TheBlack People's Convention (BPC) was a national coordinating body for theBlack Consciousness movement of South Africa. Envisaged as a broad-based counterpart to theSouth African Students' Organisation, the BPC was active in organisingresistance toapartheid from its establishment in 1972 until it was banned in late 1977.

The BPC was an outgrowth of theBlack Consciousness movement in South Africa, which gained traction in the early 1970s and increasingly became a major alternative source of ideological and organisational support forresistance to the system ofapartheid. With the influence of theSouth African Students' Organisation (SASO) growing, Black Consciousness leaders called for the formation of a new Black Consciousness political organisation to engage and mobilise broadercivil society, outside the universities.^[1][2] The shape of this national umbrella body, which became the BPC, was discussed at a series of conferences in 1971.^[3][4] The BPC was launched in July 1972 inPietermaritzburg. At its first national congress in December 1972, held inHammanskraal,Winnie Kgware was elected its first president.^[1][3]

The BPC subscribed to a Black Consciousness philosophy, as articulated bySteve Biko. Biko was closely associated with the BPC, although his political activity was seriously circumscribed following hisbanning in 1973.^[1][2] His brother-in-law, Mxolisi Mvovo, became national vice president of the BPC in 1976.^[5] The BPC collaborated with other Black Consciousness organisations, such as SASO, with whom its membership overlapped significantly.^[1][3] Membership was not open to whites.^[1]

According to its constitution, the BPC's principal aim was to foster black political unity and solidarity, towards both psychological and material liberation for blacks in South Africa. The BPC opposedapartheid throughnon-violent means and through non-participation in the apartheid system. It also advocated for an equitable economic system based onsocialism and what it called "black communalism".^[1][6] As described in the BPC's "Mafikeng Manifesto", co-written by Biko and debated at a symposium inMafikeng in 1976,^[7] black communalism was a variant of the traditional African economic system, modified for a modern and industrialised economy. It entailed communal ownership, and state custodianship, of all land.^[8]

On 25 September 1974, the day of an illegal pro-FRELIMO rally inDurban organised by the BPC and SASO, leaders in the BPC and other Black Consciousness organisations were arrested across the country. In the aftermath,nine BPC and SASO leaders were tried under theTerrorism Act.^[1][9] A second, more serious wave of government repression followed the1976 Soweto Uprising. On 19 October 1977, sometimes known as "Black Wednesday", 18 organisations, including the BPC and SASO, were banned by the apartheid government. As many as 70 Black Consciousness leaders were arrested on the same day.^[1][10] Among them were Kenny Rachidi and Drake Tshenkeng, the BPC's president and vice president respectively.^[5] Biko himself had died in custody a month earlier.

In the years after Black Wednesday, many BPC and Black Consciousness activists became active in theAzanian People's Organisation (Azapo) and its subsidiary organisations. Azapo was founded in April 1978 inRoodepoort as an offshoot of the Soweto Action Council, which had been formed in Chiawelo,Soweto, shortly after the 1977 crackdown.^[8] Like the BPC, Azapo was closed to whites and strongly opposed participation in the apartheid system – it even inherited the BPC's slogan, "One Azania, one people" – but it was more rigidlyMarxist than the BPC.^[7][8] BPC and Black Consciousness activists inexile joined the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA), established in London as Azapo's external wing before BCMA and Azapo formally merged in 1994.^[7]

In the 1980s and early 1990s, however, the popularity ofCongress-aligned organisations increased and Black Consciousness organisations (though not necessarily Black Consciousness ideologies) declined in influence. When Azapo was itself banned in 1988, many more Black Consciousness-aligned youths left South Africa and joined thePan Africanist Congress andAfrican National Congress, in order to receive military training in exile.^[7]

• Azanian People's Organisation
• Black Allied Workers' Union
• South African Students' Organisation
• Black Community Programmes (the community projects arms of the BPC-SASO bloc)
• South African Students Movement

• Anti-apartheid organisations
• Azanian People's Organisation
• Black Consciousness Movement
• Defunct civic and political organisations in South Africa
• National liberation movements in Africa
• Organizations established in 1972
• 1972 establishments in South Africa
• African and Black nationalism in South Africa

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022