Оңтүстік Африкадағы Қара саналылық қозғалысының ұлттық-азаттық туы

Nationalist Liberatory Flagship of the Black Consciousness Movement

The Black People's Convention (BPC) was a national coordinating body for the Black Consciousness movement of South Africa. Envisaged as a broad based counterpart to the South African Students' Organisation, the BPC was active in organising resistance to apartheid from its establishment in 1972 until it was banned in late 1977.

The BPC was an outgrowth of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa, which gained traction in the early 1970s and increasingly became a major alternative source of ideological and organisational support for resistance to the system of apartheid. With the influence of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) growing, Black Consciousness leaders called for the formation of a new Black Consciousness political organisation to engage and mobilise broader civil society, outside the universities. The shape of this national umbrella body, which became the BPC, was discussed at a series of conferences in 1971. The BPC was launched in July 1972 in Pietermaritzburg. At its first national congress in December 1972, held in Hammanskraal, Winnie Kgware was elected its first president. The BPC collaborated with other Black Consciousness organisations, such as SASO, with whom its membership overlapped significantly. As described in the BPC's "Mafikeng Manifesto", co written by Biko and debated at a symposium in Mafikeng in 1976, black communalism was a variant of the traditional African economic system, modified for a modern and industrialised economy. It entailed communal ownership, and state custodianship, of all land.