Steve Biko was undoubtedly the most influential South African liberation struggle theorist and activist of the 1970s. Rick Turner was arguably among the most effectual white anti-apartheid activists of the era. Biko espoused black consciousness while Turner was a Marxist philosopher. Biko (30) was murdered by apartheid police in 1977. Turner (36) was shot dead by an apartheid assassin in 1978. Their ideas continue to resonate. Political scientist and philosopher Michael Onyebuchi Eze sets out, in a chapter of a new book, Rick Turner’s Politics as the Art of the Impossible, how the two men’s philosophies mirrored and critiqued each other. The Conversation Africa asked him to explain.
What were Turner’s and Biko’s philosophies?
Following almost three centuries of colonialism, the National Party came into power in South Africa in 1948. It formalised apartheid (apartness) into law. The policy kept black people and white people apart, and discriminated against the black majority. In 1960, the apartheid regime banned the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress liberation movements.
