boost second-echelon leadership--which indeed it did.
This is Pityana's account:
To ask the right questions, to encourage a new consciousness, and to suggest new forms which express it, are the basic purposes of our new direction.
It is true that the question of race is one which we often find embarrassing. It should rather not be discussed, like the problem of sex during the Victorian era. "Oh, you see, I love you as a person and it never occurs to me that you are black!"--this is the sort of gesture we receive from our sympathetic friends. Many would prefer to be colorblind; to them skin pigmentation is merely an accident of creation. To us is something much more fundamental. It is a synonym for subjection, an identification for the disinherited. Hans Morganthau's Realist school of thought suggests that by power we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. Political power refers to the mutual relations of control between the holders of public authority and the people. The holders of public authority exercise their power by the consent of their subjects. The subjects have an ultimate right to revoke this authority in the event of its abuse, or corruptive employment. Power, therefore, is an essential element of politics.
The South African population consists of more than 25 million people. Of these only about 5 million are white. Yet all political and economic power is in the hands of this white minority. They have a right to vote for, and to be voted on to, all effective legislative bodies. They monopolize all key positions and centers of power and preferred occupations. Whites are protected by legislation from competition with blacks in spheres of employment, sport and politics. They appropriate far more than their fair share in educational, welfare and other social services, and they maintain a wide gap between themselves and other races in terms of technical skills, and consequently the wealth of the land. The so-called nonwhite people are kept in total subjection by the white authority. It is government policy to
(copyright 1978 by Donald Woods)