The aim of this essay is to address the problem of universality by way of Black Consciousness in apartheid South Africa in the 1960s and 70s. In contrast to Souleymane Bachir Diagne's notion of lateral universality, which is premised on encounters across differences, the argument here is that Black Consciousness begins with an inward turn. This "separatism", with its pronounced philosophical tenor in work by Steve Biko and others, needs however to be read dialectically, as a movement towards future modes of connection. Perhaps surprisingly, such a dialectical approach will also demonstrate how apartheid-the ultimate statebacked denial of universality-can be seen historically as the enabling condition of Black Consciousness. The optimistic conclusion to draw from such a reading is that oppression and racism tend to carry the seeds of their own undoing, allowing renewed modes of universality to emerge from within.