Luther Professor delivers lecture on anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko

(by decorahnews.com's Ben Gardner):

On Tuesday, Martin Klammer, a professor of English at Luther College, will deliver a lecture entitled: "Steve Biko: Black Consciousness as Resistance to the Apartheid State." Klammer's presentation is part of the 2019-2020 Texts and Issues Lecture Series, a series of faculty lectures throughout the academic year. The theme of this year's series is "resistance and resilience." Klammer's lecture will be delivered on Tuesday in the CFL Recital Hall, with a reception to follow in Qualley Lounge.

Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist, influential in South African nationalist and socialist causes during the 1960s and 1970s. Klammer's presentation will examine Biko's influence on the South African anti-apartheid movement during his life and following his death.

For much of his academic career, Klammer has been interested in Steve Biko. In our interview, he described Biko as the "primary spokesperson, in the 1960s and '70s, for the philosophy and political cause known as the Black Consciousness Movement." The Black Consciousness Movement advocated ending apartheid, forming a socialist economy in South Africa, and the mission of universal suffrage.

"Biko was passionate about changing one's consciousness as a black person," said Klammer in interview, "and not simply being a tool of the whites, but to be a human being: proud, self-determining, with a history and a hand in determining your future."

Biko was opposed to the apartheid system of racial segregation and white-minority rule in South Africa. He was active in anti-apartheid political movements as a young man, but was frustrated that white liberals controlled anti-apartheid groups like the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). In response, Biko formed the South African Students' Organization (SASO), to ensure blacks had influence in the anti-apartheid movement.

Biko, Klammer notes, was influenced by philosopher Frantz Fanon and Black Power activist Malcom X. Both thinkers contributed to Biko's theory of black consciousness, reinforcing his psychological insights into "black suffering, self-determination, and pride," said Klammer.

Klammer notes he didn't appreciate the death of Jesus until he reflected on the death of Steve Biko, who died following a brutal interrogation and beating by police officers in Port Elizabeth. Klammer said: "I saw what it means to give yourself up for a cause and a community."

Martin Klammer is professor of English at Luther College. He teaches American and South Africa literature and in the Paideia program. He has led January term courses in South Africa since 1998 and has lived and taught in Cape Town and Johannesburg while on sabbaticals. He has published two books on South Africa. "In the Dark With My Dress on Fire: My Life in Cape Town, London, Havana, and Home Again," co-written with Blanche La Guma, is a memoir of her life as a nurse-midwife and anti-apartheid activist. "Out, Out Brief Candle!: Macbeth Comes to Africa's Children of Fire," relates his experiences as a volunteer with children seriously burned in shack fires, tutoring them in personal writing and performing an abbreviated version of Macbeth. His work with Zwai Mgijima, a South African playwright, was the inspiration for this lecture on Steve Biko and Black Consciousness.