters in and decided to borrow the book because it was fascinating reading. i devoured it over the next couple of days.

There are a number of things i really enjoyed about this book which are reasons why i would highly encourage you to get your hands on a copy of it:

[1] It is about Steve Biko

The more i read/hear about Steve Biko, the more i feel like i was robbed. i completely resonated with the portrayal of Robert Sobukwe in Benjamin Pogrund’s book, ‘How can man die better’, which i already shared a number of thoughts and passages from over here. And while there were no doubt many other great men and women in the struggle against apartheid, there is not a doubt in my mind that in Steve Biko and Robert Sobukwe, we lost two inspirational leaders who might have been much better suited to guide us through this post-apartheid minefield we find ourselves in.

i have already read ‘I write what I like’ and shared some thoughts and passages over here, but that is largely a collection of speeches and essays that Steve gave and so while it is very helpful in some ways in terms of trying to understand and learn from the way he thought, i found this book which gives a lot more of the context of who Steve Biko was, a lot more helpful in terms of filling in the blanks. i think, if you are trying to gain a better understanding of South Africa, then and now, that ‘I write what I like’ and ‘Biko: a biography’ make up a great combo tool.

[2] It is about Steve Biko

i alluded to this in the previous point, but Xolela Mangcu grew up with and around Steve Biko and so he is able to give us a really helpful lens in terms of seeing who Biko was as a man growing up as well as highlighting some of the various shifts that took place in his life and thinking as time went on. But more than just the words of Steve Biko, this gives us a whole lot more of the about of his life.

[3] It contains some surprises

We write and read through a lens with some air of bias. And so i imagine that aspects of Mangcu’s book will be challenged by different people who either saw things differently or want a different picture to be shared.

For someone who didn’t know a lot about Steve Biko, the man, before reading this, it was incredible to read about how beyond just his words, he was a man of transformative action: he studied medicine, he was involved in starting creches and schools and hospitals and there was a whole lot more to him than his political fervour.

The other surprise was hearing that it was two white people who compiled ‘I Write What I Like’ which i imagine is something a lot of Biko followers might also be surprised about, given the ‘Biko hated white people’ mantra that is often espoused. Biko tended to be a womaniser and certainly doesn’t seem to have shown any racial prejudice of his own in terms of the race of the women he chose to be with.

[4] He was not an average man

His depth of thought and brilliance comes out strongly and repeatedly, excelling academically as well as being an excellent speaker. An in depth view of the strength of his leadership is also strongly on show.

As the Wikipedia entry on him states,

‘Biko exhibited what Woods referred to as “a new style of leadership”, never proclaiming himself to be a leader and discouraging any cult of personality from growing up around him. Other activists did regard him as a leader and often deferred to him at meetings. When engaged in conversations, he displayed an interest in listening and often drew out the thoughts of others.’

Which this quote by his friend Donald Woods backs up completely:

The charisma of Steve Biko was entirely his own. He had from an early age the unmistakable bearing and quality of a unique leader. I say unique because his style of leadership was his own – it was un-pushy, un-promotional, yet immediately acknowledged by his peers … I was thirteen years older than Steve, yet I always had the feeling I was talking to someone older and wiser, and like many others I often sought his advice on all manner of problems. [his close friend, reporter Donald Woods]

BIKO: A BIOGRAPHY

So do yourself a favour and get hold of this book and dive more into the life and mind of a man who shaped the struggle against apartheid and continues to bear influence on many around the country in terms of trying to figure out the best ways forward.

In the book there is a passage that is discussing African leaders forming political organisations to represent Africans:

‘This tradition was extended into the emergent townships in the 20th century. Belinda Bozzoli [‘The Difference of Social Capital and the Mobilizing and Demobilizing Powers of Nationalism: The South African Case’] explains the Black Consciousness Movement’s efficacy in terms of its ability to draw from what she calls ‘syncretic movements’ in the townships., with syncretism meaning people’s ability to create hybrid identities out of their interactions with the social and cultural world:

‘In most townships, both language and cultural forms were an expression of a syncretic [hybrid] rather than an ethnic, racial or class identity. Mixed street languages emerged; township music, style, churchgoing, dance, marriage patterns and the arts were all created from elements drawn from a variety of cultural sources. In spite of complaints by some that “cultural imperialism” had introduced “foreign customs” (in the form of say youth clubs, or ballroom dancing), nothing entered township without being given local meaning.’

Bozzoli argues that in societies of racial or colonial domination, the rulers use space as a means of controlling their subjects. They then invest the educated elite with the authority to be the mediators with the communities. Space thus becomes the physical terrain for contestations of power between the dominant and the dominated groups.

Sometimes the dominated groups move into spaces where there is less control by the dominant group. Thus space becomes a multidimensional terrain of struggle. Townships developed as spaces with great similarity to the sub-worlds of the poor in many other Third World settings where states are incompletely formed, and strata of urban society remain “uncaptured, and authority is unstable”.’ [‘Biko: A biography’, page 236]

When talking about space as a place of ‘contestations of power between dominant and dominated groups’ i wonder whether the online space of Facebook groups [for example] might be a more modern version of a space where some of that dominance is lessened. Certainly as a place of discussing ideas and mobilising people, some online spaces have proven to help level the playing fields in my opinion.

i found that ‘Biko: a biography’ helped paint the picture of a man who had the interests of Africans at heart – those who identify as children of the soil and he seemed to have a deep desire to help move everyone along to a place that would benfit us all:

‘Biko and Black Consciousness practised a politics of “psychological empowerment”, according to Millard Arnold. This empowerment proved to be the ‘sine qua non’ for the resumption and further continuation of the struggle in the 1980s. As a leader, Steve Biko challenged black and white people to confront their inner fears head-on. His unique contribution lay in his vision, on a wide scale, of the interrelationship between consciousness and culture, on the one hand, and developmental and political action, on the other. This stands in sharp contrast to South Africa’s recent leaders who, in the creation of a democratic society, have concentratd on the latter without sufficient attention to the former. [‘Biko: a biography’, page 272] 

i enjoyed the book and felt i learned a lot and that my picture of Steve Biko has a lot more meat on it than it did before. It is both educational and riveting in terms of being an interesting read and a great challenge of present thought and political arena.

i am very interested to see what kind of take Xolela Mangcu will give to his picture of Nelson Mandela in his next book, as i suspect we may find a more well-rounded approach than we have seen thus far.