Black People's Convention
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The Black People's Convention (BPC) was founded at the end of 1972 as the Nationalist Liberatory Flagship of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). The BCM was a product of three historical/cultural and ideological imperatives:
- Black students were tired of the hypocrisy of white liberal college/university students of apartheid South Africa.
- Blacks were undermining tribal/nationalist divide and rule by white South African governments.
- Young people globally were taking their part in the international radical/revolutionary militancy of the mid and late sixties.
African students in South Africa with Bantu Steve Biko decided neither to appease the liberal left nor accommodate the conservative right; they said "BLACK MAN/WOMAN, YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN". This had happened already in the US since 1966. African students galvanized black people with "colored and Asian Indians" in South Africa as Black People.
The BPC was founded by the Black communities from various ethnic and national groups in South Africa, excluding white Europeans. The BPC went farther than the ANC's civil rights integrationist agenda and agreed with the Pan African Congress on "National Land" repossesion. They went further by espousing scientific socialism under the guise of "Black Communalism".
When the BPC was gaining ideological hegemony over the leadership of Blacks in the country, Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi was given permision by the apartheid government to go to London and meet the ANC leadership. Later he formed the Inkatha Cultural Movement, claiming allegiance to Black Consciousness but "not communism or socialism".
Bantu Steve Biko was the first among equals in the leadership of the BPC, although he was legally not a member as he was outlawed or banned. That restricted him to his home from 6pm till 6am and he was not allowed to belong to any political or social organization. The BPC was to the South African Student Organization ((SASO)) South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement the same role that the Black Panther Party (BPP) was to SNCC and the Black Power Movement.
The BPC, like the BPP in the USA was attacked and destroyed by the system but rose like a phoenix in 1978 as the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO). In exile from 1974 onwards BCM activists and organizers re-built the movement as the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA) and in 1980, became the external wing of AZAPO, with an interim executive leadership committee.
In 1981 the founding National Organizer, Mosibudi Mangena was nominated to be the Chairperson of the Botswana Region of the BCMA and later by 1983, a motion was moved asking the Botswana Chapter to invite other external branches to dissolve the BCMA Interim Committee.
This was done and Mosibudi Mangena was elected in 1983. He became Chairperson of the BCMA in exile, as national organizer on a tour of branches and regions. The AZAPO of today in South Africa has Mosibudi as its President - historic continuation.
The three factors that led to BPC founding its ideology can be found in the indigenous culture of resistance. The ideology is no further from the Convention People's Party of Ghana and the politics not unlike that of the Black Panther Party - hence the Black Peoples Convention.