The NIC was revived in a city that was alive with resurgent anti-apartheid activity. Workers started to flex their collective muscle, and white university academics and students played supportive roles in building trade unions. The BCM engaged in discussion groups that drew on the ideological streams of Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, the US Black Power movement, and liberation theology, forming a heady mix of intellectual mutiny and militant bravado. French-educated philosopher Rick Turner sparred with Steve Biko over participatory democracy, race and whiteness. The NIC, drawing on the status of its founder M.K. Gandhi and the path-breaking generation of the 1950s, reignited the passions of Indian communities battered by forced relocations under the Group Areas Act. Those who tried to prod the NIC into dropping the ‘I’ were faced down and BC rebels walked their own path.

Despite concentrated and at times spectacular media coverage, the first years after the revival did not witness the coming of a mass-based organisation. Annual meetings drew fewer than a hundred delegates, while public meetings attracted a few hundred attendees, or perhaps a thousand people for a major current issue, such as the death of Ahmed Timol in 1971 and the Chatsworth transport disputes of 1972.

In the face of fiery internal debates over participation in governmentsponsored organisations, the NIC held together even as it was drawn into legendary battles with those termed collaborators. Intense activism brought exhaustion, but new recruits schooled in classrooms of dissent entered the ranks. In 1980 university students joined the NIC, unions and, most spectacularly, community organisations. As Pravin Gordhan put it: