Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon, two of the most important Black Power thinkers of the 20th century, have had a rough week in South Africa.
Driving with Fanon, a film by Kwena Mokoena, was recently screened at Wits University. This film simply uses the name of Fanon as a marketing ploy — we wait to drive with Fanon but the man simply never arrives. In the end we are subjected to the distortions of Fanon’s ideas by a filmmaker who is either a Buddhist or a Ghandian, with no capacity to appreciate Fanon’s creative and liberating conceptions of revolutionary violence.
Similarly, Martin Koboekae’s Biko: Where the Soul Resides is a crushing disappointment. The play, as expected, was criticised when it was first mooted, a criticism that was affirmed by the Biko family’s refusal to endorse it. Although no artist should wait for endorsement from anyone, more so family members of a public figure, the play fails on its own accord where it matters most — to give us a “wholesome Biko”.
It seeks to portray “the man behind the icon” by giving us Biko the activist and the person, warts and all. I left the theatre without any new insights into either Biko the person or the revolutionary. Instead, the play could be read as a bad cut-and-paste job of Biko’s I Write What I Like. We are subjected to an out-of-context rendition of passages from Biko’s writing and a staid performance by actors who never really get into their characters. The poor actors had to breathe life into a script that couldn’t be rescued.
As far as Biko the person goes, the biggest revelation of his “flaws and wrongs” is the well-known secret of his extramarital affairs.
The setting is more of a shebeen with drunks in conversation, or rather an overdose of speeches. You may be forgiven for thinking that the movement Biko and his comrades built was nothing more than a conglomeration of alcoholics.
Biko is portrayed as a Malema-esque rabble-rouser who toyi-toyis. Gone is the gentle giant with an incredible persuasive capacity coming from the depth of his philosophical dexterity rather than the wordsmith who operates at the level of rhetorical superficiality, which is the Biko the play represents.
Perhaps the worst portrayal is that of Biko’s close friend and rebel to the end, Strini Moodley, who was one of the few Indians who managed to become completely black. In the hands of Koboekae, Moodley ends up as an Indian nationalist who is nothing but a prop.
Dr Mamphela Ramphele, one of the most powerful and dynamic figures of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in the 1970s, is reduced to a blonde typist for Biko. The anti-patriarchy rebellion by women in the BCM, which found expression in women behaving “badly”, such as wearing miniskirts, drinking and doing what they pleased, is turned on its head in the play. Rebellious figures such as Deborah Matshoba, who shaped the black feminist practice in the BCM, would surely find such distortions disconcerting. The miniskirt and high heels were not ornaments to entice but bricks to throw at patriarchy.
What appears to be a failure to enter the souls of the BCM characters is actually a failure to appreciate fully the implications and meaning of black consciousness and its relation to both the apartheid state and the existing movements, including the white-dominated National Union of South African Students (Nusas). As a result, Biko’s critique of ANC ideology and the practice of non-racialism and its implications are missed. The fundamental philosophical rupture of the BCM from the foundations of the ANC are unexplored. There is a sense that the play artificially marries Biko’s version of liberation to that of Nusas and the ANC. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As early as 1972 Biko warned about a democracy that would leave 70% of the black population in poverty and marginalisation. He warned: “If we have a mere change of face of those in governing positions what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor, and you will see a few blacks filtering through into the so-called bourgeoisie. Our society will be run almost as [it was] yesterday.” This is a fundamental insight of Biko’s philosophy.
Contenders in the battle for the soul of Biko should try harder to pay attention to the meaning of his thinking and how it shaped his life. There is a deafening silence on the 1976 Black Power uprising, Biko’s ultimate influence.
Koboekae would have done better to do a play on Mandela, because his predisposition is towards reconciliation, not Black Power. In the play we see Biko sacrificing his life in a quest to convince his white working-class torturer about the sameness between blacks and whites. That is Mandela, not Biko.