'Bantu' Stephen Biko was one of South Africa's most significant political activists who was strongly against the apartheid system and the
white minority rule in South Africa. He was born in Tarkastad in the Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape)
on 18 December 1946, the third child of Mzingaye Biko and Nokuzola
Macethe Duna. Mzingaye worked as a policeman, and later as a clerk in
the King William’s Town Native Affairs office. An intelligent man, he
was also enrolled at the University of South Africa (UNISA), the
distance-learning university, but did not complete enough courses to get
his law degree before he died. In 1948, the family moved to Ginsberg
Township, just outside of King William’s Town in today's Eastern Cape.
The Bikos eventually owned their own house in Zaula Street in the
Brownlee section of Ginsberg - this despite Nokuzola's meagre income as a
domestic worker.
From an early age, Steve Biko showed an interest in anti-apartheid
politics. After being expelled from his first school, Lovedale College
in the Eastern Cape, for "anti-establishment" behavior. such as speaking
out against apartheid and speaking up for the rights of Black South
African citizens. he was transferred to St. Francis College, a Roman
Catholic boarding school in Natal. From there he enrolled as a medical student
at the University of Natal Medical School (in the university's Black
Section).
While at medical school, Biko became involved with the National Union of
South African Students. The union was dominated by White liberal allies
and failed to represent the needs of Black students. Dissatisfied, Biko
resigned in 1969 and founded the South African Students' Organisation.
SASO was involved in providing legal aid and medical clinics, as well as
helping to develop cottage industries for disadvantaged Black
communities and combatting the minority government’s racist
apartheid policies and to promote Black identity. In 1972, he helped
found and lead the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM)
alongside fellow activists, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele and Barney Pityana. and in the next year was banned
from politics by the Afrikaner government.
The BCM was an anti-apartheid movement that filled the power void when
the ANC and Pan African Congress leaders were banished and jailed and
was founded as a direct result of the Sharpeville Massacre https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/03/remembering-sharpeville-massacre.html
in the late 1960s. The massacre saw around 300 South African police
open fire on unarmed civilians who were peacefully marching against the
apartheid pass laws a regulation that required Black people and other people of colour to
carry a pass book whenever travelling so that the government could
monitor their movements.
The movement sought to empower young Black South Africans and inspire
them to break themselves free from the chains of white governance. The
BCM helped with the empowerment and mobilisation of Black people in
urban areas. During the struggle Biko gave South Africans hope for a better future,
he never gave up and he fought for what he believed to be right. As he once said “The
greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed"
In
September 1977, Biko was arrested for subversion. While in police custody
in Port Elizabeth, Biko was brutally beaten and then driven 700 miles to
Pretoria, where he was thrown into a cell. On September 12, 1977, he
died naked and shackled on the filthy floor of a police hospital. News
of the political killing, denied by the country’s white minority
government, led to international protests and a U.N.-imposed arms
embargo.
Biko's funeral was marked by passionate denunciations of the apartheid
regime, and became something of a political rally, lasting more than six
hours. Mourners thrust their fists into the air and shouted ‘Power!’
when Steve’s coffin was lowered into the grave.
Soon after Steve’s death, the state banned 18 organisations on 17 October 1977, the majority of them allied to the BCM. The BCM launched the Azanian People's Organisation (AZAPO) in 1979, but the organisation was also banned soon thereafter. By the early 1980s the Black Consciousness Movement was in decline, eclipsed by the re-emergence of the Congress movement, most notably in the shape of the United Democratic Front. Steve’s dream of uniting the various liberation organisations never came to fruition; rather, the Congress Movement took the reins of the anti-apartheid struggle and eventually the ANC became the ruling party after the first democratic elections in 1994.
In Pretoria on Dec 2 the Stephen Biko inquest ended that absolved the security police and all others involved of any responsibility for the death in prison of the country's foremost young black leader. Demonstrations began outside the court.
Although his death was attributed to "a prison accident," evidence
presented during the 15-day inquest into Biko's death revealed
otherwise. During his detention in a Port Elizabeth police cell he had
been chained to a grill at night and left to lie in urine-soaked
blankets. He had been stripped naked and kept in leg-irons for 48 hours
in his cell. A blow in a scuffle with security police led to him
suffering brain damage by the time he was driven naked and manacled in
the back of a police van to Pretoria, where he died.
In 1995, after the peaceful transfer to majority rule in South Africa,
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to examine
decades of apartheid policy and to address the widespread call for
justice for those who abused their authority under the system. However,
as a condition of the transfer of power, the outgoing white minority
government requested that the commission be obligated to grant amnesty
to people making full confessions of politically motivated crimes during
apartheid. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu was appointed to
head the commission, which was soon criticized by many South Africans
for its apparent willingness to grant pardons.
In early 1997, four former police officers, including Police Colonel
Gideon Nieuwoudt, appeared before the commission and admitted to killing
Stephen Biko two decades earlier. The commission agreed to hear their
request for political amnesty but in 1999 refused to grant amnesty
because the men failed to establish a political motive for the brutal
killing. Other amnesty applications are still in progress.
In 1978, a few months after Steve Biko’s death, Stevie Wonder called and
asked Millard Arnold if he would accept the National Association for
the Advancement of Coloured Peoples’ (NAACP) Image Award for Biko
posthumously. Arnold was flown out to Los Angeles for the Eleventh
Annual NAACP Image Award celebration at which he accepted the Stevie
Wonder Perpetual Award in Biko’s honour. This is the poem Arnold wrote and read for the event.
They tell me Steve Biko is dead
To persuade me perhaps that his strong but sensitive voice can be stilled by hatred and fear
They tell me Steve Biko is dead
To show me perhaps that humanity and dignity can be bludgeoned into submission
They tell me Steve Biko is dead
To convince me perhaps that courage and compassion can be somehow compromised
But what they are afraid to tell me is that Biko lives
That the spirit, the ideals, the dreams, the glory of Steve Biko lives
That it lives in Soweto
That it lives in Watts
That it lives in Harlem
That it lives in the minds of all those oppressed
Steve Biko lives because the aspirations of a people cannot be denied
Steve Biko lives because violence and repression will not quench the thirst for freedom and decency
Steve Biko lives because his special sense of humanity and integrity cannot be forgotten
But they, they would have me, they would have you believe that Steve Biko is dead
You and I…
We know better
To persuade me perhaps that his strong but sensitive voice can be stilled by hatred and fear
They tell me Steve Biko is dead
To show me perhaps that humanity and dignity can be bludgeoned into submission
They tell me Steve Biko is dead
To convince me perhaps that courage and compassion can be somehow compromised
But what they are afraid to tell me is that Biko lives
That the spirit, the ideals, the dreams, the glory of Steve Biko lives
That it lives in Soweto
That it lives in Watts
That it lives in Harlem
That it lives in the minds of all those oppressed
Steve Biko lives because the aspirations of a people cannot be denied
Steve Biko lives because violence and repression will not quench the thirst for freedom and decency
Steve Biko lives because his special sense of humanity and integrity cannot be forgotten
But they, they would have me, they would have you believe that Steve Biko is dead
You and I…
We know better
Many of Biko's writings were posthumously collected in the 1978 anthology I Write What I Like.
It is compulsory reading for everyone – especially as a way of
understanding his nuanced theories and expositions of racial inequality
and racist violence. In the preface to this collection, the editor
Aelred Stubbs grappled with Biko’s passing, suggesting that while it was
difficult to directly comment ‘in depth about his death’ or to begin
writing a biography of him, Biko’s teachings were desperately needed:
they were, and sadly continue to be, ‘timely, [as they] serve to inform
those who all over the world know the name Biko only in the dreadful
context of his death’. There are haunting echoes of what his happening,
‘all over the world’, today.
Before his untimely death in
detention at age 30, he was instrumental in uniting Black Africans in
the struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa. His place in history is firmly cemented and the struggle that he gave
his life for continues. He left a legacy of thoughts and words, and
these words pay tribute to the courage and power of the young leader who
was to become one of Africa’s heroes.
Internationally, many years after his death, Bantu Stephen Biko is
memorialized as one of the most important activists of South Africa’s
apartheid era, but in his hometown he is remembered as “Big Brother
Bantu.”
In Xhosa, one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, “Bantu” means
“the people’s person.” Those who knew Biko said it was a name that
described him well, according to Nkosinathi Biko, CEO of the Steve Biko Foundation and the eldest of Biko’s four children.
It has been many years since the police arrested, interrogated and
beat Biko with enough force to cause his death,yet
the former medical student has not been forgotten. Biko became not just a hero of South Africa’s liberation struggle,
but a universal symbol of resistance against oppression, with his memory
praised in films, (1987's Cry Freedom, for instance) books and songs. " In popular culture, he remains a very powerful symbol of hope … an
icon of change,” Biko’s son Nkosinathi once said. “He helped to
articulate our understanding, our own identity that continues to
resonate in young South Africans to this day.“His ideas have a
real influence well beyond the political field, in cultural
organisations, in research organisations and in churches.”
Nelson Mandela South Africa's post-Apartheid president who was incarcerated at the
notorious Robben Island prison during Biko's time on the world stage,
lionized the activist 20 years after he was killed, calling him "the
spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa."
Biko’s brutal murder had a palpable impact on South Africa and the rest
of the world, sounding a forceful wake-up call to non-Black citizens who
wilfully overlooked the inhumane cruelty of apartheid. As well as
impacting the politics of well-known figures like Nelson Mandela, Biko
continues to be a source of inspiration today; his name has been leant
to numerous organisations including the Steve Biko Foundation which has
developed projects like Accelerate Hub to support young people across
Africa.Movements like Black Lives Matter carry forward versions of ‘grass-roots’
organisations for which Biko advocated. They challenge anti-Black
racism – in the US, the UK, and across the world – by unapologetically
stressing the worthiness, the importance, and the value of each
individual Black life existing within a system which derides all Black
experiences as a whole. Black Consciousness remains a vital lens through
which these ideas are being conveyed. In fact, Steve Biko was the
great-uncle of Cherno Biko, the founder of Black Trans Lives Matters.
I.will end this post with Peter Gabriel’s haunting
1980 song Biko:
“You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire.
0nce the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher.”
Sources :
Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like. Bowerdean Press, 1978.
“Cry Freedom.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 6 Nov. 1987.
“Steve Biko: The Philosophy of Black Consciousness." Black Star News, 20 Feb. 2020.
Donald Woods. Biko. Paddington Press, 1978.