i finally finished reading the Voices of Liberation series book on Steve Biko by Derek Hook. And i can highly recommend it. i honestly believe that if you are a South African [especially if you are white] then you really need to read 'How can man die better?' [by Benjamin Pogrund] which is the story of Robert Sobukwe, and either one of 'I write what I like' or this version of Biko's writings and [...]
A while back i shared a number of passages from the Steve Biko book: I Write What I Want. Which are all well worth checking out, as is the whole book if you get the chance. i found one more i would like to share with you which is an example of Steve’s conduct while under hostile examination as well as his ‘perceptive understanding of the difference of black and white uses of language’. This comes [...]
This is a hard but necessary passage to share from Steve Biko's 'I Write What I Like' which you should totally get hold of and read in its entirety. Hard, because it is true. Not true that the black man is inferior, but that the idea of the black man being inferior has been so deeply entrenched in so many of us, that it is an extremely hard and horrible thing to admit to when [...]
Another passage from the chapter titled 'Some African Cultural Concepts': 'Yet it is difficult to kill the African heritage. There remains, in spite of the superficial cultural similarities between the detribalised and the Westerner, a number of cultural characteristics that mark out the detribalised as an African. I am not here making a case for separation on the basis of cultural differences. I am sufficiently proud to believe that under a normal situation, Africans can [...]
i am still slowly making my way through Steve Biko's 'I write what I like' and here is a passage that i marked a while ago from Chapter 8: Some African Cultural Concepts: One of the most fundamental aspects of our culture is the importance we attach to Man [by which i think he is referring to people as opposed to individual - brett] . Ours has always been a Man-centered society. Westerners have on [...]
A further extract from the same chapter as the last one i shared, this one looks at the history that is taught and the need for young black men and women to have stories and heroes they can relate to: One writer makes the point that in an effort to destroy completely the structures that had been built up in the African Society and to impose their imperialism with an unnerving totality the colonialists were [...]
In my quest to continue learning South African history from voices other than those i grew up with i was encouraged to read, 'I Write What I Like' by Steve Biko. Not so much a story as a collection of letters and speeches, this book is really helpful as it contains real time words, thoughts and ideas from one of South Africa's great leaders written during the height of apartheid. The Catholic Herald had this [...]
