The political theory espoused by the initial leadership of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in the late 1960s and 1970s has frequently been critiqued for its intellectualism and its detachment from the material concerns of ordinary Blacks in South Africa. In its most extreme form, this critique has argued that the BCM held a class partisanship against the majority Black population. Whilst there is no doubt that the cadre of young intellectuals who formed the initial leadership of the movement were indeed set apart by their tertiary education, this paper intends to show two things. Firstly, how the notion that they were working to promote their own narrow class interests is deeply mistaken. Secondly, to describe the various means through which the movement disseminated their political ideas in such way as to bridge the social distance between themselves and the broader grassroots Black population. To conclude, the paper will ask what lessons we might learn from this specific case about effective public intellectual engagement more generally.
