Black Consciousness activist and academic Ben Khoapa dies, aged 87

Prof Bennie Albert Khoapa, who played a key role in the development of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in South Africa, has died.

His family said Khoapa passed away at his ancestral home on May 5, two weeks after his 87th birthday. He is survived by his wife Olga, children and grandchildren.

Azapo president Nelvis Qekema shared his condolences and saluted Khoapa for his contribution to the founding and building of the BCM.

An academic, administrator and author, he was a former vice-chancellor of Technikon Natal and consultant to the education department. He held a PhD in social welfare, an MSc in social administration and a BA in sociology and criminology.

He was the Durban director of the Black Community Programmes (BCP) and director of Sprocas (Study Project on Christianity in an Apartheid Society) when he met BCM leader Steve Biko in the early 1970s.

Speaking about this time, Khoapa said: “He liked my personality and I liked him.”

Biko worked as his deputy director until he was detained by the apartheid era security branch.

Khoapa subsequently served on the Steve Biko Foundation.

TRIBUTE TO PROF BENNIE ALBERT KHOAPA (1937-2024)

By Lintletse (Mamsie) Khoapa, on behalf of the family

A nine-year age difference between the director of Black Community Programmes, Dr Ben Khoapa, and medical student at the University of Natal (now Nelson Mandela School of Medicine) Steve Biko, proved no obstacle to the beginning of a companionship of mentor and mentee when the two met in the 1970s. Had the mentor spurned the mentee’s hand, history would most probably have missed talking of an encounter that shaped the person Biko became. In Khoapa and Biko, history is yet to appreciate the wisdom of age and the zest of youth resulting in the perfect marriage that found the emancipatory power of Black Consciousness walking on their task-driven path.

Grounded in black experience, Khoapa was a giant in his own right. In him, Biko found a shoulder to lean on. This made Khoapa a rock for Biko to confidently stand beside. Albeit young, Biko proved daringly ripe to derive from Khoapa a piercing vision for the navigation of a homegrown nation building ideology whose sterling liberation thinking and practice not only gave the Black Consciousness demonstrable gravitas by its impact in the massive awakening of the oppressed black people, but also propelled its basic tenets to reach for erudite skies of thought leadership Biko finessed to be deservedly reputed as the father of Black Consciousness. If Biko had so ascended to be equally looked up to as a thinker and doer, it is because Khoapa was the solid rock from which Biko launched a bigger cause that was matched by his gifted mind to champion with distinction.

When the two met in the 1970s, the wayfaring Biko was 24 years of age and the grounded luminary Khoapa was 33. By then Khoapa was already a student, academic, administrator, author, humanitarian and key role player in the development, growth and sustainability of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. The heart of a servant leadership could have found no better set of rib cage to settle in than Khoapa’s body.

Hailing from Matatiele, Khoapa was born in 1937, one of 11 children of Chief Albert C Khoapa and Lintletse Rachel (Mohase) who proceeded him. To the young, who looked up to him to gain a firmer footing to walk tall in a world trained for the diminution of the souls of black folks, he was simply Bra Ben. He attended Eagle’s Peak Boarding School in Lesotho, studied at Adams College in KwaZulu-Natal and later graduated from the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. He was the personnel social worker for the South African Rubber Manufacturing Company. He later became national secretary in 1965 of the South African Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Durban.

It was through the YMCA that Khoapa encountered and became national adviser to the South African Students’ Organisation and the Black People’s Convention, and in particular an adviser and friend to the late Biko. Khoapa established the Black Community Programmes in 1972, with Biko as youth organiser, while he was also a director of the Study Project on Christianity in an Apartheid Society.

On October 15 1973, he was banned and placed under house arrest, from where he continued to work for the BCP until Black Wednesday, when the organisation was listed among the 18 Black Consciousness organisations outlawed by the apartheid era justice minister Jimmy Kruger on October 19 1977.

He earned a BA degree in sociology and criminology from the University of South Africa. On the expiry of his banning order, Khoapa left for Lesotho with his family and later settled in the US. He earned an MSc in social administration and a Doctorate in social welfare from Case Western Reserve University, (Cleveland, Ohio). He taught at Grand Valley State University, MI, for eight years.

He returned to South Africa in 1991, becoming the academic registrar of the University of Fort Hare and then deputy vice-chancellor of student affairs. Khoapa went on to become deputy vice-chancellor of student affairs at Technikon Natal. He oversaw its merger into the Durban University of Technology where he served as vice-chancellor from 1996 to 2003. He thereafter served in several capacities to improve the quality of higher education in South Africa, including serving as a ministerially appointed assessor on issues facing the University of Limpopo.

Khoapa is the author of presentations and publications in international and domestic forums, including the UN, the World University Service, University of South Africa and the African American Institute. His assignments included being a board member of international and South African organisations including Lawyers for Human Rights, chair and patron of Umtapo and the South African Association for Literacy and Adult Education and he founded the Mazisi Kunene Foundation in KwaZulu-Natal.

He served the Steve Biko Foundation as an active trustee for 17 years, taking part in the shift of the legacy of Biko from the margins of history to the fore of public memory, and overseeing a wide range of development programming including the building and opening in 2012 of the Steve Biko Centre — a National Legacy Project — now home to some of the deepest archives on Black Consciousness and whose operations have helped 640,000 direct beneficiaries. His image is displayed at the Steve Biko Centre and other museums locally and abroad.

For the last years, he was the trustee and chair of the Khoapa Land Trust and the AC Community Trust.

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