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1 int roduction The Seventies In 1974, nine South African activists were put on trial for terrorism. They were all officers in either the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) or the Black People’s Convention (BPC)—organizations known collectively as the Black Consciousness Movement—and they were charged with threatening the peace, order, and security of the white minority–governed apartheid state. The trial stretched on for over seventeen months; it was the longest, to that date, of apartheid’s innumerable security or terrorism trials. Along the way, the defendants, the state prosecutor, the judge, and other witnesses paused on numerous occasions to debate the character and political opinions of Jesus Christ. The discussions revolved especially around a resolution SASO, the oldest of these two organizations, had passed in 1973, which described Christ as “the first freedom fighter to die for the liberation of the oppressed.”1 The resolution went on to detail how Christ had earned this reputation by associating with known Zealots, described as the anticolonial revolutionary radicals of firstcentury Palestine, and perhaps even the Essenes, described as an “Israeli guerilla warfare unit against the Romans.” The judge asked witnesses to explain what this meant. Some demurred; others, perhaps recognizing that they were going to jail anyway, drew comparisons between the Essenes and the Front for Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), whose guerrilla forces had just taken power in neighboring Mozambique. Discussions about these and other theological issues went on and on, to the point that the state prosecutor, faced with defendants who repeatedly referred to the Bible and Christ to make their case, grew frustrated. “SASO and BPC are very fond of bringing religious connotations into lots of things,” he finally complained.2 He had a point. 2 w฀ Introduction These young activists appeared to have drawn rather interesting conclusions about the theory and practice of resistance to apartheid, based not exclusively on politics or ideology but on theology. Consider the plea penned by Kaborane Gilbert Sedibe, the Student Representative Council (SRC) president from the University of the North, in preparation for the trial. Sedibe explained that the charges against him were “an evil indictment . . . an indictment against God for having created me black . . . [and] an indictment against Christ for having said that I am a free man.” Such evil, however, did not surprise him because “the ‘son of the soil’—O.R. Tiro”— Sedibe’s predecessor as SRC president—had “prophesied of these accusations against the Black man before his fateful death.” Sedibe then used the Bible to rebut the charges: “God says to us in Galatians 5:1 that we must stand strong in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled with the yoke of bondage. For declaring this liberty I am being charged. This should not surprise us for the word tells us in II Corinthians 2:14 that ‘And do not marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.’” Sedibe thus used Christianity against the white state that had long used that religion to justify its policies. He inverted state theology and countercharged that his prosecutors , as representatives of apartheid’s law, were in fact Satan, disguised in their whiteness as angels of light. And against them he wielded the words and warnings of a recently assassinated “prophet,” Ongkopotse Tiro, a student leader like Sedibe, who spoke with a righteous voice that sanctified “secular” politics. Sedibe’s plea was a profound political statement in a country that disparaged those with darker skins and claimed that God’s countenance shone especially on the descendants of white settlers. It was also a theological statement. Sedibe was a Christian; he knew his Bible and did not enlist the word of God without reflection. When he pleaded that “Black Consciousness preaches the freedom and liberation of the Black man from evil power representing Satan,” he meant it. When he claimed that “our struggle is [a] Godly and genuine one, and as the Word of God in the Acts of the Apostles 5:39 says: ‘Since it is of God, ye’ i.e. forces of oppression, ‘cannot overthrow it, lest ye be found to fight against God,’” he spoke in the political tongue of his time and place.3 This episode—adrift amid the flotsam of pretrial filings—was but one of many well-known conflicts between apartheid law and opposition prophets during South Africa’s 1970s. Yet that struggle is only part of the story. Although Sedibe stood accused of...

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