V. MSILA
who espoused the conditions of the oppressed. These people,
“the damned of the earth” need to constantly fight exploitation
and hunger as people try to change their lives (Fanon, 1967).
In his book, Black Skins, White Masks (1967) Fanon expli-
cates the sense of dependency, helplessness and inadequacy
that Black Africans experience in a “White world”. Fanon, a
qualified psychiatrist, uses psychoanalysis to explain the Black
behavior after the loss of culture. Amongst others, Fanon raises
an argument that it is because of language that people in former
colonized states experience marginalization, pathologization
and servitude. He says that language is an index of power im-
balance and cultural difference. Furthermore, Fanon (2001) states
that colonialism not only physically disarms the colonized sub-
ject, but it also rob her of a pre-colonial cultural heritage. Lan-
guage, like culture negatively transformed the colonized to as-
sume an iden tity of being The Other. As traditional culture dis-
sipated among the indigenes, the creation of otherness seeped
through. Black Africans became poorer and poorer and regard-
ed the colonizer as the provider. There developed a schism be-
tween the Black A frican and the Westerner:
The creation of otherness (also called othering) consists of
applying a principle that allows individuals to be classi-
fied into two hierarchical groups: them and us. The out-
group is only coherent as a group as a result of its opposi-
tion to the in-group and its lack of identity. This lack is
based on stereotypes that are largely stigmatizing and ob-
viously simplistic. The in-group constructs one or more
others, setting itself apart and giving itself an identity
(Staszak, 2008: p. 2).
The politics of colonialism and racism further entrenched this
otherness. The Black African was marginalized by the domi-
nant White society .
Similar to this philosophy is the philosophy of the Black
Power movement. In fact, Joseph (2003) refers to Fanon as a
man who was viewed as a future icon of the Black Power
movement in its early stages. The Black Power movement in
America espoused the politics of liberation of the Black people.
Like Fanon above, Carmichael and Hamilton (1967) postulate
that Black people needed to redefine themselves. These authors
also point out that the fundamental need for Black people was
to reclaim their history and identity from what they referred to
as cultural terrorism. Furthermore, Carmichael and Hamilton
(1967: p. 44) aver:
The concept of Black Power speaks to all the needs men-
tioned in this chapter. It is a call for Black people in this
country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a
sense of community. It is a call for Black people to begin
to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations
and to support these organizations. It is a call to reject the
racist institutions and values of this society.
The above clearly illustrates the envisaged propinquity be-
tween Black Power movement and Fanon’s philosophy. Both
philosophies support the call for the oppressed to fight for their
rights. The goal of both is the liberation of the marginalized and
oppressed people. The Black Power movement emphasized ra-
cial pride and political self-determination (Joseph, 2009). Fur-
thermore, Joseph argues that it called for a redefined Black
identity that connected Black Americans to a national and
global political project based on solidarity and a shared history
of racial oppression. “The Black Power movement, in its chal-
lenge of postwar racial liberalism, fundamentally transformed
struggles for racial justice through an uncompromising quest
for social, political, cultural, and economic transformation” (Jo-
seph, 2009: p. 753). Black Power expressed a concept that ne-
gated racial oppression and it advanced a self-sufficient econ-
omy.
The Black Power movement also instilled a sense of pride
among the oppressed. Children were taught to love their black-
ness (Van DeBurg, 1992). Later the Black Power movement
produced cultural products that imbued pride in blackness.
Thus it used all available forms of folk, literary and dramatic
expression based in a common ancestral past to promote a mes-
sage of self-actualization and cultural definition (Van DeBurg,
1992). Biko shared the ideals of these schools of thought that
came before him. The emancipation of the oppressed Black
people in South Africa was dependent upon the oppressed
fighting for their liberation. Biko asserted that Black people are
the only ones who could liberate themselves from political op-
pression (Wilson, 2012).
Education: The Context in Which Biko Wrote
Biko’s philosophy needs to be understood within the context
in which it was written. When he formulated his ideas on edu-
cation and various other political and societal challenges there
were a number of education systems in South Africa for differ-
ent racial groups. All these were guided by the apartheid phi-
losophy of Fundamental Pedagogics which in turn was based
on what was referred to by the White Afrikaner church as
Christian National Education (CNE). This was a philosophy
that purported to be propelled by Calvinism and Christian Na-
tionalism. Fundamental Pedagogics also regarded all children
as blank slates or tabula rasas. Du Plooy and Kilian (1983)
point out that man (sic) is educating his children with a view to
assisting them educatively “to become proper human beings on
their way to adulthood”. Education under Fundamental Peda-
gogics envisaged the role of the adult to be that an imparter of
knowledge upon the child. “There is only one way in which to
realize the child’s becoming an adult and that is with the help
and accompaniment of a responsible adult as his fellow man”
(Du Plooy & Kilian, 1983: p. 4).
Within this rather twisted view of education apartheid educa-
tion regarded Bantu Education for Blacks as a form of domina-
tion over the oppressed. Article 15 of the CNE document de-
clared:
We believe that the calling and task of White South Africa
with regard to the native is to Christianise him and help
him on culturally, and that this calling and task has al-
ready found its nearer focusing in the principles of trus-
teeship, no equality and segregation. We believe besides
that any system of teaching and education of natives must
be based on the same principle. In accordance with these
principles we believe that the teaching and education of
the native must be grounded in the life and worldview of
the Whites most especially those of the Boer nation as
senior White trustee of the native…
Apartheid education system abused religion while it enforced
divisions among ethnic groups in South Africa. It was a prac-
tice of maintaining that status quo and of preserving the master-
servant relationship between the Black Africans and the Whites.
It was intended to “entrench apartheid capitalism”, as was noted
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