‘Afrika, we will only move forward if we are united.
Afrika, do not stop caring ‘cause that would be the end.
Afrika, you were there when they took everything from us.
Me and you cried together.
Me and you have been to hell and back in our dreams and in the struggle.
May we always look for The Way.
In our thoughts and in our religious spaces it would do us good to look for The Way.
So go on.
Do not be afraid.
‘Cause it must be done.
Hurry up before the sun sets.’

Simphiwe Dana penned these words as the chorus to her song ‘Bantu Biko Street’ in her album bearing the title ‘The One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street[1]’.

We are gathered here today to commemorate and celebrate the life and works of Bantu Stephen Biko. Steve was born on 18 December 1946, and assassinated by the Pretoria regime on the 12 September 1977. On Monday, 12 September 2011, we will observe the 34th anniversary of Steve’s assassination.

We are not here merely to honour Steve as a martyr, and to remind ourselves of how his blood has nourished the tree of freedom. We are here to re-dedicate ourselves to the cause of creating Azania and liberating the world.

The philosophy of Black Consciousness (BC) mapped out by Steve encompasses the emancipation of the wretched of the earth. It is neither time bound, nor is it geographically bound.

Mao Tse Tung incisively remarked:

‘We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.’

Steve had the uncanny ability of stepping right outside the unthought thought patterns of lifetimes, of aeons[2]. He did not fear surfacing, and surface he did. He liberated his mind from the habits of thought, and he relentlessly interrogated the presumptions, assumptions, predilections and biases that keep us in bondage. Steve’s brilliant mind was able to penetrate to the core of, and annihilate, the densest of deceptions and misconceptions. He understood perfectly Paulo Freire’s equation of ‘right’ and ‘left’ sectarianism in his preface to ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’[3]:

‘…[C]losing themselves into “circles of certainty” from which they cannot escape, these individuals “make” their own truth. It is not the truth of men and women who struggle to build the future, running the risks involved in this very construction. Nor is it the truth of men and women who fight side by side and learn together how to build the future – which is not something given to be received by people, but is rather something to be created by them. Both types of sectarian, treating history in an equally proprietary fashion, end up without the people – which is another way of being against them.’
Read more from Pambazuka

‘Afrika, we will only move forward if we are united.
Afrika, do not stop caring ‘cause that would be the end.
Afrika, you were there when they took everything from us.
Me and you cried together.
Me and you have been to hell and back in our dreams and in the struggle.
May we always look for The Way.
In our thoughts and in our religious spaces it would do us good to look for The Way.
So go on.
Do not be afraid.
‘Cause it must be done.
Hurry up before the sun sets.’

Simphiwe Dana penned these words as the chorus to her song ‘Bantu Biko Street’ in her album bearing the title ‘The One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street[1]’.

We are gathered here today to commemorate and celebrate the life and works of Bantu Stephen Biko. Steve was born on 18 December 1946, and assassinated by the Pretoria regime on the 12 September 1977. On Monday, 12 September 2011, we will observe the 34th anniversary of Steve’s assassination.

We are not here merely to honour Steve as a martyr, and to remind ourselves of how his blood has nourished the tree of freedom. We are here to re-dedicate ourselves to the cause of creating Azania and liberating the world.

The philosophy of Black Consciousness (BC) mapped out by Steve encompasses the emancipation of the wretched of the earth. It is neither time bound, nor is it geographically bound.

Mao Tse Tung incisively remarked:

‘We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.’

Steve had the uncanny ability of stepping right outside the unthought thought patterns of lifetimes, of aeons[2]. He did not fear surfacing, and surface he did. He liberated his mind from the habits of thought, and he relentlessly interrogated the presumptions, assumptions, predilections and biases that keep us in bondage. Steve’s brilliant mind was able to penetrate to the core of, and annihilate, the densest of deceptions and misconceptions. He understood perfectly Paulo Freire’s equation of ‘right’ and ‘left’ sectarianism in his preface to ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’[3]:

‘…[C]losing themselves into “circles of certainty” from which they cannot escape, these individuals “make” their own truth. It is not the truth of men and women who struggle to build the future, running the risks involved in this very construction. Nor is it the truth of men and women who fight side by side and learn together how to build the future – which is not something given to be received by people, but is rather something to be created by them. Both types of sectarian, treating history in an equally proprietary fashion, end up without the people – which is another way of being against them.’
Read more from Pambazuka