Biko, Black Consciousness and Soweto

What the specification asks for

“including Nelson Mandela, ANC, Biko and Black Consciousness. Other forms of civil disobedience, including anti-pass law demonstrations, Sharpeville (1960), Spear of the Nation (1961) and Soweto (1976) and their consequences.” — examined through change and significance. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The vacuum of the 1960s

After Rivonia the internal opposition had been destroyed. The ANC and PAC were banned and their leaders imprisoned or in exile; the security legislation of the 1960s permitted detention without trial for lengthening periods; and the economy grew strongly, which made the regime look permanent to almost everybody, including many of its opponents.

What filled the vacuum came from an unexpected direction. Steve Biko, a medical student, broke with the multiracial national student organisation in 1968 and founded the South African Students' Organisation, on the argument that black people needed to organise separately — not because white liberals were insincere but because dependence on them reproduced the psychological subordination that apartheid existed to enforce.

What Black Consciousness argued

The central claim was that the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Liberation therefore had to begin psychologically: with the refusal of the categories, the assertion that black was an inclusive political identity covering African, Coloured and Indian, and the rejection of the idea that dignity was something to be granted.

The movement spread through universities, schools, churches and community projects during the early 1970s, at a time when the political organisations were illegal and invisible. It was not a political party and did not attempt to be, which is partly why the security police were slow to see it as a threat.

Its practical importance was that it created a generation of school and university students who did not regard the system as permanent, in a country where nobody had visibly resisted for a decade. That is the condition for 1976.

16 June 1976 and after

The immediate cause was a decree that half the subjects in African secondary schools were to be taught in Afrikaans. It was widely resented as unworkable — many teachers did not speak it well enough to teach in it — and as symbolic in the sharpest way, since Afrikaans was the language of the government that had built the system.

On 16 June some ten thousand Soweto schoolchildren marched in protest. The police opened fire. Hector Pieterson, aged twelve, was among the first killed, and the photograph of his body being carried became one of the defining images of the period. Protest spread across the country over the following months and hundreds were killed; the official total was 575 and other estimates are considerably higher.

In September 1977 Steve Biko died in police custody in Pretoria after being transported naked in the back of a vehicle for over a thousand kilometres with untreated head injuries. The inquest found no one responsible. The international response included the mandatory UN arms embargo of November 1977, and Biko's death is the single event most often identified as the point at which the regime lost the argument abroad.

The consequence for the movements is the one candidates most often miss. Thousands of young people left South Africa in the two years after June 1976, crossing into Botswana, Swaziland and Mozambique to join the ANC and the PAC in exile. Organisations that had been ageing and starved of recruits since Rivonia were transformed within eighteen months by a generation that had already been on the streets. The rising the exiles had not organised became the source of the manpower they had lacked for a decade, which is why 1976 matters as much for the 1980s as for the 1970s.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1968–72

Biko founds SASO; Black Consciousness spreads through campuses, schools and community projects. Why this date: It rebuilds a politics of resistance during a decade in which the political organisations were banned and invisible.

16 June 1976

Soweto schoolchildren march against compulsory Afrikaans instruction; police open fire. Why this date: It begins the largest internal challenge to the regime since 1960, and it was organised by pupils rather than by the exiled movements.

September 1977

Steve Biko dies in police custody. Why this date: It produces the mandatory UN arms embargo and is widely identified as the moment the regime lost the international argument.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• 575 — The official death toll for the protests following June 1976. (The figure is the government's own; other estimates are considerably higher and no independent count was possible.)
• About 10,000 — Schoolchildren estimated to have marched in Soweto on 16 June 1976.
• 12 — The age of Hector Pieterson, among the first killed on 16 June 1976.

The people to place

• Steve Biko — Founder of SASO and the leading voice of Black Consciousness; died in police custody in 1977.
• Hector Pieterson — Twelve-year-old schoolboy killed on 16 June 1976; the photograph of his body became the period's defining image.
• Desmond Tutu — Anglican churchman who became one of the most prominent internal opponents of the system in the years that followed.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'Black Consciousness made 1976' reading: The rising was produced by a decade of psychological and organisational work among students that the banned movements had no part in, and the exiled organisations were beneficiaries rather than authors. Contested by The reading that stresses material conditions — overcrowded schools, an economy slowing after 1973, the collapse of Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Mozambique in 1974–75 — and treats the Afrikaans decree as a trigger for pressures that had built independently..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The ANC organised the Soweto uprising.

This: It was organised by school students, and the exiled movements were caught unprepared. Their principal gain was the thousands of young people who left the country afterwards and joined them in exile.

Not this: Soweto was about Afrikaans and nothing else.

This: The language decree was the trigger. The grievances behind it were Bantu Education itself, overcrowding, and a system the students had been taught was permanent and had decided was not.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Black Consciousness and the ANC's non-racialism.

The distinction: The ANC's Freedom Charter declared that South Africa belongs to all who live in it; Black Consciousness argued that black people must organise separately first. The two were in genuine tension in the 1970s, and treating them as the same movement misses why 1976 surprised the exiles.

Blurred: The trigger and the causes of 1976.

The distinction: The Afrikaans decree is the trigger. The causes are Bantu Education's expansion, the psychological work of Black Consciousness, and the changed regional position after the Portuguese withdrawal. Answers that stop at the language have explained a date and not an event.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer connects 1976 back to 1953. The regime built the schools, filled them beyond capacity, taught in them that their pupils were destined for subordination, and then decreed that half the teaching be in the language of the government — and the generation it had created marched. Bantu Education did not merely fail to prevent the rising; it assembled the population that carried it out and gave them somewhere to assemble.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The point that pupils organised it and the exiled movements did not. It is the fact that makes 1976 a change in the character of resistance rather than a continuation of it.

The cap that bites here: The 16-mark question requires three aspects; Black Consciousness, the schools and the international response are the natural three.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. What impression does the author give about the Soweto uprising of 1976? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
2. Explain two causes of the Soweto uprising of 1976. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Explain two effects of the death of Steve Biko in 1977. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'Black Consciousness was the most important development in resistance to apartheid in the 1970s.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'The Soweto uprising was caused by Bantu Education.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds 2 Decide History judgements — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: What ended apartheid? · What did the armed struggle achieve?.

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: Spear of the Nation and the Treason and Rivonia trials
• Next lesson: The extent of threats to apartheid by 1978 and the international reaction
• Also in this key topic: Anti-pass demonstrations and Sharpeville
• Key topic 3 · Resisting apartheid, 1955–78 · South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of South Africa: Setting up apartheid, 1948–54 · The growth of apartheid, 1955–59 · PW Botha – response to resistance, 1978–90 · Dismantling Apartheid, 1990–94