Accounts of Black Consciousness have tended to place the discourse in a continuum of resistance to white minority rule and to assess its significance in bringing about the downfall of apartheid. While these are valid historical narratives, they have occluded some of the wider resonances and significance of both the movement and the body of ideas. This book takes its cue from Steve Biko’s own injunction to see the evolution of Black Consciousness alongside other political doctrines and movements of resistance in South Africa. It identifies progressive thought and movements, such as radical Christianity and ecumenism, student radicalism, feminism and trade unionism, as valuable interlocutors that nonetheless also competed for the mantle of liberation, espousing different visions of freedom.
[More]