Ben Khoapa interviewed by David Wiley May 7, 2006 Durban, South Africa.
"... the most important political formation in South Africa has in fact been the Black Consciousness Movement."
Khoapa comments about the importance of the BCM in South Africa's liberation struggle in filling the gap in leadership of the 1960s and contributing to social thought.
Ben Khoapa was born at the end of World War II and became politically aware first at a boarding school in Lesotho and later at high school at Adams College near Durban. In 1963, he began working for the YMCA in Johannesburg. The YMCA sent him on a training trip to the United States in 1968, where he learned about political debates going on in the black community. Khoapa became involved with Steve Biko and other younger people in the Black Consciousness Movement. He then became director of SPROCAS (Study Project on Christianity in an Apartheid Society). After being under house arrest since 1973, Khoapa moved to the United States, where he taught for eight years. Khoapa was the first black Vice Chancellor of Technikon Natal and assisted with the merger of three higher education institutions as Pro-Vice Chancellor at the Durban Institute of Technology between 2002 and 2003.
