We Can Fix Ourselves Building a better South Africa through Black Consciousness

Abstract

Scholarship on Black Consciousness in the so-called post-apartheid South Africa is not as prominent as its counterpart within the
Congress tradition. The fundamental reason for this is the hegemony and pervasiveness of whiteness and its aversion to the Black Radical Tradition. Another reason is the “success” of the Congress tradition as epitomized by the ANC through its so-called negotiations to usher in an era that is compatible with its political vision of a non-racial constitutional new South Africa. It is in this sense that the intellectual and ideological marginalization of the Azanian tradition which Black Consciousness is a part of, is intimately linked to the “failure” of its political vision. In other words, the triumph of the democratisation paradigm, instead of the decolonisation paradigm (Ramose, 2005) is not only political but is also epistemological and ideological.