Volume 26, Number 6 · April 19, 1979
South Africa: What Is Black?
By Xan Smiley
Black Power in South Africa: The Evolution of an Ideology
by Gail M. Gerhart
University of California Press, 364 pp., $14.50
I Write What I Like
by Steve Biko, edited by Aelred Stubbs C.R.
Harper and Row, 216 pp., $8.95
Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa
edited by Millard Arnold
Random House, 298 pp., $5.95 (paper)
It is a stark indication of black nationalism's tortuous crawl toward an independent South Africa that the question of how to regard whites opposed to apartheid still—after thirty years—engenders more rancor within nationalist circles than does the conduct of whites defending the laager itself. The gulf between the multiracial African National Congress (ANC) and the 'exclusivist' Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) has never been wider nor the differences more bitterly divisive. Both movements were outlawed in 1960 and forced into exile or underground. Since then, the realization by the leaders that violence is now the surest method of contesting white rule has prompted them to seek arms from conflicting international camps—thus further increasing the risk of factional war, should the white citadel start to crumble.
Review, 5713 words
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