This was the work of the Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko. Biko was one of the African students who had joined NUSAS. But he and others chafed at the paternalism and hegemony of the group’s white organizers and struck out on their own. They founded the South African Students’ Organization, a group open only to blacks. While this may have seemed like a reinvestment in apartheid, it was anything but. By “blacks,” Biko and others promoting Black Consciousness meant African, Indian, and Coloured students. Black Consciousness was a historic rupture with the mindset of apartheid.
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