Sipping Whiskey in Memphis

Robert Bernasconi (RB): Jonathan, to get us started, tell me about your background and what brought you to focus on the intersections of existentialism and racism?Jonathan Judaken (JJ): Well, I grew up in a Jewish family in Johannesburg in Apartheid South Africa. And I think all of those very specific facets of my upbringing are important to the trajectory of my work. My work has been a process of unthinking and dismantling and coming to terms with a past, a family, a legacy that very much defines who I am. I’m attempting to understand myself within the broader frameworks within which I grew up. I left South Africa permanently when I was twelve. This was in the immediate aftermath of the Soweto Riots that were steered by the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa, under the leadership of Steve Biko, a thinker whose framework is so clearly influenced by existentialism.

Sam C. Nolutshungu: Race, Reform, Resistance and the Black Consciousness Movement

This paper excavates and historically contextualizes the political theory of a largely neglected thinker within South African black intellectual history, Sam C. Nolutshungu. It seeks to rectify the current imbalance in South African intellectual history which largely neglects or effaces the contribution of black thinkers in the colonial or Apartheid period notwithstanding significant black contributions in theorizing racial submission, domination, reform and popular resistance in the context of state oppression. In this paper I argue that two such areas of inquiry are present in Nolutshungu’s overall position on political reform. The first is with regards to his intervention in the race- class debates which dominated political and intellectual discussions during the late Apartheid period. Here, Nolutshungu, argues that political domination could not be reformed with simple concessions as a result of its racially exclusionary nature. Thus Nolutshungu argued that race rather than class was the fundamental source of domination. The second is the theoretical evaluation of the social and political significance of the Black Consciousness Movement as an important symbol of resistance and racial solidarity. The link between these two aspects of his thought, I argue are not insignificant and should be carefully considered. Nolutshungu’s valuable analysis on the route to political reform is strengthened by his evaluation of the role of the Black Consciousness Movement, which for Nolutshungu was an instance of how resistance was mobilized along racial rather than class lines. Moreover, the Black Consciousness Movement not only prioritized the question of race as a primary factor in its mode of resistance but served to illustrate how and why meaningful change in South Africa was contingent on the abolition of racial oppression and the overturning of the institutions of Apartheid. Finally, I argue that there is a contextual urgency in undertaking projects that seek to establish the importance of black intellectual ideas and reclaiming these ideas in order to give content and meaning to contested contemporary debates on justice, legitimacy, liberty, equality and land rights in South Africa. While the discourse of the negotiated settlement and reconciliation sparks intense debate often resulting in greater forms of racial polarisation, historical rumination and reflection offers a powerful and enduring opportunity for collective inquiry.

Movement intellectuals engaging the grassroots: A strategy perspective on the Black Consciousness Movement

Drawing upon activist interviews and framing theory this article proposes that the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) is better understood not by focusing on the objective status of its leadership as middle-class intellectuals, but by instead looking at what these ‘movement intellectuals’ subjectively did to link their philosophy of liberation to the lifeworlds of those they sought to engage. It argues that this shift reveals three important features of social movements and movement intellectuals more generally. Firstly, it uncovers the meaningful, value-driven, emotional and collective-identity bases for action, alongside the more familiar instrumental motivations. Secondly, given the inevitable clash between movement intent and the contingent constraints under which movements invariably operate, it argues that movement success is better judged not by external criteria that are assumed to hold universally, but instead by reference to the unique strategic intentions articulated by movements themselves. Finally, it shows how, given heterogeneous audiences, the deployment of a diversity of grounded intellectual strategies can help augment the resonance of a movement’s core political message.

Ideas and Political Mobilization in Africa

Ideas play a key role in political mobilization around the world, and often ideas travel cross-nationally. It is important to recognize the diverse influences and iterative processes that produce political ideologies and influence mobilization. The sociological literature on diffusion offers scholars a framework for thinking about and recognizing the channels through which ideas move. When tracing such channels, scholars must also be cognizant of the ways that movement of this sort affects ideas and ideologies themselves; international concepts will always be read through domestic lenses, and local realities prompt reinterpretation of global ideas. The Black Consciousness Movement offers a case study to analyze some key channels through which global ideas moved and impacted a university student movement in 1970s South Africa. Influenced by anti-colonialism and antiracism discourses originating in Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States, Black Consciousness thinkers took these ideas and refashioned them into their own ideology. They used relational networks as well as channels like art, theatre, fashion, and development projects to mobilize a constituency and to propagate their own ideas, which have endured beyond the end of the formal Black Consciousness Movement.

Itumeleng Mosala: Giving Theology Its World, Feet and Hands

Worthy of celebration is the contribution made by Itumeleng Mosala (hereafter Mosala) to the Black Methodist Consultation, the theological community in Southern Africa, and the Black Consciousness Movement. This article attempts to give theology its world, feet and hands in the person of Mosala. The article departs from the narration of the history of Mosala. It locates Mosala within township life and Old Testament scholarship. Furthermore, the article searches for suitable and effective weapons of intellectual struggle in light of Mosala’s life. The aim of this article is to celebrate the indelible footprints that Mosala made as he communed with black people.

Van Wyk, Christopher (1957–2014)

Born in Baragwanath, Soweto, Chris van Wyk proved an influential figure on the South African literary scene. Associated with the Black Consciousness movement, his volume of poems titled It Is Time to Go Home (1979) won the Olive Schreiner Prize of 1980. In the same year he would begin his five-year term as editor of Staffrider journal, which proved such an important outlet for the black protest poetry of the period. He launched Wietie magazine, which sought to provide a platform to recuperate the Sophiatown argot known as tsotsitaal or gangster-speak. The venture was not successful, but demonstrated his skill at crossing cultural and racial boundaries through linguistic means, a type of textual experimentalism not without a foundation in lived experience. Linguistic play can also be seen, for instance, in the title of his 2004 memoir, Shirley, Goodness & Mercy: A Childhood Memoir, a Joycean title, based on the punning of proper names.