Today, in 1977, A Great Man Died

[moe.ron]

Steven Biko died on the hand of the Apartheid Government of South Africa. Let us remember Steven Biko!

[justamom]

Wasn't too up on names of the leaders, but I do recall all the demonstrations on campus and calls for boycott surrounding
apartheid.

Entertainers are wonderful assets, but leaders are precious.

I'll never forget when Princess Diana was killed and Mother Theresa died the next day...I was so upset that Mother received a tiny corner and PD was splashed all over the front page.

[Senusret I]

Arya, thanks for posting this. We must never forget men such as Steven Biko.

I attended school with Biko's son.....he is a great, humble man.

[moe.ron]

Biko
-Peter Gabriel

September '77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

And the eyes of the world are
watching now
watching now

[Munchkin03]

I doubt enough people on here know who Steve Biko is, which is sad.

Let us remember this great, yet totally underappreciated, leader in the fight to make South Africa a free country for all its people.

[breathesgelatin]

Let us remember the freedom fighters.

[Sistermadly]

There's a guy in my graduate program who has Biko's name tattooed on the inside of his forearm. If you read it up and down, it looks like Chinese characters, but if you read it from right to left, you can tell it's Biko's name.

Thanks for posting this, Arya.

Here's a short bio:
Date of birth: 18 December 1946, King William's Town, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Date of death: 12 September 1977, Pretoria prison cell, South Africa


From an early age Steve Biko showed an interest in anti-Apartheid politics. After being expelled from his first school, Lovedale, in the Eastern Cape for 'anti-establishment' behaviour, he was transferred to a Roman Catholic boarding school in Natal. From there he enrolled as a student at the University of Natal Medical School (Black Section). Whilst at medical school Biko became involved with the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). But the union was dominated by white liberals and failed to represent the needs of black students, so Biko resigned in 1969 and founded the 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.

In 1972 Biko was one of the founders of the Black Peoples 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 Student's Movement (SASM), which played a significant role in the 1976 uprisings, the National Association of Youth Organisations (NAYO), and the Black Workers Project (BWP) 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 full time for the Black Community Programme (BCP) in Durban which he also helped found.

In 1973 Steve Biko was 'banned' by the Apartheid government. Under the 'ban' Biko was restricted to his home town of Kings William's Town in the Eastern Cape – he could no longer support the BCP in Durban, but was able to continue working for the BPC – he helped set up the Zimele Trust Fund which assisted political prisoners and their families. (Biko was elected Honorary President of the BPC in January 1977.)

Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977 under Apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation. On 21 August 1977 Biko was detained by the Eastern Cape security police and held in Port Elizabeth. From the Walmer police cells he was taken for interrogation at the security police headquarters. On 7 September "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."1

By 11 September Biko had slipped into a continual, semi-conscious state and the police physician recommended a transfer to hospital. Biko was, however, transported 1,200 km to Pretoria – a 12-hour journey which he made lying naked in the back of a Land Rover. A few hours later, on 12 September, alone and still naked, lying on the floor of a cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage.

The South African Minister of Justice, James (Jimmy) Kruger initially suggested Biko had died of a hunger-strike and said that his death "left him cold". The hunger strike story was dropped after local and international media pressure, especially from Donald Woods, the editor of the East London Daily Dispatch. It was revealed in the inquest that Biko had died of brain damage, but the magistrate failed to find anyone responsible, ruling that Biko had died as a result of injuries sustained during a scuffle with security police whilst in detention.

The brutal circumstances of Biko's death caused a worldwide outcry and he became a martyr and symbol of black resistance to the oppressive Apartheid regime. As a result, the South African government banned a number of individuals (including Donald Woods) and organisations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely associatiated with Biko. The United Nations Security Council responded by finally imposing an arms embargo against South Africa.

Biko's family sued the state for damages
in 1979 and settled out of court for R65,000 (then equivalent to $25,000).


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 police officers responsible for Biko's death applied for amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings which sat in Port Elizabeth in 1997. The Biko family did not ask the Commission to make a finding on his death.

"The Commission finds that the death in detention of Mr Stephen Bantu Biko on 12 September 1977 was a gross human rights violation. Magistrate Marthinus Prins found that the members of the SAP were not implicated in his death. The magistrate's finding contributed to the creation of a culture of impunity in the SAP. Despite the inquest finding no person responsible for his death, the Commission finds that, in view of the fact that Biko died in the custody of law enforcement officials, the probabilities are that he died as a result of injuries sustained during his detention."1

1. From the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa report, published by Macmillan, March 1999.
Newsletter

[moe.ron]

Man Friday - In a crowded lecture hall, fulminate of mercury exploded as a voice rang out from the ceiling

September 12, 2003

By Tony Weaver

Twenty-six years ago today, I did not know who Steve Biko was. The next day, I lost my political virginity. Until September 13, 1977, I was your average liberal, beer-swilling, hard-partying, rugger bugger first year student at UCT.

That day, I walked into the canteen to look for my usual circle of bridge playing, lecture skipping friends. All over the place, sombre lentil lefties were plastering posters on the wall that read "Steve Biko. Killed by the apartheid police 12/9/1977. Donald Woods speaks, today 1pm."

I vaguely remembered that Woods was the editor of an east coast newspaper, but I'd never heard of Steve Biko. I picked up a pamphlet which detailed Biko's history. Everywhere in the canteen, groups of students were beginning to gather in huddles, discussing the pamphlets, discussing what had
happened, and a tangible air of anger began to spread across campus.

At lunch time, I joined the throng of students streaming into the New Science Lecture Theatre, NSLT 1. There must have been over a thousand students jammed into the hall. Woods began speaking, an emotional, tearful address as he told of the man he had come to know and love and who had been brutally beaten to death by the security police.

Halfway through, a voice came from the ceiling and shouted "this is your god speaking, do not support terrorists", or words to that effect, and a handful of fulminate of mercury was thrown on to the floor, exploding in clouds of smoke. A stream of angry students rushed to find the culprit, a prominent member of the Conservative Students' Alliance.

The locus of my political ideology began to change from that day on. That afternoon, the then minister of justice (an oxymoron if ever there was one), Jimmy Kruger, stood up in parliament. Asked about Biko's death, he said, "Dit laat my koud" (it leaves me cold).


When an outraged PFP MP asked how the police could possibly allege that Biko had died because he had purposely banged his own head against the wall, Kruger replied that "sometimes I also feel like banging my head against the wall".

My virginity was gone, and when, a day later, a radical friend tentatively suggested that it was time to get involved in direct political action, I didn't hesitate. Jimmy Kruger was speaking that night at a National Party rally in the Maitland Town Hall.

Did I want to join a group of activists who intended disrupting the rally? A bunch of us packed into the hall.

The security police had clearly tipped off the Nats that we were coming, and party heavies had packed out the front row. There were cops everywhere.

As Kruger rose to speak, someone midway through the hall began rhythmically banging his crash helmet against the wall. Kruger lost it, and yelled that we were just a bunch of hippies and dagga smokers.

Laura Levetan, who was later to serve a five year banning order, yelled back "Djy, Jimmy, maak 'n pyp". The meeting was called off as we walked out amid chaos and jeers, but we had outnumbered the Nats both numerically and morally.

Thus I lost my political virginity - but there is one last tale to tell: This was also the first, and last time, that I was censored by the Cape Times. The SRC collected hundreds of rand to place death notices remembering Biko in the Times. I chose as my tribute a line from the song The Partisan.

"Oh the winds, the winds are blowing; Through the graves the winds are blowing; Freedom soon will come! Then we'll come from the shadows."

It was rejected by the newspaper as being "too inflammatory".

[Imthachamp]

/tips 40oz of oe in the memory of those who past