Being "Relevant": Toward a History of Political Ethics in South African Thought

During the 1970s, South African anti-apartheid activists judged race by relevance. Activists were black because their actions were thought relevant - a subjective category, infused with the nascent identity politics of the Black Consciousness Movement - while collaborators with the apartheid state were deemed 'highly irrelevant,' and therefore unworthy of race. Ideas, theology, music, art - all were judged by the subjective standards of relevance, as were perspectives on the future and the ethics of political life. This paper explores activists' use of the concept of relevance during the development of the Black Consciousness Movement between 1968 - 1977; it then moves backwards to suggests how Black Consciousness' combination of Christian theology and political philosophy was only the latest in a long tradition of black, Christian South African ethical innovation."