MP Khwezi Ka Ceza is Gqeberha-based independent political commentator, community leader and a social activist.
The Clipboard Replaced the Mind as the Potent Weapon
On 1 June 2026, a mother stood at the gate of Addington Gateway Clinic. Her baby’s Road to Health Book was stamped “High Risk” in red ink by a doctor. But she had no South African ID. She was turned away. Not by Home Affairs. Not by a nurse. By a civilian with a clipboard and a March and March armband.
That day, Steve Biko’s ghost walked out of Addington Hospital. March and March walked in.
This is not just a beef between activists. It is two rival playbooks for who gets to count in South Africa. On one side, is Biko’s Black Consciousness. Psychology, self-reliance and radical self-definition. On the other stands March and March’s street gatekeeping. Fear of foreigners, ID checks at the gate. Both claim to speak for the Black majority. Only one can be right.
The fix for broken clinics is not placing vigilantes at the gate
“You’re Okay As You Are, “Subject to Vigilante Approval
In 1973, Biko wrote that “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Apartheid’s real trap was psychological.
BC’s answer was not paperwork. It was organising. SASO was formed in December 1968 and officially inaugurated at Turfloop on 1 July 1969, with Biko as its first president. The Black People’s Convention followed in July 1972 in Pietermaritzburg, with its first National Congress at Hammanskraal that December. Through Black Community Programs, activists built clinics, literacy projects, worker co-ops.
The enemy was white supremacy and internalised shame. Never other Black people.
How ‘Black’ Got Killed by ID checks
March and March emerged in March 2024. Where BC starts with “you are okay as you are,” March and March says “prove you belong.”
Through 2025 into 2026, volunteers posted themselves outside public healthcare facilities, demanding IDs before letting patients in. Government keeps warning them. Blocking foreign nationals violates the law. Section 27(1) of the Constitution states that, “Everyone has the right to have access to health care services”. Not “every citizen.” Everyone.
March and March’s logic is blunt. Dignity is conditional. Passport first, humanity second.
BC saw the wound as psychological and prescribed collective uplift. March and March sees it as demographic and prescribes exclusion. One sets a bigger table. The other hires bouncers.
Black Consciouness C saw the wound as psychological and prescribed collective uplift
True Humanity Downgraded to True Birth Certificate
Because apartheid was illegitimate, BC did not beg it for scraps. It built alternatives. Biko called it “a quest for true humanity” to give South Africa “a more human face.” Even at its most defiant, BC aimed at the state. The 1976 Soweto generation marched against the Bantu Education, not against Mozambican workers.
Fifty years later, the battlefield moved from Turfloop to the hospital gate.
March and March fills the gap where the state fails. But it copies the state’s worst habits. It claims it is defending clinics. In practice, it clogs queues and delays care for citizens and migrants alike.
BC told the oppressed to stop seeing themselves as an “appendage to white society.” March and March tells us to see our neighbour as an appendage to Home Affairs. One creates agency. The other hands it to a guy with a clipboard.
From White Society’s Appendage to Home Affairs’ Appendage
This is the crack Biko would’ve spotted instantly.
BC defined “Black” as politics, not biology. SASO’s 1971 Manifesto deliberately included Indian and Coloured activists. The enemy was racism, not nationality. Biko’s vision was pan-African in nature.
March and March shrinks “Black” to “documented South African.” Its blockades treat poor people differently based on paper, not need. Solidarity used to mean “the oppressed.” Now it means “the citizen.” That is not an update. It’s an inversion.
With MKP leaders now engaging March and March, this is not fringe anymore. It is a detour from liberatory Black Consciousness to gatekeeping Nationalist Consciousness.
The New Gatekeepers Turned Black into Blocked
These aren’t just vibes. They have consequences.
March and March says it protects schools. But when protests target migrant kids, all kids get traumatized. Basic Education has already slammed these disruptions. Learners end up needing psychosocial support.
Biko warned in 1973 that “Apartheid, both petty and grand, is obviously evil.” BC’s mission was to kill that evil by restoring dignity. March and March just redistributes it, deciding who counts as human first.
BC: “A More Human Face.” March and March: “Papers, Please.”
South Africa has to pick a playbook.
The fix for broken clinics is not placing vigilantes at the gate. It is BC’s old ethic. Build, don’t block. Fix Home Affairs so a birth certificate is not a death sentence.
Pick the wrong logic and we won’t be debating healthcare. We will be counting bodies. We won’t be building clinics. We will be building morgues.
MP Khwezi ka Ceza is a Gqeberha-based independent political commentator, community leader and social activist
