It's very interesting because at that time
South Africa was a very closed society but
we were fortunate to have Charles Sibisi whose
parents were teaching at the university.
So he got material out of the university library.
That helped us to catch up.
And he used to listen to BBC.
[Charles Sibisi was an anti-apartheid student
activists who served in the leadership of
the South African Students’ Organization,
a national Black students’ group opposed
to the apartheid government.]
We didn’t have access to television at the
time so he was our international gatherer
of information.
So we were very much inspired by the student
movement internationally.
We were inspired by the black power movement
in the United States.
We were inspired by Martin Luther King.
We're inspired by Malcolm X so we drew on
all of those but we also were inspired by
Frantz Fanon whose writings spoke to this
issue of psychology color oppression.
That if you allow yourself to be imprisoned,
to be oppressed, you are in a sense acquiescing
to your oppression.
He encouraged our thinking about identity
politics and the importance of a mind that
is free even though you live in an unfree
society.
[Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968)
was an American clergyman and civil rights
leader.
King used nonviolent civil disobedience to
press for civil rights for African-Americans.
Malcolm X (1925 – 1965) was an African-American
leader and prominent figure in the Nation
of Islam who articulated concepts of racial
pride and Black Nationalism in the 1950s and
'60s.
Frantz Fanon (1925 – 1961) was a Martinique-born
Afro-French writer and psychiatrist known
for his controversial anticolonial scholarship.
His works inspired postcolonial and Black
liberation movements around the world.]
We also were inspired by the Negritude Movement
with people, particularly in the West Indies
who were writing about the Negritude Movement.
The importance of black people or people of
African descent who are scattered around the
world to reimagine themselves and to capture
the heritage that they represent because that
is what is needed to make the world a better
place.
[Negritude was a literary and ideological
movement of the 1930s-1950s that began among
French-speaking African and Caribbean writers.
It rejected European colonization and emphasized
black pride and traditional African values.]
