Steve Biko Interview

22 GAIL M. GERHART

Between 1960 and 1967, the only strong elements of dissent came

from groups like NUSAS [National Union of South African Students], the

Progressive Party, particularly the Young Progressives, and elements of the

Liberal Party that had diffused into other organizations like Defense and

Aid-which were in fact white organizations, white dominated in terms of

members but open in terms of membership. The best blacks could do was

just to be there, and to allow whites to speak on their behalf. And all blacks

were doing all this time was just to clap and say "amen."

In '67 the [NUSAS] conference had some inroads. We went there

expecting to stay on the campus. As we were leaving we got word that the

conference was in fact going to be segregated, in the sense that although

we would be at the university, whites would stay in one residence and we

would stay in another. Our immediate response was that conference must

close; this was my own response-until the organizers can find a proper

venue. It was my first year within the movement, and I had sort of sorted

out a few ideas, from friends and from reading. The conference proceeded,

but I had made up my mind at that stage that this was a dead organization;

it wouldn't listen to us, and that no useful and forthright opinion can be

expressed from the aegis of this organization. So what I began to do even

at that conference was to begin to caucus with the blacks.

And then the next move we made was the following year [at the NUSAS

conference in July 19681. What we ultimately did was to use an occasion

that arose over this permit law. There was a big argument. Africans

can only stay for 72 hours within a white area. So at the end of the first

72 hours a debate was introduced as to what should be done. Do we take

a walk out of the magisterial area and come back for a new 72 hours, or

do we defy the law. Now the whites were claiming that no, we should

just take