THIS DAY IN HISTORY

25 September, 1977: Steve Biko is buried

HOW HE DIED

Steve Biko was stripped and manacled for 20 days before he was transferred to the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, where the Security Police were based. He was told to remain standing, but he defied his captors and sat down. Infuriated, a Captain Siebert manhandled him, but Biko fought back.

Biko was badly beaten and between the night of 6 September and the morning of 7 September, he sustained a brain haemorrhage. Despite his injury, the police kept him shackled to a grille, still naked. When doctors examined him, they yielded to the security police by glossing over Biko’s injuries. Dr Ivor Lang could find nothing wrong with Biko on 7 September. When specialist Dr Benjamin Tucker examined Biko, he suggested that the badly injured detainee be taken to hospital, but he backed down when police objected.

Lang did not object when police said they were driving Biko to Pretoria, 1 109km away. This they did, on 11 September, with Biko in the back of a van still naked, frothing at the mouth and unable to speak. In Pretoria, a district surgeon examined Biko and tended to him, but it was too late. Alone in his cell, Biko died on the night of 12 September 1977.

HIS FUNERAL

Biko’s funeral was attended by about 20 000 people, although the mourners would have numbered many more if police had not turned many away at scores of roadblocks around King William’s Town. Police blocked all the routes into the town and thousands were turned away by heavily armed officials. Convoys in the major cities were stopped before they could set out for the funeral.