“Let me hasten to say that I am not claiming that segregation is necessarily the natural order; however, given the facts of the situation where a group experiences privilege at the expense of others, then it becomes obvious that a hastily arranged integration cannot be the solution to the problem.
It is rather like expecting the slave to work together with the slave-master’s son to remove all the conditions leading to the former’s enslavement.”
—Steve Biko, ‘Black Souls In White Skins?’
It seems inescapable that student journalists and activists are criticised as unproductive, utopianistic, and symbolic by cynics. We are interrogated for our purpose and significance; where our positions lay within a spectrum of influencers in press and politics. Inherently, these criticisms assume there is no sense of change profound enough that student groups could practically generate. We are confronted with the idea that perhaps the golden age of university activism and journalism is only discoverable through archives of past papers and meeting minutes between the sixties and the nineties.
Undoubtedly, there is much to revise. As Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist and international martyr for South African nationalism, was elected publications director for SASO (South African Students Organisation) in 1970, the following year saw the historical emergence of his monthly column titled ‘I Write What I Like’.
Biko’s writing and broader student activism cultivated the Black consciousness political philosophy, allowing publics to realise the incompatibility between white–liberal processes of racially bilateral ‘integration’, with a complete structural and cultural abolition of apartheid.
This demand for Pan Africanism; the realisation of South Africans’ capacity to organise against its settler regime, necessarily flourished. The context of criminalisation and exile in the African fight for autonomy meant SASO and like-minded groups were burdened to sustain apartheid abolitionism in the absence of the ANC (African National Congress) and PAC (Pan African Congress). Biko’s practise in student journalism and activism responded to his ultimate concern, that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
Honi was staunchly involved in the reporting on the apartheid regime. A 1977 article titled ‘Zionist Imperialism’ informed students “Israel [had] already been criticised in the UN for its large arms exports to the South African government in violation of the UN arms embargo to the regime.”
In this same issue on a later page, is an analysis of the Australian government’s complicity toward the regime, beside a demonstration notice demanding ‘no ties to apartheid!’ The role of Honi as an outlet for reportage and political analysis is evidenced through these archives, platforming academically informed critiques in a weekly press context otherwise absent from the mainstream media.
At the time, Honi was particularly self aware, “contrary to press reports which give the impression of isolated, spontaneous riots incited by ‘gangs’ of black youths, the present resistance is the outcome of several years of organisation and consciousness raising.”
In an age where political censorship is more subtle, There is now an overwhelming impression that student activism and journalism have dwindled in importance. Our contemporary media landscape is overwhelmed with instantaneous broadcast; containing material irrespective of cultural insensitivities and ‘alternative facts’. An aspect of political censorship may not be as self-evident, but is now integral to the institution of news media primarily through emotive appeal. This attempt to systematically delegitimise grassroots politics is a sneaky parallel to the once blatant censorship within the red scare political climate, or today’s open critique of zionism invoking similar hysteria.
Ultimately we are confronted with the question of Honi’s function in today’s politics and economy; in this neoliberalism, late-stage capitalism or techno-feudalism. Should it be to trigger; to empower; to complain?
It seems unproductive to question why we bother continuing protests and writing when it could have been more widely appreciated before the emergence of instantaneous, internet news. But the political aspirations and idealisms of weighted words alike to Biko’s are necessary to the drive of student activists and authors. It is plain we take ourselves and the products of our actions and beliefs more seriously than our uninvolved peers, though this self-awareness is what enables space to scrutinise the institutions we study at and live amongst. It seems the function of education for once transcends corporatism.
There lies opportunities for human solidarity to form between shared loves or hatreds; wants for better lives beyond the tightening grasp of course cuts, insecure working conditions and deteriorating education standards. The question is thus no longer about why we believe in a deserved sense of seriousness by the public. Instead, the role of Honi becomes self-validating; that without a press and politics led by students, there is a prevention of critical consciousness, whether through realisation, provocation or compulsion.
