Essay About Progressive Party And Next Move

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 wouldnt 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