Black Forum South Africa is a lobby group organisation that advocates for Black solidarity in South Africa. The genesis of the organisation could be traced back in 1988, when it was founded at the University of South Africa (UNISA), as UNISA Black Forum, by esteemed black professors and academics. The main purpose of UNISA Black Forum was to advocate for transformation and Africanisation of UNISA research and academic curricula, and to permanently dismantle the perpetual imbalances of the past between black and white colleagues.
Since its inception, the UNISA Black Forum has managed to transform or replace various policies, systems and practices which have perpetuated white domination and privilege for many years within the entire University of South Africa. We are proud to state that black professionals and general black staff members who have been trapped in such perpetual states of childhood and inferiority, prior to the inception of the UNISA Black Forum, are currently enjoying their total state of emancipation at the workplace. The University’s culture of one race dominating the other has drastically changed and the attitude and thinking among staff members has improved significantly.
Twenty years plus into democracy and thirty-two years since the inception of UNISA Black Forum, it was realised that black people in South Africa have never attained their full or equal rights of citizenship in the way white people have. White systems which aim to sustain white privileges and supremacy over black progress and independence are still alive and well.
Black people have been subjected to a permanent state of socio-economic ills, and they have accepted such anomalies as the conditions naturally married with being black.
A black life, educated or not, within this democratic country, depends entirely on white systems i.e. school curriculums, official languages, cultural relevance, business growth and employment as well as legal and economic influences/systems and so forth. These painful experiences have been internalised and normalised in black society. Against this backdrop, the UNISA Black Forum has, in the year 2020, graduated into Black Forum South Africa.