SOUTH AFRICA THE PERSONALITIES

Bantu Steven Biko

You are Bantu Steven Biko. You are a black South African born on December 18, 1946 in King William's Town, South Africa. In 1966, you enrolled in the University of Natal to study medicine. You did very well, but you became more interested in what became your life's work. You became a member of many black liberation organizations on campus and became so involved that you eventually dropped out of school and fought for black liberation full time. You are a new kind of leader. You never proclaim yourself as a leader, force people to follow you, nor ever really form any kind of group or organization of any kind. You feel that freeing black South Africans is a struggle led by many, everyone, not by a few people, and especially not by one. You feel that it is everyone's job to educated everyone on the difficulties and
the struggles of everyday life as a black person in South Africa. You are a writer, a speech maker, and especially a teacher, educating everyone who will listen, and many who will not.
You are a believer in a new movement called Black Consciousness. You have become the unofficial leader of it and have been the one who can explain what it is better than any other. For decades, almost 100 years, black South Africans had been told by the Dutch and then the British that they were worthless, lower than human beings, nothing. They were told time and again, and it was proven to them through the actions of the white Europeans that they were somehow inferior. Now, generations later, the black South Africans were acting as if they believe it. Black Consciousness teaches that blacks need to foremost be independent, they must not depend upon the white for any reason. It teaches that blacks must be totally self-reliant, they must not even depend on whites who believe in the black cause. Many whites who believed in black rights believed in a nonracial society, one in which no one recognized any ethnic background at all. This was unacceptable under Black Consciousness
Under Black Consciousness, the most powerful weapon blacks have to free themselves is the knowledge that they are being oppressed and held down by the whites. By realizing this and helping other blacks to realize this, the black South Africans can come together, and stand up to the white Apartheid government with pride in themselves.
You and Black Consciousness do not believe in violence or in the violent overthrow of Apartheid. Instead, you believe that when all blacks become conscious of their situation and power that they will be able to peacefully bring the white South Africans to their senses. By mass demonstration you feel that you can alert all of South Africa as well
as the world to the problems facing black South Africans. You feel that since blacks are more than 90% of the population they can financially cripple the country by refusing to buy products from white stores and encouraging other countries not to trade with or buy products from South Africa.
The main focus of Black Consciousness is he idea that Blacks know what the government is doing to them, but Black Consciousness teaches people to not give in to what the government is doing to them, but to resist it, to struggle against it and to change it.

Nelson Mandela The Youngster

You are Nelson Mandela. You are a black South African descended from
a Xhosa Chieftain's family. Due to this all the pride and faith of your village was put into you. Your village paid for you to have a good high school education and even paid for you to go to law school. You and your law partner became the first black lawyers to open an office in an all white city. Early on in life you became interested in and active in the movement to free black South Africans from the grip of Apartheid.
You joined an organization called the African National Congress or ANC. The ANC is a black resistance organization whose reason for being was the end of Apartheid. The ANC was formed in 1912 and was greatly influenced by the Indian resistance leader Mahatma Gandhi. It believed in black nationalism or black pride and self-worth. It also believed in nonviolent protest of means of changing the situation of black South Africans. The usual weapons were strikes, civil disobedience, and boycotts of white owned businesses.
In March, 1960, your views on nonviolence changed. In Sharpeville, an Hall black nonviolent protest was being held. The majority of those in attendance were students who had chosen to skip school that day to struggle against Apartheid. Police officers arrived en masse and ordered the protesters to disperse. When they refused, the police opened fire on the group of unarmed nonviolent protesters. Seventy were killed, many of them shot in the back as they ran away, while 180 were seriously wounded.
After this massacre, many black South Africans became convinced that nonviolence would never work and would only continue to get people killed. Sensing this was happening, you pushed the ANC to form the Umkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of the Nation. The Spear of the Nation became the militant wing of ANC and it was led by you. You went underground and trained yourself and others in military skills and sabotage. You were afraid that if you didn't lead and guide the violence that others would engage in violence, causing death and destruction to many innocent people, including themselves. You feel that you should lead the violence, giving the people hope. You choose to destroy targets that will damage the government offices and bring financial ruin, but not cause many deaths. Within a few months, you are captured and sentenced to life in prison.

Nelson Mandela The Older

After twenty-eight years in prison, longer than any other life prison sentence in South African history you are released. The president who is presiding over South Africa at this time is F.W. DeKlerk, an Afrikaner who up until this point has been a firm and strict believer in racial separation under the Apartheid government.
Over the years while you were imprisoned on Robben's Island, you maintained control over the African National Congress and gaining national as well as international fame. You become a symbol of the hope and freedom that Black Africans can attain. After years in prison you realize that the movement towards violence was wrong. You feel the best way to cause change is by
gaining international attention to the problems in South Africa. You feel that nonviolent protest and international recognition of your struggles is the only way to solve South Africa's problems.

Arch-Bishop Mpilo Desmond Tutu

You are the Arch-Bishop for the Anglican Church in South Africa. When L you were assigned to this very high position within the church you were not allowed to live in the beautiful house the arch-bishop always lives in because it was located in an all white city. You told the local police chief that he had his duty and you had yours and that he could arrest you if he wished but you and your wife would be living in the arch-bishop's residence. From the pulpit, your entire career as a minister has been dedicated to nonviolence You speak
often of how Jesus Christ turned the other cheek when wronged, but how he never moved, but always held his ground. You believe strongly that Apartheid can and should be ended with nonviolent means. You always attempt to appeal to white Christians. You attempt to explain to them that if you are a true Christian than how can you turn your back on them and hold them down, repressing them. You feel that if all the Christian people in the world unite and realize what is occurring in South Africa, then the world will change. In 1986 you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for your nonviolent efforts against the Apartheid government of South Africa.

The Unconvinced

You are all Black South Africans who heard that Steven Biko, Nelson Mandela, and Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu were all going to speak in a Resistance Festival in a nearby black township. Looking for inspiration and direction in how to resist you attend. It is your task, to thoroughly question each resistance leader during the Socratic Seminar portion of the simulation, and then decide which, if any, resistance leader you will follow. Be sure to have sound reasons for your choice, because you will need to share them at the -end of the discussion.

1. You are a Black South African mother of three. You were ten years old in 1960 and remember the Sharpeville Massacre well. In fact, it is the first political event you can remember. You will never forget the pictures of the bodies from the television news, nor the stories of the older township children who were actually there. It was around that time that your awareness of Apartheid began to grow. As your awareness began to grow, so did an anger and a rage. Early in high school, you became active in the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress. One day at an inter-township football game (soccer), you heard Steven Biko speak with an eloquence you had never heard before. He moved you and inspired you so much, you began to read and collect every one of his "Fred Talk, I Write What I like", newspaper columns. In 1976, you participated in the Soweto Uprisings. To this day, you cannot truly believe the brutality and sheer mercilessness that the internal police force showed the unarmed peaceful demonstrators. You lost many friends that day and even more in the riots which took place after the massacre. Not only did the police burn and loot but even black South Africans.....buring and looting their own impoverished townships. You are still active and still believe, but now you are a mother of three. As Apartheid continues, your children begin to get more and more active and are becoming more and more aware, both of their own oppression and the struggles which are taking place against it everyday. You have two recurring nightmares. The first, that your children give in or are swallowed up by Apartheid, becoming slaves to the system....the other, that they become activists, who end up dead,
tortured, in prison, or even worse, just disappear.....

2.You are an 18 year old Black South African. You have carried your passbook for three years now, and each year, it becomes more and more heavy. You are graduating this year and will be fluent in English and Afrikaans, but struggle to understand a few words and phrases of your native Xshosha language that few seem to know. You are fascinated by the stories of Steven Biko and the Black Consciousness struggle to peacefully struggle against the Afrikaans educational system. Nelson Mandela remains in jail, but you are inspired by how he managed to open the first black law office in Johannesburg. You heard Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the radio the other day and were inspired by his
hope for a peaceful resolution to the Apartheid system. It has been two weeks since your older 23 year old brother didn't come home from a protest march. You and your father looked everywhere, the protest grounds for his body, the hospital, the police station, and even the morgue. He was nowhere to be found. With every passing day, your father drifts into a bottle of whiskey, and drift into an uncontrollable rage.

3. You are a 25 year old graduate student. You were one of the lucky ones. When you were 16, you won a tennis and academic scholarship out of the black townships and into an American private school. From there you
attended Harvard and UCLA. Now, on a Fulbright Scholarship, you have returned to South Africa to help free her from the bonds of Apartheid. Although you only carried a passbook for one year, you watched people carry theirs for 15 years. You watched them struggle and resist your entire life. While in America you finally understood what the word freedom meant and what the possibilities of South Africa could be. Although you were thousands of miles away, South Africa was never far from your consciousness.

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