Inqaba ya basebenzi Number 2 April 1981 - DISA

What way forward
*
for Black
Consciousness ?
The Black Consciousness Movement
started as a movement of
radical nationalist confrontation. It
arose out of the soil of undisguised
national oppression, the foundation
and source of cheap labour.
With the igniting slogan "Black
Power", the student youth from the
bush-colleges were expressing the
beginnings of a movement which was
set to oppose national and racialist
domination totally.
The BCM and black consciousness
itself has not arisen on a distinct
ideology. The nationalism of "Black
Power" is essentially the expression
of an undeveloped class consciousness,
which can only have assumed
the form it has taken in the BCM
because of the absence of an
independent working-class leadership,
with its own mass programme.
The BCM was the eruption of that*
hidden volcano of class consciousness,
beneath the iron heel of white
baasskap.
Power
However, mobilisation for black
unity can only be consciously realised
by the power of black workers in the
factories, mines, and on the farms.
The BCM has been drawn as by a
magnet towards the source of Its
strength, the working class.
The growth and limitations of the
BCM are reflected in the variety of
its organisations: the struggles of
the SRC's of the early 1970's in the
bush-colleges; .the formation of
SASO. NAYO. and SASM. BPC.
BCP. and BAWU; then, with the
magnificent uprising in Soweto in
1976, the formation of the original
Committee of Ten; and following on
this the appearance of PEBCO and
other community organisations;
AZAPO. AZASO, and COSAS; the
organisations of the mass boycotts
throughout 1980; and the rapid
growth of SAAWU.
All these, together with the
unsuccessful attempts to crush the
movement on October 19 1977,
impose on the BCM the question:
Either apart from the rising tide of
the working class movement, or
organised under its banner for the
total overthrow off national domination
and capitalism.
The BCM leaders cannot successfully
create organisational structures
of any value apart from or above the
by
Zakes Ramushu
mass movement of the youth and the
workers. Yet organisation in the
mass movement increasingly requires
a clear identification of the
tasks of the struggle, and a concrete
programme for unity in action.
The unity of the BCM is
impossible outside of the mass
movement; the unity of the mass
movement cannot be completed
without a programme for smashing
the capitalist state and for taking
over the factories, mines and farms
into the hands of the working class.
The open turning of the mass of
the youth to the black workers'
movement in 1980 has shown the
answer to all that has plagued the
BCM. Being chiefly a movement that
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