Students, Apartheid and the Ecumenical Movement in South Africa, 1960–1975

Ian Macqueen

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2013, vol. 39, issue 2, 447-463

Abstract: This article examines ecumenical endeavour and student politics in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s to bring into fresh perspective sources of antiapartheid activism. The article explores Christian ecumenical developments in the twentieth century and specifically the crisis point reached in 1960 after the Sharpeville massacre. It turns to discuss the formation of two key black student leaders, Steve Biko and Barney Pityana, in the Eastern Cape and discusses their creation of the black-led South African Students' Organisation (SASO) in 1968. I explore a fraught but productive relationship between the growth of Black Consciousness and a developing commitment to social justice by student Christian organisations. A political culture of dialogue enabled the message of Black Consciousness to be quickly communicated to a broad cross section of progressive political actors in the early 1970s. A prime legacy of the ecumenical endeavour of the 1960s was its emphasis on unity and muting of strict orthodoxy, an approach that facilitated such cooperation. I argue that the theological radicalism of the ecumenical movement provided a reference point from which to understand and come to terms with the challenge of the emergent Black Consciousness movement.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070.2013.765693 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:39:y:2013:i:2:p:447-463

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2013.765693

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().