Coined by academic Tony Morphet, the term describes the convergence of various intellectual and activist movements in Durban that significantly influenced the anti-apartheid struggle.
He described four simultaneous intellectual projects occurring between 1970 and 1974, citing Rick Turner’s radical political philosophical teachings and organizing; the activism of then student and intellectual Steve Biko; the challenge to revisionist Afrikaner history by sociologist Dunbar Moodie; and the critiques of English literature by Mike Kirkwood.
[4] Activist Organizing The Durban Moment signaled a departure from earlier banned anti-apartheid movements in its non-racial, non-hierarchical, and explicitly socialist intellectual strains.
Influenced by socialism, radical Christianity, and various new left ideologies, intellectual leaders forged a new opposition to the apartheid regime.
The organization of students, laborers, and ordinary citizens across racial lines presented a significant threat to the apartheid regime’s norms and laws, while simultaneously influencing subsequent trade union tactics and the eventual triumph of the broader anti-apartheid movement.