Today Professor Angela Davis will
deliver the 17th annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at the University of South
Africa, in Pretoria. The annual lecture seeks to promote a culture of critical
dialogue and active citizenry. Since its inauguration in 2000, various
luminaries have delivered the annual memorial lecture and we have selected 10
poignant excerpts taken from previous lectures, which reflect on Biko’s life,
and ideas.
Today
Professor Angela Davis will deliver the 17th annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture
at the University of South Africa, in Pretoria. Davis is an American political
activist, academic scholar, and author. The annual lecture seeks to promote a
culture of critical dialogue and active citizenry in South Africa.
The annual
lecture is held to celebrate the life, and commemorate the death of Biko. The
lecture also honours Biko’s courage and leadership as a political activist,
thinker, freedom fighter, writer and founder of the Black Consciousness
Movement.
The lecture
celebrates Biko’s intellectual prowess. Through his writing, and ideas on black
consciousness, Biko led the quest for black people to unite, understand
themselves and affirm their their common identity.
Since its
inauguration in 2000, various luminaries have delivered the annual Steve Biko
Memorial Lecture and these include, leading politicians, writers, academics and
entrepreneurs. Below are 10 poignant excerpts reflecting on Biko, and his
ideas, taken from previous memorial lectures.
1. “Steve
Biko and his colleagues… were hands on activists who established practical
community development projects. These men and women went beyond moaning and
whinging about the plight of black people; they made their hands dirty…
building health centres and running them, and facilitating the establishment of
communal gardens in marginalised communities. In this way, they aimed to
inculcate values of self-reliance and self-development in addition to
self-esteem, self-respect and self-confidence”. Professor Zakes Mda (2001)
2.
“A young man with a sharp intellect and flair for organisation and leadership,
Biko realised the need to raise the sagging morale of black people, to raise
their consciousness and self-esteem; in his own words to ‘overcome the
psychological oppression of black people by whites’”. Chinua Achebe (2002)
3. “Steve
Biko, whom we have come to honour, is among this great gallery of people whose
work and devotion have impacted those beyond the native shores, and which make
it possible for us even to talk about the possibilities of a new Africa out of
the colonial ashes of latter-day empires”. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2003)
4. “History
from time to time, brings to the fore the kind of leaders who seize the moment,
who cohere the wishes and inspirations of the oppressed. Such was Steve Biko,a
fitting product of his time; a proud representative of the reawakening of a
people”. Nelson Mandela (2004)
5.
“Citizenship as stewardship is about taking ownership of the gift of freedom”.
Mamphela Ramphele (2005)
6. “The best
memorial to Steve Biko would be a South Africa where everyone respects
themselves, has a positive self image filled with a proper self esteem and
holds others in high regard”. Desmond Tutu (2006)
7. “Steve
Biko understood that to attain our freedom we had to rebel against the notion
that we are a problem, that we should no longer merely cry out…that we should
stop looking at ourselves through the eyes of others, and measuring our souls
by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”. Thabo Mbeki
(2007)
8. “…the
lesson that Biko taught us. Democracy is something to fight for, constantly.
Development is not something handed out at the welfare office. It is a
conscious process of building capabilities, giving communities power to change
their lives, empowering young women and men to make a contribution…” Trevor
Manuel (2008)
9. “We need
to reincarnate Biko’s rigour, his high-standards and his forensic questioning
of society and of all of his assumptions. We need to keep alive Biko’s fierce
and compassionate truthfulness. In fact, we need Biko’s spirit now more than
ever. If he were here today he might well ask such questions: Is the society
just? Are we being truthful about one another? Has there been a real change of
attitudes and assumptions on both sides of the racial divide?” Ben Okri (2012)
10. “The
decolonization of the mind starts with our sense of self as Africans, a sense
that is developed through our socialization – both in the families, communities
and schools – and increasingly in today’s information age through the media”.
Nkosaza Dlamini Zuma (2013)
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