Bravery, selflessness of a SA hero
Biko preached black solidarity to ‘break the chains of oppression’
BANTU Stephen Biko was born in Tylden in the Eastern Cape on December 18 1946, the third child in an average family, where his father Mathew was a clerk and his mother Alice was a domestic worker.
Biko was not offered the opportunity to know his father because he died when Biko was only four years old.
Biko, schooled firstly in King William’s Town and later Marianhill, excelled at his studies as a youth but because of his political activities, was expelled from Lovedale High School.
He was still able to continue to college, where he received a scholarship to attend St Francis College, a liberal Catholic boarding school in then Natal.
While at the University of Natal Medical School (in the university’s black section), Biko became involved in the National Union Of South African Students (Nusas), a multiracial politically moderate organisation. It was while he was in Natal that Biko began questioning the apartheid system and the conditions that his people were forced to endure.
Nusas was dominated by white liberals and failed to represent the needs of black students, so Biko resigned in 1969 and co-founded the all-black South African Students’ Organisation (SASO). SASO was involved in providing legal aid and medical clinics, as well as helping to develop cottage industries for disadvantaged black communities.
The primary aim of SASO was to raise black consciousness in South Africa, through lectures and community activities.
Biko concluded that the apartheid system had a psychological effect on the black population, which had caused blacks to internalise and believe whites’ racist stereotypes.
According to Biko, blacks had been convinced that they were inferior to whites, which resulted in the hopelessness that was prevalent in the black community.
Biko preached black solidarity to “break the chains of oppression”. In 1972, Biko was one of the founders of the Black People’s Convention (BPC), working on social upliftment projects around Durban.
The BPC effectively brought together roughly 70 different black consciousness groups and associations, such as the South African Students’ Movement, which played a significant role in the 1976 uprisings, the National Association of Youth Organisations, and the Black Workers Project, which supported black workers whose unions were not recognised under the apartheid regime.
Biko was elected as the first president of the BPC and was promptly expelled from medical school.
He started working fulltime for the Black Community Programme (BCP) in Durban, which he also helped found.
Biko’s political activities eventually drew the attention of the South African government, resulting in his being banned in 1973.
The banning restricted Biko from talking to more than one person at a time. This was in an attempt to suppress the rising political movement. However, the banning did not stop Biko’s commitment to activism.
At this time, he helped set up the Zimele Trust Fund, which assisted political prisoners and their families. For the next four years, he continued to spread his message at gatherings – despite his banning – and with his underground publication called “Frank Talk”.
During this period, Biko was often harassed, arrested, and detained by the South African police.
He was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977 under apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation.
On August 18 1977, Biko was seized by the police in Port Elizabeth and detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act.
This draconian law had resulted in the loss of freedom of over 40 000 blacks in South Africa since 1950.
The law permitted the police to hold Biko in jail indefinitely.
As it turned out, he was held in prison for 24 days, where he was interrogated, starved, and brutally beaten.
From the Walmer police cells he was taken for interrogation at the security police headquarters. On September 7 Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, after which he acted strangely and was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him (naked, lying on a mat and manacled to a metal grille) initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury.
By September 11, Biko had slipped into a continual, semi-conscious state and the police physician recommended a transfer to hospital.
Biko was, however, transported 1 200km to Pretoria – a 12-hour journey which he made lying naked in the back of a Land Rover.
A few hours later, on September 12, alone and still naked, lying on the floor of a cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage.
Biko had become the 41st person in South Africa to die while being held in custody.
The South African government claimed that Biko’s death was caused by a hunger strike and proclaimed their innocence.
The then Minister of Police, Jimmy Kruger, was quoted as saying crassly: “Biko’s death leaves me cold.”
The hunger strike story was eventually dropped after local and international media pressure, especially from Donald Woods, the editor of the Daily Dispatch.
However, the official autopsy concluded that Biko’s death was due to a brain lesion caused by the “application of force to the head”. The officers who were responsible for Biko while he was detained were absolved of any wrongdoing by a South African court.
The magistrate ruled that Biko had died as a result of injuries sustained during a scuffle with security police, while in detention.
Biko’s tragic death had a great impact on the people of South Africa and stunned the world. His funeral was attended by more than 15 000 mourners, not including the thousands who were turned away by the police.
Biko’s family sued the state for damages in 1979 and settled out of court for R65 000.
The three doctors connected with Biko’s case were initially exonerated by the South African Medical Disciplinary Committee.
It was not until a second enquiry in 1985, eight years after Biko’s death, that any action was taken against them.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced that five former members of the South African security forces who had admitted to killing Biko were applying for amnesty.
His family had opposed their amnesty applications – a decision taken by Biko’s widow, Ntsiki, his sons Nkosinathi and Samora, and his sister, Nobandile Mvovo. Their application was ultimately rejected.
Steve Biko’s legacy lives on through the struggle he helped to ignite and through the freedoms that South Africans now possess.
He is hailed as a martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle.
It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity; to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.