steve biko essay pdf

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
African Diaspora
Afrocentrism
Archaeology
Central Africa
Colonial Conquest and Rule
Cultural History
Early States and State Formation in Africa
East Africa and Indian Ocean
Economic History
Historical Linguistics
Historical Preservation and Cultural Heritage
Historiography and Methods
Image of Africa
Intellectual History
Invention of Tradition
Language and History
Legal History
Medical History
Military History
North Africa and the Gulf
Northeastern Africa
Oral Traditions
Political History
Religious History
Slavery and Slave Trade
Social History
Southern Africa
West Africa
Women’s History
Share Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Steve biko and the black consciousness movement.

Leslie Anne Hadfield Leslie Anne Hadfield Department of History, Brigham Young University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.83
Published online: 27 February 2017

The Black Consciousness movement of South Africa instigated a social, cultural, and political awakening in the country in the 1970s. By the mid-1960s, major anti-apartheid organizations in South Africa such as the African National Congress and Pan-Africanist Congress had been virtually silenced by government repression. In 1969, Steve Biko and other black students frustrated with white leadership in multi-racial student organizations formed an exclusively black association. Out of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO) came what was termed Black Consciousness. This philosophy redefined “black” as an inclusive, positive identity and taught that black South Africans could make meaningful change in their society if “conscientized” or awakened to their self-worth and the need for activism. The movement emboldened youth, contributed to the development of Black Theology and cultural movements, and led to the formation of new community and political organizations such as the Black Community Programs organization and the Black People’s Convention.

Articulate and charismatic, Steve Biko was one of the movement’s foremost instigators and prolific writers. When the South African government understood the threat Black Consciousness posed to apartheid, it worked to silence the movement and its leaders. Biko was banished to his home district in the Eastern Cape, where he continued to build community development programs and have a strong political influence. His death at the hands of security police in September 1977 revealed the brutality of South African security forces and the extent to which the state would go to maintain white supremacy. After Biko’s death, the state declared Black Consciousness–related organizations illegal. Activists formed the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO) in 1978 to carry on Black Consciousness ideals, though the movement in general waned after Biko’s death. Since then, Biko has loomed over the history of the Black Consciousness movement as a powerful icon and celebrated hero while others have looked to Black Consciousness in forging a new black future for South Africa.

Black Consciousness
South African Student’s Organization
liberation movements

The Rise of Black Consciousness

The Black Consciousness movement became one of the most influential anti-apartheid movements of the 1970s in South Africa. While many parts of the African continent gained independence, the apartheid state increased its repression of black liberation movements in the 1960s. In the latter part of the decade, the major anti-apartheid organizations worked underground or in exile. The state also increased its extra-legal tactics of intimidation, silencing some activists by kidnapping or killing them. This state action crippled anti-apartheid activity and instilled a sense of fear in the larger black community. The state also began creating so-called homelands—small reserves intended to become independent countries for specific ethnic groups to curb black political opposition and urbanization while retaining access to black labor. All of this perpetuated deep-seated cultural racism in South Africa.

As state repression increased, universities and churches tended to have greater freedom to speak out against the government and facilitated the sharing of ideas. The 1960s saw an increase in Christian social movements and growing opposition to apartheid in churches and ecumenical organizations. Both economic prosperity and greater government control led to higher numbers of black students in primary and secondary schools and the expansion of black universities, segregated according to ethnicity. Although apartheid education restricted black aspirations, these schools also became places of politicization where black students could come together and share ideas and experiences. These elements along with the daily experiences and interpretations of individuals who made up the Black Consciousness movement all contributed to its growth. As emerging young adults unencumbered by the fear of older generations, these activists looked for a way to fundamentally change their society. They did this first by targeting the mind of black people in South Africa. But the movement was also about immediate and relevant action that would make South Africans self-reliant. In other words, it sought a full liberation of black South Africans by starting at the level of the individual, an approach not overtly political to begin with.

SASO and Black Consciousness

The beginning of the movement is marked by the formation of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO), officially launched in July 1969 . Black students at various universities, especially at the University of Natal Medical School–Black Section (UNB), the University of Fort Hare, and the University of the North at Turfloop, became increasingly frustrated with the limits of white student leadership in multiracial organizations. At a National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) meeting held in Grahamstown in 1967 and a University Christian Movement (UCM) conference in Stutterheim in July 1968 , the mostly white leadership would not act decisively to challenge the enforced racial segregation of accommodations for the students at the conference. Led primarily by Steve Biko and Barney Pityana, black students decided to form an exclusively black organization to more effectively advance the cause of the oppressed in South Africa.

SASO laid the foundation for what would grow beyond universities and student groups to become a wider movement. It was in SASO that activists formulated the Black Consciousness philosophy. SASO students also started engaging in community development programs and artistic and literary production and eventually moved into political defiance against the state.

Members of SASO as university students had access to a number of different ideas and engaged with each other—students who came to universities with diverse backgrounds, but similar experiences. They also had access to news media and reading materials through student-activist networks. As they debated and read materials from various parts of Africa and the African diaspora, these students formulated what they began to call Black Consciousness. In addition to the influences of various South African perspectives and their experience in student politics, a number of philosophers and leaders from the African continent and the African diaspora helped shape their thinking. Daniel Magaziner described them as “autonomous shoppers in the marketplace of ideas.” 1 SASO students studied Franz Fanon’s analysis of the psychological impact of colonialism, Jean-Paul Sartre’s dialectical analysis, Zambia’s K. K. Kaunda’s African humanism, and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere’s version of African socialism that emphasized self-reliance and development for liberation. They also read from black American authors, particularly identifying with the Black Power movement (even adopting the raised fist as a gesture of black pride in South Africa) and analyzing the Black Theology of James Cone. SASO students also drew upon the writings of Brazil’s educationalist, Paulo Freire, from which they derived the idea of “to conscientize”—to awaken people to a critical awareness of their situation and their ability to change their situation.

Black Consciousness began to be defined as “an attitude of mind” or “way of life” of black people who believed in their potential and value as black people and saw the need for black people to work together for a holistic liberation. SASO students explained South Africa’s main problem as twofold: white racism and black acquiescence to that racism. They felt that in general, black people had accepted their own inferiority in society. Without a positive, creative sense of self, black people would not challenge the status quo. “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor [was] the mind of the oppressed,” Biko argued. 2 Thus, Black Consciousness activists worked to change the black mindset, to look inward to build black capacity to realize their own liberation. Biko wrote that colonialism, missionaries, and apartheid had made the black man “a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.” He continued:

This is the first truth, bitter as it may seem, that we have to acknowledge before we can start on any programme [ sic ] designed to change the status quo…. 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. 3

In affecting a black psychological, social, economic, and even spiritual liberation, activists saw two aspects as vitally important. First, they defined black as a new positive definition that included all people of color discriminated against by the color of their skin. This was a new approach to grouping people divided into apartheid into Coloureds (mixed-race people), Indians, and various black African ethnic groups. They wanted to make South Africa African in the end (though they had a vaguely defined future) but used a political definition of black that referred to a shared experience and outlook that was more cosmopolitan in celebrating black values and culture. A positive black identity would increase black people’s faith in their own potential. Black unity also presented a stronger front against apartheid. SASO came to strongly reject the participation of black South Africans in any apartheid institution that emphasized ethnic separation (including the so-called African homelands). Second, Black Consciousness activists rejected white liberals (whom they defined as any white person seeking to oppose apartheid). They saw white leadership as an obstacle to black liberation because it stifled black leadership and psychological development. As black people understood fully the oppression they experienced firsthand, activists believed they had the insights and knowledge to know what needed to change. White leadership would hinder the development of a truly self-reliant, black society. The phrase “Black man you are on your own” became a slogan of the movement. For many people, including white liberals, this came across as abrasive and startling. Some even accused SASO of promoting reverse racism. For others, it led to a refreshing, emboldened new consciousness.

SASO began with a few black students who worked to recruit other students across black campuses. This was not always easy, but strongholds developed at the University of the North, Zululand, Fort Hare, the Western Cape, and in Durban. SASO students in these various universities traveled around trying to prompt a psychological change among blacks in a number of ways. From the beginning of SASO, students engaged in community work. This began as a way to relieve the suffering of black people in poverty. Yet community projects were also seen as a way to uplift black communities psychologically as well as to improve black self-reliance. Each campus group ran projects in neighboring communities, such as volunteering in local clinics, helping to secure a clean water supply, and running education and literacy programs. The students learned from their experiences and drew upon the methodologies of Freire in particular to help them refine this work.

SASO also spread Black Consciousness through the SASO Newsletter , wherein activists described their philosophy, shared news, and dealt with the nature of their oppression. Asserting the right to speak was important for these activists and they claimed this right in the newsletter, along with other literary forms such as poems and plays. The newsletter also reported on various student meetings where students developed their thinking, debated strategies for the future, and discussed how to engage with the broader community. So-called formation schools—weekend or holiday camps—served as training grounds where students debated societal issues and learned organizational strategies. Acutely aware of the politically hostile environment within which it worked, SASO made it a point to train a number of layers of leadership to ensure the organization would continue if state repression were to hit.

A marker of the “attitude” and “way of life” of Black Consciousness activists was the way they carried themselves. The clothes they wore, their demeanor when interacting with white people, and the music they listened to all portrayed confidence and pride in blackness. The young women involved in the Black Consciousness especially challenged the status quo with new styles by throwing away their skin-lightening creams and wigs and wearing their hair in natural Afros. They also wore bold styles in clothing that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable at the time, such as very tight pants. Some even smoked cigarettes in public. Though female students were involved in the movement from the beginning—prominent SASO women include Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Deborah Matshoba, Daphne Matshoba, Lindelwe Mabandla, Mamphela Ramphele, Thenjiwe Mthintso—the movement was dominated by male students. Women’s issues were tabled in favor of focusing on black liberation. Female activists had to excel at male ways of debating to gain an influence in SASO. The students also held parties where young women were treated more as objects of sexual desire. For some, this means that women had more conservative roles in the movement; however, some women did gain leadership in the movement, especially in community projects where they challenged conventional gender roles.

The Broader Movement

Before the state took action to suppress Black Consciousness, its influence had expanded beyond university campuses. With the spread of ideas and expansion of organizations linked to Black Consciousness, what began as a student organization grew into a movement with a broad, diffused impact that can be difficult to generalize about or trace precisely.

Cultural Movement

The movement had cultural dimensions, linked in varying degrees to formal organizations. Black Consciousness ideas resonated with poets and theater groups in particular. Some worked directly with SASO. For example, a group of black students and actors from Durban, many of Indian descent, performed their plays at SASO events (these activists formed the Theatre Council of Natal or TECON as well as the South African Black Theatre Union or SABTU). Their plays, such as Black on White and Resurrection , examined what it meant to be black and oppressed in South Africa. Participants and playwrights such as Asha Rambally Moodley and Strinivasa Moodley joined Black Consciousness organizations, while others simply continued to use theater as a way to raise a critical awareness among black communities. Poets such as Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Wally Serote, Don Mattera, Mafika Pascal Gwala, and James Matthews, among others, similarly dealt with black oppression and sought to inspire hope in black self-determination with positive images and themes of resistance and redemption. Black Consciousness promoted music with black themes and origins and influenced the outlook and material in Sowetan literary magazines, such as The Classic , New Classic , and Staffrider . 4 As Mbulelo Mzamane has argued, Black Consciousness effectively used culture as a form of affecting a black awakening and resisting white supremacy in an oppressive political climate. 5

Black Theology

Black Consciousness also contributed to the development of Black Theology in South Africa. Ecumenical organizations, Christian activists, and Black Consciousness adherents all influenced each other. The University Christian Movement (UCM) established a project spearheaded by Sabelo Stanley Ntwasa on Black Theology coming from the United States—an interpretation of Christianity that taught that Christ came to liberate the poor and oppressed, the black populations in the United States and South Africa. SASO joined the UCM in engaging Black Theology in the South African context and resolved to influence a change in leadership in South African churches. SASO and other Black Consciousness organizations supported conferences focused on examining Christianity’s relevancy to black South Africans. 6 A number of those influenced by Black Theology later became leaders of Christian resistance and contextual theology, such as Alphaeus Zulu, Manas Buthelezi, Desmond Tutu, Allan Boesak, and Frank Chikane. Activists worked closely with radical priests and ecumenical organizations, significantly putting these Christian ideals into action. 7

Black Community Programs

In September of 1971 , the Christian Institute and the South African Council of Churches appointed Bennie Khoapa as the director of a division of their Special Project on Christian Action in Society (Spro-cas 2). As the head of the Black Community Programs (BCP), Khoapa combined Christian action with the Black Consciousness philosophy. The organization sought to coordinate among other agencies run by and in the black community and to conscientize black South Africans through publication projects that provided relevant news for black people and promoted a positive black identity. The BCP eventually moved to run its own projects when activists working for the organization found themselves restricted to their home areas by banning orders in 1973 . For example, it ran health clinics such as the Zanempilo Community Health Center in the Eastern Cape, managed cottage industries like the Njwaxa leatherwork factory also in the Eastern Cape, and opened resource centers at its regional offices. It published a yearbook, Black Review . The BCP gave practical expression to Black Consciousness ideals. BCP publications encouraged black publishing in South Africa and became a trusted source of positive information in black communities. Research in villages where the BCP ran its projects has demonstrated that health and economic projects in the Eastern Cape improved black people’s physical conditions and helped villagers gain a greater sense of human dignity. Through this work, the BCP also significantly addressed women’s issues and female activists proved themselves as capable leaders and respected colleagues. 8

The Black People’s Convention

At the same time that some activists saw community and cultural work as essential for reaching their goals, others advocated for a national organization to push for more immediate political change. This led to the formation of the Black People’s Convention (BPC). In 1971 at meetings of various black agencies to discuss the formation of a national coordinating organization (including the Interdenominational African Ministers’ Association and the Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of the African People), proponents of establishing an overtly political organization (such as Aubrey Mokoape and Harry Nengwekhulu) gained a majority over those who saw community development as a more sure way of building up strength for future political work. The BPC was launched in July 1972 and held its first national conference in December, where Winifred Kgware was elected as one its first president. The principal aim of the BPC was defined as fostering black political unity in the Black Consciousness sense in order to achieve psychological and physical liberation. This included creating an egalitarian society, developing Black Theology, and condemning foreign countries working with the apartheid government, among other objectives. The BPC was the first black national political organization formed since 1960 and took a strong stance of non-participation in the apartheid system. Membership did not grow as rapidly or as widely as the BPC hoped. By the end of 1973 , the BPC had forty-one branches. Still, the BPC helped organize the pro-FRELIMO rallies and continued to refine its future vision for South Africa, including the much debated Mafeking Manifesto that outlined a specific mixed-economy future for South Africa. 9

Youth and Leadership

Activists also influenced high school students and the development of youth movements, directly and indirectly. SASO and the BCP held youth leadership conferences or formation schools that engaged students in critical social analysis and taught organizational skills. These meetings eventually led to the formation of regional youth organizations and the National Youth Organization (NYO, formed in 1973 ). In Soweto, where student organizations had already been operating, SASO students and events in general helped spread Black Consciousness among high school students. SASO leader Onkgopotse Abraham Tiro, expelled from the University of the North, and other SASO students ended up teaching in high schools in Soweto. The already existing African Student Movement changed its name to the South African Student Movement (SASM), to be more inclusive. It was SASM that organized the June 16, 1976 , Soweto student march against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction that led to widespread uprisings. Although the Black Consciousness movement cannot claim credit for orchestrating the Soweto Uprisings, the movement’s bold assertion of black self-worth and self-reliance clearly influenced high school students, and SASM aligned itself to Black Consciousness organizations. The student uprisings of 1976 , along with other adult leaders who became involved in running community programs in Soweto (such as Ramsey Ramokgopa and Oshadi Mangena), are evidence of the way Black Consciousness ideas changed South African thinking among different groups of people in various corners of the country. 10

Clashes with the State

State repression profoundly shaped the context and direction of the Black Consciousness movement. Aware of the way the state cracked down on resistance in the early 1960s, SASO leaders deliberately avoided confrontation with the state in order to evade crippling state action. Still, activists took care to nurture leadership so that replacements were ready to fill in positions if the police detained people in leadership roles. Initially, the state saw the formation of an exclusively black student organization as fitting with apartheid. However, it soon understood that Black Consciousness undermined the whole philosophy behind apartheid and increasingly bore down on the movement and its leaders. The state’s efforts to silence activists included bans on individuals (legal orders that restricted a person’s movement, political involvement, and public presence), numerous detentions without trial (for up to 180 days at times), and constant police surveillance and intimidation. Activists learned to outwit the police. Their youthful energy and audacity sustained their activity in this politically hostile environment. They also found hope in suffering at the hands of the state because they viewed it as a sacrifice that advanced South Africa closer to liberation. 11

Confrontation with the state escalated first in 1972 , when Tiro, the Student Representative Council president at the University of the North, gave a speech criticizing the university’s white leadership and the racial discrimination infused in its education. The university expelled Tiro. This sparked a number of black student strikes across the country. Many of these students were in turn expelled and at the beginning of 1973 ; the state placed banning orders on a number of SASO leaders including Biko, Pityana, Nengwekhulu, Saths Cooper, Strini Moodley, and Bokwe Mafuna. This scattered activists throughout the country, although they found ways to continue their work.

State repression of Black Consciousness activists intensified in the next few years, especially as activists took more overt action against the state. A particularly important move in this direction was the pro-FRELIMO rallies held at the University of the North and in Durban in September 1974 to celebrate the liberation of a neighboring country from European colonialism and express their support for the people of Mozambique. The minister of justice declared the rallies illegal just before they were to take place. The leaders of SASO and the BPC decided to go through with their original plans, even if it meant violent clashes with police. Police did indeed break up the rallies using some violence. This led to further arrests and detentions of activists and a publicized court case that essentially put Black Consciousness on trial ( State v. Cooper et al., also known as the SASO-BPC trial). Nine men were tried and convicted of encouraging racial hostility. 12 Even if not all Black Consciousness activists agreed with the way the rallies were held, this move marked them more firmly as enemies of the state and gave the movement a more public place in anti-apartheid politics.

Police harassment, detentions, and bannings spiked again after the 1976 student uprisings and continued into 1977 . This took a toll on the lives of many activists. Detentions put a psychological strain on individuals and their families, and increasingly brutal torture inflicted physical damage. Four Black Consciousness activists died between 1972 and 1977 as a result of the actions of South African security forces: Mthuli ka Shezi was pushed onto a train track in 1972 , Tiro was letter-bombed in Botswana in 1974 , Mapetla Mohapi (SASO organizer) was killed in the Kei Road police station in 1976 , and Biko died at the hands of the security police in 1977 .

Bantu Stephen Biko, the most prominent figure of the Black Consciousness movement, was not the only student, thinker, writer, and community project director in the movement, but he did play a significant role in forming SASO, spreading the Black Consciousness philosophy, and running and advising the BPC, among other informal roles. His charismatic personality drew people to him. His death at the hands of the South African security police thus had significant repercussions for the Black Consciousness movement and made him a famous martyr.

Born at Tarkastad on December 18, 1946 , to Mzingaye and Alice Duna Biko, Biko grew up in Ginsberg (a small township of King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape). Biko’s father was a policeman (studying for a law degree by correspondence) until he died of an illness in 1950 . Biko’s mother subsequently supported her four children—Bukelwa, Khaya, Bantu, and Nobandile—by working as a domestic maid, then a cook at Grey Hospital in King William’s Town. Biko’s mother was a committed Christian and was often remembered for the way she helped people in need in the township or people in transit at the train station nearby. This kind of community involvement and devotion influenced each of her children in their chosen professions later in life.

The Ginsberg community was a small but racially and economically diverse and vibrant community in the 1950s and 1960s. Biko lived with Coloured neighbors, and Ginsberg’s Weir Hall hosted a number of musical events. There were also a number of sports clubs. Although the community had politically involved people, Biko himself was not interested in politics as a young boy. His siblings, friends, and classmates remember him as being a highly capable student but one who was very playful and sociable. His academic achievements won him support from his community, which organized a bursary for him to join his older brother at the Lovedale Institution to finish high school when he was sixteen years old. His brother’s political activities with the Pan Africanist Congress led to his detention and then expulsion from Lovedale in 1963 . This experience politicized Biko. He resented the abuse of authority by the police, especially as he thought about his brother’s experience. His schooling had also been interrupted, leaving him at home to think while his peers busied themselves with school work. In 1964 , he continued his schooling at St. Francis College, a Roman Catholic school in Mariannhill in the then Natal province. There he further distinguished himself as an outstanding student and questioned authorities and their Christian beliefs. He also held stimulating intellectual debates about African independence with other students.

Biko’s scholastic achievements won him a spot at the UNB medical school, the only place where black people could study medicine during apartheid. There Steve interacted with black people of various backgrounds and began to play a role in student politics at the university. He joined NUSAS and also interacted with the UCM. It is through these student networks that he began working with other students such as Pityana to start SASO. He traveled around the country with Pityana and others to persuade students at black colleges and universities to join SASO and to explain the Black Consciousness philosophy. He served as SASO’s first president. His room at the medical school residency served as the SASO office. After one year in office, SASO elected Pityana as president and Biko took the role of publications officer. Using the pseudonym Frank Talk, he instituted a series in SASO’s newsletter entitled, “I Write What I Like,” where he tackled a number of issues and explained Black Consciousness. Former friends and activists remember Biko as one who enabled others, rather than seeking leadership roles. He also continued to find joy in his associations with people—of all racial backgrounds—mixing intellectual and political conversations with his socializing. He was known for his demanding work ethic as well as his ability to hold his drink.

During his time in Durban he met and married a nursing student, Nontsikelelo (Ntsiki) Mashalaba, with whom he had two sons, Nkosinathi (b. 1971 ) and Samora (b. 1975 ). Biko loved his family and spending time with his children; however, he did not put boundaries on his romantic and sexual relationships with women. It was also during his time in Durban that Biko met and worked with Ramphele, with whom he had a long-standing affair. He and Ramphele had a daughter, Lerato (who lived for two months in 1974 ), and a son, Hlumelo (b. 1978 ). Biko had affairs with a number of other women as well. One, Lorrain Tabane, gave birth to Biko’s daughter Motlatsi (b. 1977 ). Although their student days were marked by parties with women and drinking, a number of Biko’s friends later confronted him about his womanizing, as did his wife and Ramphele. Yet Biko seems to have been unwilling or unable to resolve the controversies and pain he caused through this behavior before his death. While he worked well with many women as colleagues and fellow activists, he at times struggled to concede that traditional gender roles could change. 13

In 1972 , Biko was expelled from medical school and left to find a way to support his young son and wife (who was also fired because of her husband’s political involvement). This led to his employment by Khoapa as a field officer for the BCP, his only official employment ever. In Durban, he worked on coordinating among various black organizations and on producing the Black Review . In 1973 , his banning sent him back to Ginsberg. This changed his work and the direction of the BCP. He set up an Eastern Cape branch of the BCP in King William’s Town, from where he helped establish the Zanempilo clinic, took over the Njwaxa project, ran the BCP office and resource center, continued to assist with publications, and started other bursary and grocery coop programs in Ginsberg. He also continued to be involved politically, despite constant police surveillance and attempts to arrest and detain him, and started studying for a law degree by correspondence. Even when he was further restricted by the government from working officially for the BCP in 1975 , he continued to advise on the projects and political matters. The BPC even elected him as an honorary president in 1977 to give him authority to cultivate unity among the various black political groups in the country at the time. Working against the apartheid security forces was a challenge, especially when Biko felt isolated and watched his fellow activists and friends suffer. But Biko also found ways to circumvent police surveillance and to challenge their authority. He was detained, arrested, and accused several times (though never convicted). He was also called to testify at the SASO-BPC trial, which gave him a public platform to define Black Consciousness and display his debating skills. He also famously befriended Donald Woods, the white East London Daily Dispatch newspaper editor, which gave the movement inroads into the media and other networks.

Biko continued to work on unifying the various black groups even under his banning orders. The last trip he took outside of his restricted banning area led him to Cape Town with fellow activist Peter Jones on August 17, 1977 , to meet with various people including Black Consciousness activists as well as Neville Alexander of the Unity Movement. The meetings never materialized. Fearing negative repercussions if they stayed too long, Jones and Biko turned back the next day. They were stopped at a roadblock just outside of Grahamstown. A problem with opening the trunk of the car they had borrowed made the police suspicious. When the police found out they had detained two leaders of the Black Consciousness movement, they arrested the two and sent them to security police headquarters in Port Elizabeth. Biko and Jones suffered physical torture at the hands of the security police.

On September 6, the police took their physical beatings of Biko too far. Police testimonies indicate that Biko’s refusal to submit to disrespectful treatment led the police to beat him and run him into the wall. Biko collapsed. Instead of providing medical treatment, the police chained him to a gate in a standing position. They only called in a district surgeon the next day. Despite evidence of brain damage, the police kept Biko naked and chained up in his cell until his conditioned worsened. On September, the police loaded Biko naked into the back of a police van and drove him through the night to Pretoria Central Prison for medical care. He was pronounced dead there on September 12, 1977 .

The announcement of Biko’s death sparked an international outcry. At first the government said Biko had died of a hunger strike. However, evidence from a postmortem examination proved that Biko had died of head injuries. An inquest into the death of Biko was held, but no one was convicted. Later evidence showed that the police and the medical professionals involved lied at the inquest about the timing of the care Biko received and the cause of the nature of the physical scuffle that led to Biko’s death. When the case was brought to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the hearings shed further light on the physical struggle that led to Biko’s death and the medical doctors’ complicity but left members of the Biko family dissatisfied with the police officers’ disclosure. The TRC denied amnesty to all of the police officers involved in the hearings. Biko’s death remains a poignant example of the brutality and dishonesty of government security forces as well as the medical sector during apartheid.

Thousands of people attended Biko’s funeral in King William’s Town. A few weeks later, the government banned all Black Consciousness–related organizations including SASO, the BCP, the BPC, and other sympathetic organizations, newspapers, and individuals. Because of Biko’s role in the Black Consciousness movement and the nature of his death, he became the movement’s main martyr. This has influenced the way in which he has been celebrated and remembered. Biko is often placed at the center of histories of the Black Consciousness movement. He was one of the first liberation movement heroes to be memorialized in the post-apartheid era with a statue, his gravesite, and his home being dedicated in 1997 , the 20th anniversary of his death. Soon afterwards, his widow and oldest son, Nkosinathi, formed the Steve Biko Foundation, which contributes to the celebration and shaping of Biko’s character. Yet many have claimed Biko as a progenitor or hero. Community members, people involved in the projects he ran, his friends and colleagues, political parties, and public intellectuals look to Biko. Almost all remember his good characteristics (although his peers are more willing to recognize his faults). He is particularly seen as someone who sacrificed for the nation when in the post-apartheid period leaders from liberation movements are charged with corruption and self-serving politics. He has also been elevated as a leading intellectual and political activist, someone who spoke out boldly and affirmed black dignity. For some, he stands as a revolutionary, while others see him as entrenched in community work.

Post-1977 Black Consciousness Directions

The apartheid state dealt a heavy blow to the Black Consciousness movement after Biko’s death when it declared all Black Consciousness–related organizations illegal. However, activists regrouped in various ways to continue their work. As Mbulelo Mzamane, Bavusile Maaba, and Nkosinathi Biko wrote, different views about the end goal of Black Consciousness manifested themselves in the directions activists took after 1977 . 14 Some continued with community development projects as a practical way of advancing the material position of black people while also improving black self-perceptions. For example, Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana started the Zingisa Education Fund in the place of the Ginsberg Education Fund and later established the Trust for Christian Outreach and Education (an umbrella for other community development organizations). Ramphele established the Ithuseng Community Health Centre in Tzaneen, where she had been banned, based on the Zanempilo Community Health Centre model.

On the other hand, disagreements already stirring in the movement surfaced about what kind of action would move South Africa closer to freedom and the validity of an analysis that saw economic class as the main cause of inequality. Those advocating a more direct confrontation with the state had already begun to join armed organizations outside the country. Other activists still in the country saw an above-ground political organization as the best way to embody Black Consciousness and affect change. In 1978 , a group of activists met in Roodepoort to form the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO), designed to defy state repression and carry on the work of the BPC. While AZAPO sought to address various aspects of the black experience, it soon adhered to a more socialist interpretation and approach, even emphasizing workers’ concerns. Black Consciousness leadership in Ginsberg had previously highlighted the importance of changing unequal economic structures that disadvantaged the black majority and activists had begun exploring the idea of “black communalism,” but AZAPO now adopted a more explicit class analysis, which it called “scientific socialism.” Activists in AZAPO saw Black Consciousness’s focus on black self-reliance as making it a distinctively different organization, in opposition to other socialist-leaning organizations like the ANC and its supporters. This resulted at times in physically violent clashes. (The PAC and AZAPO have also clashed at times. 15 ) Activists in exile formed the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA) as a sort of wing to AZAPO that operated in the 1980s.

Other activists took their conscientized outlook with them as they joined various existing organizations such as the ANC and the PAC. For them, Black Consciousness was an “attitude of mind” and “way of life” that black people needed to adopt, no matter what political organization they belonged to. Some activists in exile, for instance, who had been part of the BCMA eventually decided an additional organization was unnecessary and joined other organizations.

Different interpretations of Black Consciousness and various activists have persisted as people ask what it means to be free in a post-apartheid South Africa. AZAPO is still a political party, although a minor one (and it too has had breakaway factions). Others have written in the same style as Frank Talk. Some have interpreted Black Consciousness simply as promoting black economic and political ascendency or a celebration of black culture (which has translated into clothing lines, for instance). Others look to Black Consciousness for answers about how to uproot residual colonialism. In the early 2000s, younger generations of South Africans, transcending political party boundaries, looked to Black Consciousness as a radical challenge to prevailing racial structures. For example, university student movements in 2015 and 2016 evoked Black Consciousness when critiquing university curriculum and claiming a voice as youth. Some of these students saw a lack of black pride and economic inequality in South Africa as evidence of continued black oppression. Thus, black South Africans continue to evoke Black Consciousness.

Discussion of the Literature

Many scholars and writers have been inspired by Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness movement. This has resulted in a relatively large body of scholarship with authors primarily from South Africa and the United States taking perspectives ranging from the biographical and commemorative, political science, philosophy, history, and literary and visual arts. The amount of scholarship along with various news articles, commentaries, and short-run periodicals demonstrates the power of Biko as an icon and shows that people find relevancy in the movement’s ideas and history. Yet, many works reiterate common themes with an emphasis on Biko’s intellectual and political work.

The first authors who wrote about the Black Consciousness movement in the 1970s and 1980s included sympathetic political scientists and those seeking to commemorate Biko. A collection of Biko’s own writings was published along with a memoir by Biko’s friend, Father Aelred Stubbs, in 1978 , soon after Biko’s death. Various editions of this collection, entitled I Write What I Like , have appeared many times since. Three other books published at the same time similarly sought to publicize Biko’s ideas and expose the brutality of the apartheid regime, including Donald Woods’s Biko . 16 In a more scholarly vein, political scientists Gail Gerhart, Robert Fatton Jr., and CRD Halisi situated Black Consciousness in relation to other black political ideologies to discuss its ideas on race and citizenship. 17

The 1990s saw further commemoration of Biko, but a greater analysis of the Black Consciousness movement. Bounds of Possibility , a volume edited by Biko’s former colleagues and activists, included a brief biography of Biko and commemorative essays as well as various examinations of different aspects of the movement. Even though it perpetuated the focus on Biko, it broadened the analysis of the movement to touch on theology, cultural production, community engagement, and gender. Saleem Badat and Thomas Karis and Gerhart’s work in the late 1990s presaged greater historical analysis and summary of the movement found in subsequent works. 18 For example, in 2006 , Mbulelo Mzamane, Bavusile Maaba, and Nkosinathi Biko’s chapter in The Road to Democracy in South Africa , vol. 2, gave the most comprehensive summary of the movement to that date, and Bhekizizwe Peterson’s chapter in the same volume focused on Black Consciousness literary and other cultural work. 19 Former activists, friends, and politicians continued to add their personal reflections in monographs and edited collections, particularly at anniversaries of Biko’s death. 20 Biographies and edited collections in the early 2000s dealt with Black Consciousness’s philosophical, intellectual, and cultural production. This came as people questioned what it meant to be black and liberated in a post-apartheid, globalized world. For example, Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel Gibson’s Biko Lives! began with a substantial section entitled “Philosophical Dialogues,” and Nigel Gibson and Lewis R Gordon have focused on Black Consciousness’s relation to Fanon and existential thought, respectively. 21

More historical analyses were published as the 1970s became more distant. These works explored the origins, contexts, and impact of the 1970s movement. Daniel R. Magaziner published the first historical monograph of Black Consciousness. His The Law and the Prophets examined the movement’s intellectual history in the context of its time. Leslie Anne Hadfield provided an in-depth analysis of the movement’s extensive community development work in Liberation and Development . 22 Other scholars have emphasized Biko’s longer intellectual heritage, manifested in the museum exhibit at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg, and in Xolela Mangcu’s biography of Biko. 23 These, along with other works published at the same time, notably dealt with questions about the place of women and youth in the movement. 24

Scholars of other disciplines such as art history and theology have continued to explore various parts of the movement and Biko’s impact in depth. 25 Updated collections of Biko’s writings continue to be published. Repeated references to Black Consciousness in South African politics and the growth in scholarly work about the movement indicates that new questions will draw out different aspects of the history of Black Consciousness and Biko in the future. 26 However, many works continue to commemorate Biko and the intellectual aspects of the movement at the expense of greater coverage, complexity, and historical sensitivity. This also has the effect of confining analyses to the Black Consciousness movement of the 1970s, with Biko’s death in 1977 seen as the close of that era. More work on the various actors and broader reach of the movement, including a focus on different regional experiences and contemporary adaptations of Black Consciousness, could prove to be enlightening and productive avenues for further research.

Primary Sources

In relation to the beginnings of Black Consciousness with SASO, there is a relative abundance of published primary sources and sources accessible online. These include Biko’s writings, literary and organizational publications, memoirs and interviews published in edited volumes. On the other hand, many written records from the time when state repression and police harassment increased have been lost or destroyed. Furthermore, after 1977 , the movement was more diffused, resulting in a less cohesive archive for this time period. The written record thus poses challenges for reconstructing the history of the Black Consciousness movement and Biko. Historians have turned to various different sources to create a fuller picture of the movement. Most notably, they have conducted numerous oral histories to fill in the gaps of the written record.

Public Archives

In addition to published primary sources, there are two main archival repositories in South Africa that hold substantial collections on Biko and the Black Consciousness movement, both written and oral sources. The Steve Biko Foundation has created an archive, now housed at the Steve Biko Centre in Ginsberg. This collection brings together sources from major public and personal archives concerning Biko, Black Consciousness, Black community programs of the 1970s, and many of Biko’s contemporaries. It includes copies of the South African Department of Justice files related to Steve Biko and Black Consciousness activists, copies from papers at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Bruce Haigh Special Collection, documents pertaining to the TRC Amnesty Application by the killers of Steve Biko, cuttings from the Daily Dispatch 1972 to 2003 , master’s and doctoral theses, and the collections of scholars such as Magaziner and Hadfield (including the transcripts of the oral histories they conducted).

The Historical Papers division of the William Cullen Library at the University of Witwatersrand has an extensive collection of material related to human and civil rights in South Africa. It has accessions with materials on: Steve Biko; SASO; AZAPO and the Azanian Student’s Organization; the Black People’s Convention; the SASO-BPC trial; and the research materials of Thomas Karis and Gail M. Gerhart used to write From Protest to Challenge (also available on microfilm at the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago). It also holds several valuable accessions on related organizations, such as the papers of the Christian Institute and the South African Council of Churches and their joint program, Spro-cas, the parent organization of the BCP and the papers of the University Christian Movement, and NUSAS. Some of these materials have been digitized and can be accessed online through the archive’s website.

Two other archives hold important materials. The Unisa Documentation Centre for African Studies at the University of South Africa main library in Pretoria has organizational brochures and documents related to the BCP, BPC, and SASO that are not found elsewhere, along with other miscellaneous Black Consciousness papers. For research on AZAPO and the BCMA, the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre (NAHECS) at the University of Fort Hare has the most extensive collection in their accession on the Azanian People’s Organization/Black Consciousness Movement (AZAPO/BCM).

Digital and Filmed Collections

Primary sources may also be found in online collections: Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA) digital library has copies of Black Consciousness publications such as the SASO Newsletter and Black Review ; the Aluka digital library’s Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa Collection includes a sampling of interviews and documents from Gerhart Interviews, Karis-Gerhart Collection, Magaziner Interviews, and NUSAS (but Aluka requires a subscription to access those materials); the Google Arts and Culture online exhibits includes a series on Biko with photographs and some documents. The South African History Online website includes a number of pages on Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness Movement, SASO, the BPC and SASO trial, and various activists with a sampling of primary documents linked to some of the pages. The Overcoming Apartheid website includes a multimedia resource page on the Black Consciousness movement with interviews from various activists. And finally, “The Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa—Material from the collection of Gail Gerhart,” filmed for the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) is available on microfilm at the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, Illinois.

Links to Digital Materials

Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA) .

Google Arts and Culture Institute: Steve Biko .

Overcoming Apartheid .

South African History Online .

Biko Lives!

Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko

© 2008
Andile Mngxitama ,
Amanda Alexander ,
Nigel C. Gibson

You can also search for this editor in PubMed Google Scholar

Part of the book series: Contemporary Black History (CBH)

3515 Accesses

156 Citations

10 Altmetric

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

About this book

Frantz Fanon in the Era of Black Lives Matter

The Power of a Black Christology: Africana Pastoral Theology Reflects on Black Divinity

The Death of “la Reina de la Salsa:” Celia Cruz and the Mythification of the Black Woman

Table of contents (16 chapters), front matter.

Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, Nigel C. Gibson

Interview with Steve Biko

Gail M. Gerhart

Philosophic Dialogues

Biko: africana existentialist philosopher.

Mabogo P. More

Self-Consciousness as Force and Reason of Revolution in the Thought of Steve Biko

A phenomenology of biko’s black consciousness.

Lewis R. Gordon

Biko and the Problematic of Presence

Frank B. Wilderson III

May the Black God Stand Please!: Biko’s Challenge to Religion

Tinyiko Sam Maluleke

Contested Histories and Intellectual Trajectories

Black consciousness after biko: the dialectics of liberation in south africa, 1977–1987, an illuminating moment: background to the azanian manifesto.

Neville Alexander

Critical Intellectualism: The Role of Black Consciousness in Reconfiguring the Race-Class Problematic in South Africa

Nurina Ally, Shireen Ally

Cultural Critique and the Politics of Gender

The influences and representations of biko and black consciousness in poetry in apartheid and postapartheid south africa/azania.

Mphutlane wa Bofelo

A Human Face: Biko’s Conceptions of African Culture and Humanism

Andries Oliphant

Remembering Biko for the Here and Now

Ahmed Veriava, Prishani Naidoo

The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman’s Question in South Africa: 1970–1980

M. J. Oshadi Mangena

Interview with Strini Moodley

Naomi Klein, Ashwin Desai, Avi Lewis

Interview with Deborah Matshoba

Amanda Alexander, Andile Mngxitama

"This welcome collection of essays about Biko's existentialism, self-consciousness, place of phenomenology in his philosophy, and contribution to the dialectics of liberation, as well as the meaning of race and class problematic in Biko's work, African culture and humanism in his thinking, attitude toward the rights and roles of women, and much more examines his legacy and the meaning that his preachings, writings, and life's example gave to the development of black consciousness in South Africa. But, by far, the most important chapters in the book are Gail Gerhart's hitherto unpublished 1972 interview with Biko and Neville Alexander's recollection of Biko and the Azanian Manifesto." - R. I. Rotberg, Choice"Taken as a whole, this collection of essays is an important addition to the scholarship on Steve Biko. It contributes not only to a deeper understanding of what philosophy is, but also how Biko's writing can be considered philosophical." - Martin Murray, Professor of Sociology, SUNY Binghamton"I never thought I would read anything like this that reminded me of the 'good old days' when we were giddy with hopes and enthusiasm for recreating our own world! Biko Lives! will ruffle many feathers. People who have been trying to 'program' the forward movement of history and human development are going to have to think again."

- Bokwe Mafuna, former journalist, founding organizer of the Black Workers' Project, and friend of Steve Biko's

About the authors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : Biko Lives!

Book Subtitle : Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko

Editors : Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, Nigel C. Gibson

Series Title : Contemporary Black History

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613379

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan New York

eBook Packages : Palgrave History Collection , History (R0)

Hardcover ISBN : 978-0-230-60519-0 Published: 22 August 2008

Softcover ISBN : 978-0-230-60649-4 Published: 22 August 2008

eBook ISBN : 978-0-230-61337-9 Published: 07 July 2008

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : X, 294

Topics : African History , Imperialism and Colonialism , Social History , Cultural History , International Relations , Modern History

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Society and Politics
Art and Culture
Biographies
Publications

Stephen Bantu Biko

Introduction

Stephen (Steve) Bantu Biko was a popular voice of Black liberation in South Africa between the mid 1960s and his death in police detention in 1977. This was the period in which both the ANC and the PAC had been officially banned and the disenfranchised Black population (especially the youth) were highly receptive to the prospect of a new organisation that could carry their grievances against the Apartheid state. Thus it was that Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) came to prominence and although Biko was not its only leader, he was its most recognisable figure. It was Biko, along with others who guided the movement of student discontent into a political force unprecedented in the history of South Africa. Biko and his peers were responding to developments that emerged in the high phase of Apartheid, when the Nationalist Party (NP) , in power for almost two decades, was restructuring the country to conform to its policies of separate development. The NP went about untangling what little pockets of integration and proximity there were between White, Black, Coloured and Indian people by creating new residential areas, new parallel institutions such as schools, universities and administrative bodies, and indeed, new ‘countries’, the tribal homelands.

Though Biko was killed before his thirty first birthday, his influence on South Africa was, and continues to be profound. Aside from the BCM, he is also credited with launching the South African Students Organisation (SASO) , which was created as a Black alternative to the liberal National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) . It is necessary to disambiguate this move, as Biko is frequently misunderstood to have been ”anti-White.” This categorisation is demonstrably untrue, as Biko had no issue with White people per se - his target was always, ultimately white supremacy and the Apartheid government. The decision to break away from NUSAS and the formation of the BCM was rather to create distance from liberal sympathisers who could attempt to speak for their Black counterparts but were nonetheless, by virtue of their race, beneficiaries of an iniquitous system. Biko is best remembered for empowering Black voices, installing a sense of Black pride similar to Césaire and Senghor’s ‘Negritude’, and for taking the liberation struggle forward and galvanising the youth movement.

Childhood and Schooling

Biko 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.

Mzingaye died suddenly in 1950, when Steve was four years old. His mother subsequently raised the children on her own, working as a cook at Grey’s Hospital.

Steve’s elder brother, Khaya, was politically active as well as enjoying sports. He started a rugby club called Sea Lions, which later morphed into the Star of Hope rugby club. Khaya was well-read and well-spoken, and he became a reporter for the school newspaper at Forbes Grant School, and got involved with the local branch of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) , a political tendency which had a strong presence in the area. After coming under the influence of Malcolm Dyani, who was also at Forbes Grant, Khaya was made the secretary of the local branch, and he tried to use the Star of Hope rugby club to recruit people into the PAC.

Steve was known as a joker by his friends and schoolmates, Zinzo Gulwa, Ndikho Moss, Sipho Makwedini and Siphiwo Ceko. Around 1952 (the exact date varies from source to source), he went to Charles Morgan Higher Primary School when he started Standard Three (Grade Five). His teacher, Damsie Monaheng, who remembered him as a naughty boy who was always barefoot, recommended that he be promoted to Standard Five, so he skipped Standard Four. Although his friends never saw him study, he was one of the brightest kids in the class, and he would help the other kids when they did not understand their lessons.

Steve passed Standard Six in 1959 and in 1960 he went on to Forbes Grant, a school through which many passed to become prominent figures in post-apartheid South Africa. At Forbes, Steve eventually befriended Larry Bekwa, who had been expelled from Lovedale College after he took part in a strike protesting against South Africa’s becoming a republic in 1961. Steve proved to be a studious high school student, excelling in mathematics and English. In 1962, at the age of 16, Steve and Larry completed their Junior Certificate (Grade Ten).

Steve then went to Lovedale, where his brother Khaya, was already a student. However, in April, Steve was taken into custody by the police, who came to the school to arrest Khaya, who was suspected of being involved with Poqo , the armed wing of the PAC. The police took both brothers to King William’s Town, 60km away, and Khaya was charged. He was given a sentence of two years, with 15 months suspended, and served his term at Fort Glamorgan jail near East London .

Steve was released and returned home, but he ran away from Ginsberg to live with his friend Larry Bekwa in Peddie (Eastern Cape) for the rest of the year. Nevertheless, he continued going to classes at Lovedale, where he became friends with Barney Pityana , who was at the school on an Andrew Smith bursary. The political tensions at Lovedale were palpable, as Steve arrived at the school soon after Thabo Mbeki had been expelled, following strikes by students. Following Khaya’s arrest, Steve was interrogated by the police and subsequently he was also expelled from Lovedale after only attending for three months. This incident inculcated in Steve a "strong resentment toward White authority", which would shape his political career.

Khaya was barred from attending any school after his release from prison, so he began to work as a clerk for a law firm. Concerned about his younger brother’s education, he wrote to various schools and got Steve accepted at St Francis College (a Catholic boarding School outside Durban ) in Marianhill in Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal ) in 1964, where he began doing Form Four. By now, after his brush with the police, Steve had become politicised. Khaya remembered:

“Steve was expelled for absolutely no reason at all. But in retrospect I welcome the South African government’s gesture of exposing a really good politician. I had unsuccessfully tried to get Steve interested in politics. The police were able to do in one day what had eluded me for years. This time the great giant was awakened.”

Steve was in illustrious company at Marianhill, and he thrived, becoming the vice chair of the St Francis College’s Literary and Debating Society. He became friends with Jeff Baqwa , who described Steve’s burgeoning analytical and political capacities during a discussion about Rhodesia’s (now Zimbabwe ) unilateral declaration of independence [UDI]:

“We needed clarity on UDI in Rhodesia, and that’s where Steve shone. And when Churchill died Steve was there to describe the political implications. He was able to make all these connections and link them to what was going on in South Africa.”

Steve underwent the traditional Xhosa initiation rites at his uncle’s house in Zwelitsha, King William’s Town in December 1964, and “returned to St Francis as a man in 1965,” according to the author Xolela Mangcu.

University and NUSAS

After matriculating from St Francis with very good grades, Steve was admitted to Durban Medical School at the University of Natal Non European section (UNNE) at the beginning of 1966. Known as Wentworth, Steve lived in the Alan Taylor Residence, the segregated living quarters for Black students at Natal University (now known as the University of kwaZulu-Natal–UKZN).

The Black Section had its own Students Representative Council (SRC), which was a member of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Steve was elected to the SRC in his first year, and he became involved in NUSAS politics, attending the annual NUSAS conference for the first time. But even before he went to the conference, he was engaging in debates about the role of NUSAS, especially since White students dominated the body, there being more Whites than Blacks at South African universities at the time. The African National Congress (ANC) aligned African Students Association (ASA) was in favour of remaining in NUSAS, while the PAC-aligned African Students Union of South Africa (ASUSA) was in favour of breaking off from the supposedly national student body.

At this time, Steve befriended Aubrey Mokoape, who had been involved with the PAC, and they engaged in frequent debates about the NUSAS question. Mokoape was against remaining in NUSAS, while Steve argued that it was useful to belong to the organisation – because of its resources, if not for any other reason.

The NUSAS Conference of July 1967

In July 1967, the young Steve went to the NUSAS conference at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, his second appearance at the annual gathering. The Wentworth students travelled to Grahamstown by train, and debated the affiliation issue during their trip, resolving to pull out of NUSAS if the organisers adhered to Apartheid legislation by housing the Black students separately.

Biko recalled the circumstances while giving evidence at the SASO/BPC trial in 1975:

“It so happened that when we got to Rhodes University, in the first instance the conference organiser could not quite say where we were going to stay. We were all put in the hall in different places, and we eventually noticed that all the White students went first, then some of the Indian students, then eventually he came to us to say he had found a church where we could stay. At that moment I felt we had ample reason to stick by our decision on the train.”

In a letter to SRC presidents written in February 1970, after Steve had been elected president of SASO, he wrote:

“In the NUSAS conference of 1967 the Blacks were made to stay at a church building in the Grahamstown location, each day being brought to the conference site by cars etc. On the other hand their White “brothers” were staying in residences around the conference site. This is perhaps the turning point in the history of Black support for NUSAS. So appalling were the conditions that it showed the Blacks just how valued they were in the organisation.”

The students were indeed fed and housed separately, in accordance with the Separate Amenities Act. The Black students were aggrieved, but when the NUSAS executive condemned the University for the Arrangements, the Black students were divided over whether to withdraw their participation.

When the conference opened the next day, Steve stood up to deliver his regional report, and he did so in isiXhosa, to drive home the point about Black students’ alienation from the NUSAS agenda. The President of the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) SRC, Robin Margo, proposed a motion to condemn the University Council, which the conference passed.

Steve then proposed that the conference be suspended, because the NUSAS organisers had known in advance that the students would be housed separately. After a long discussion, his motion was rejected.

The Black students felt disadvantaged by their small number, by the use of English as the medium of the conference, and by the distance between their concerns and those of the White students. Steve and his fellow Black students walked out.

Steve left the conference and went to Port Elizabeth , Eastern Cape to see Barney Pityana, who had just attended the launch of the University Christian Movement (UCM) in Rosettenville, in Johannesburg , Transvaal (now Gauteng ). A law student at Fort Hare University, Pityana was one of many students later expelled from that university, in 1969.

The UCM was led by Colin Collins and Basil Moore, both radical priests who introduced the ideas of Black Theology to South Africans. They forged links with the South African Council of Churches (SACC) , with the Christian Institute (CI) and with the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) . The UCM would play an important role in facilitating the birth of SASO.

Steve travelled throughout the country to caucus for the creation of a Black-only student body. Pityana was initially opposed to the idea, but was swayed by Biko, after which he became a staunch supporter of the idea and Biko’s most important lieutenant.

Stutterheim, 1968

At the UCM conference in Stutterheim in July 1968, Steve and his Black comrades were faced with a situation similar to the one at the Rhodes conference a year earlier. The students had to leave the venue after 72 hours, travel to a Black township, and then return – all this so they would not break the law that prevented Blacks from being in a White area for more than 72 hours. The move irritated Biko, who felt it was hypocritical.

After the conference Steve, Pityana and others met at Biko’s home in Ginsberg, 35km from Stutterheim, to discuss the launch of a Black-only student body. Steve was tasked with the mobilisation of Black students from all the Black campuses.

They went to Fort Hare to attend a meeting of Black Christian student bodies where Basil Moore was to be the main speaker, but Moore was not allowed to speak, and Steve was asked to be the main speaker. The meeting was meant to see the establishment of a UCM branch at Fort Hare, which did take place, but more importantly, students there resolved to join in the formation of the South African Students Organisation (SASO).

At Fort Hare, students were polarised between those who wanted to re-establish the SRC and those opposed to the move, with Justice Moloto supporting the former and Pityana the latter. Moloto became the president of UCM, and was thus well-positioned to provide financial aid for SASO when it emerged.

Despite these developments, Steve was still open to NUSAS, hoping to form a pressure group within the national organisation rather than severing ties with it.

Meanwhile, Biko was living at the Alan Taylor Residence, where his close friends included Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Charles Sibisi, Chapman Palweni and Goolam ‘Gees’ Abram, an Indian medical student from Benoni, east of Johannesburg. Later the group was joined by Ben Ngubane and Ben Mgulwa.

Through Vuyelwa Mashalaba Biko met Mamphela Ramphele , who began her second year medical studies at UNNE in 1968.

Wits University Congress 1968

For the NUSAS congress at Wits University in 1968, the president of the Wits SRC, John Kane Berman, ensured that problems regarding accommodation would not be repeated, and the Congress was largely uneventful, according to Biko. But when an Afrikaner student delivered his report in Afrikaans, Gees Abram delivered a report in Urdu, while Steve delivered his in isiXhosa. When, at the conclusion of the proceedings, the White students sang the South African anthem, Die Stem, the Black students sang Nkosi Sikelele iAfrika. Duncan Innes, a close friend of Biko, was elected president of NUSAS after Biko nominated him for the position.

When Innes was elected president of NUSAS, Biko congratulated him in a letter on 22 August 1968. Biko wrote: ‘I would like to convey to you congratulations from our local committee on your election as President and a declaration of support and full co-operation during your term of office.’

In November 1968, Steve again assured Innes that he was not in favour of disaffiliation from NUSAS, but his plan to properly establish SASO continued.

Steve sent out invitations to all the Black student bodies he had been in contact with, on 14 October 1968, asking them to attend the launch of SASO from 1-3 December that year. The students met at Marianhill in December 1968, and officially founded SASO.

SASO’s founding Congress

SASO’s founding congress was held at Turfloop, Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo ) in July 1969, and Steve was elected the first president, with Petrus Machaka as deputy president.

Steve’s presidential address was titled ‘SASO – Its Role, its Significance and its Future’, and as the title suggests, he spelt out the reasons the organisation came into being, and what role it was meant to play. Steve spoke of the organisation being forged by those treading a middle path, between Black militants who rejected any links with NUSAS and White students who saw the organisation as rejecting the liberal stance towards multiracial interaction. At this stage, Steve emphasised that SASO was not aiming to replace NUSAS as a national student organisation, and that they accepted the role of NUSAS in that capacity. But he also said:

“What SASO objects to is the dichotomy between principle and practice so apparent among members of that organisation (NUSAS). While very few would like to criticise NUSAS policy and principles as they appear on paper, one tends to get worried at all the hypocrisy practised by the members of that organisation. This serves to make the non-White members feels unaccepted and insulted in many instances.”

Steve went on to talk about the fact that NUSAS was dominated by White students, both in terms of numbers and leadership, in a country where Blacks were in the majority – in 1969 there were 27,000 White students at universities, while Black university enrolment totalled 3,000.

Steve also feared there would be a swing to the right within NUSAS, and that the influence of Black students had to be brought to bear on the organisation. For these and other reasons SASO would not become an affiliate of NUSAS. Indeed, NUSAS had been undergoing stormy conflicts from the beginnings of apartheid: its leaders were far more radical than the rank and file members and in 1964, Jonty Driver delivered a speech that reflected the schism, and there was a reaction that saw more moderate students begin to edge out the radicals. Ultimately the BCM exerted a radicalising influence on NUSAS, with many later leaders drawing on the ideas of the Black militants.

Around this time Biko began to have a romantic relationship with Mamphela Ramphele, who was becoming increasingly conflicted as she was betrothed to Dick Mmabane, whom she had met while in high school. With their two families already making wedding arrangements, Ramphele got married to Mmabane in December 1969. Biko was devastated.

The split from NUSAS, 1970

Steve did not attend the NUSAS conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1969, as he was busy travelling to the Black campuses trying to caucus support for SASO. But the Black student leaders who did attend embarked on a walkout. Neville Curtis , far more radical than previous White Presidents, was elected President of NUSAS for the 1969-70 terms. Together with Horst Kleinschmidt , Paula Ensor and others, he engaged in radical activities that eventually resulted in all of them being banned. Sheila Lapinsky, Paul Pretorius, Clive Keegan, Chris Wood, and Philip le Roux were also banned.

Steve began a relationship with Paula Ensor, who fully supported the creation of SASO. Writing about Biko and SASO years later, she said:

“The withdrawal of SASO and the transformation of NUSAS were outward manifestations of Biko’s influence on White student politics. But his influence was also felt in more personal ways, especially by students based in Durban at that time, as I was - for a small group of White students, SASO represented the re-emergence of radical politics and needed to be actively supported.”

Steve attended the 1970 NUSAS congress in Eston, Natal, as an observer and as a delegate from SASO. Paul Pretorius proposed a motion that NUSAS recognise SASO “as the body best able to represent the views and needs of Black students in South Africa.” The motion also recommended closer ties between SASO and NUSAS, with ‘maximum contact and co-operation’, and confirmed that both organisations were committed to non-racialism even if they had different methods of achieving this state. The motion caused an uproar, with the Wits and UCT delegations threatening to walk out of the congress. While the president, Neville Curtis, tried to foster a compromise, the majority of the students rejected the proposition. At this point, Ensor embarked on a piece of anti-apartheid theatre that stunned the congress: she went across to Biko and sat on his lap, effectively announcing that she and Steve were involved in an illegal relationship under Apartheid law.

In his personal life, Biko had met Nontsikelelo ‘Ntsiki’ Mashalaba, a cousin of Vuyelwa, and they married in December 1970 in King William’s Town at the Magistrate’s Court. They held a celebration at his mother’s house. Their first child, a son, Nkosinathi, was born in 1971.

SASO Takes Off

In July 1970, at the 1st General Students Council of SASO, Barney Pityana was elected President, and Steve was elected Chair of SASO Publications. Biko began to publish articles using the pseudonym Frank Talk, under the heading ‘I Write What I like’, in the SASO newsletters. In the August/September newsletter, he published the piece ‘Black Souls in White Skins’. After painting a picture of a more or less homogeneous White community, he turns his attention to the ‘Black souls in White skins’, ‘that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms, that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names, liberals, leftists etc.’. Steve goes on to set out a history of liberal involvement in Black politics, further honing his critique of South African liberalism.

By now the need to appease NUSAS was dispensed with, and the SASO leaders voted to withdraw from NUSAS, refusing to recognise the body as the national student body.

Mamphela Ramphele has described the years from 1969 to 1971 as “the trial period” marked by experimentation with community projects in and around Durban. The students embarked on a series of community-upliftment projects, assisting squatters near the Phoenix settlement, north of Durban, operating a clinic outside Wentworth, south Durban and launching literacy, health and agricultural programmes. These projects continued over the next few years, and helped not only to improve material conditions, but to instil a sense of self-empowerment and self determination, one of the central aims of the BCM.

At the 2nd General Student Council in July 1971 the students set out the aims of Black Consciousness. The students passed a resolution on Black Theology, and rejected the Christianity of the White electorate, which they saw as upholding the structures of oppression. By now SASO was also considering the launch of other bodies, such as national political movements and trade unions.

In the December 1971 holiday period, students conducted a survey in the Winterveldt area near Pretoria , to gather statistics and knowledge that would inform community development projects. They also helped at the Mabopane private clinic and studied gathering places such as bus and taxi ranks, and informal markets. In the north, Turfloop students helped at the nearby Monkwe clinic and developed important relations with the surrounding community.

Meanwhile, an event that was to project SASO onto the national stage occurred in April 1972 at Turfloop. Onkgopotse Abram Tiro was expelled after delivering a speech containing a scathing critique of Bantu education and racist practices at universities and in society in general. Students embarked on a solidarity strike, boycotting their classes, until many were expelled. When they were allowed to return to campus, SASO was suspended, and was only revived in 1974 by Pandelani Nefolovhodwe and his comrades, but they were forced to base themselves off-campus.

At the 3rd General Student Council in July 1972, SASO president Temba Sono delivered a speech that recommended better relations with Whites and with some homeland leaders, provoking outrage among the students. Steve introduced a motion of censure, arguing that the speech was ‘contradictory to SASO policy’ and to the spirit of the policy. Pityana proposed that Sono be expelled from the organisation.

The 3rd council also saw the question of armed struggle hotly debated, with some, led by Keith Mokoape, pushing for SASO to join the military struggle. They were told to ‘search for other grazing lands’ as SASO was determined to remain an above-ground organisation.

On the other hand, the council took strong positions against Apartheid institutions, particularly the Bantustan/homelands system, and Bantu education.

Black People’s Convention (BPC)

During the period from 1970, SASO’s leaders were beginning to consider the limitations of organisations confined to student membership, and the idea of a broader community formation took root, one which would result in the launch of the Black People’s Convention (BPC) . Members of six organisations met in Bloemfontein in April 1971 to discuss the issue, including leaders of the Interdenominational African Ministers’ Association (IDAMASA) and the Association for the Advancement of African People of South Africa (ASSECA). A steering committee was established at a subsequent meeting in August of the same year, with editor of The World and ASSECA President MT Moerane tasked with drawing up a constitution. After a report-back meeting at the Donaldson Community Centre in Orlando in December 1971, a second steering committee was established under the leadership of Drake Koka, which met in Lenasia, south of Soweto , on 13 January 1972.

Throughout these deliberations, there was debate about the nature and function of the proposed body: some saw it as a simple umbrella body that served a co-ordinating function, while others wanted BPC to act as a vanguard body, leading the people in a thoroughly political project, ultimately to take power. Steve was somewhere in between, and he was concerned that decisions were being made without consulting other members of the Black community, especially in Indian and Coloured communities. It was important to Steve to add substance to the non-racial nature of the ‘Black’ as defined by the BCM.

Biko approached Saths Cooper and Strini Moodley to join the second steering committee, which met again in Dube and later at Wentworth in May 1972. After a number of preparatory meetings, BPC was launched at its first national conference in Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, in December 1972. With 1,400 delegates from 145 organisations present, the conference proposed to ‘unite all South African Blacks into a political movement, which would seek liberation and emancipation of Black people from both psychological and physical oppression’.

From its beginnings, Steve was active in the affairs of BPC. More formally, he was employed as BPC's full-time youth coordinator.

Black Community Programmes (BCP)

The Black Consciousness Movement, together with the Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society (Spro-cas), set up a branch for community activities, called Black Community Programmes (BCP), in January 1972. Bennie Khoapa, a social worker at the YMCA, was elected to drive the organisation. With funding from Rev. Beyers Naude’s Christian Institute, the BCP embarked on a series of projects, including community development programmes in King William’s Town, Winterveldt and other areas.

Biko, after quitting his medical studies in August 1972, was heavily involved in BCP activities. He described the rationale of the organisation thus:

“Essentially to answer [the] problem that the Black man is a defeated being who finds it very difficult to lift himself up by his boot strings. He is alienated; He is made to live all the time concerned with matters of existence, concerned with tomorrow. Now, we felt that we must attempt to defeat and break this kind of attitude and instil once more a sense of dignity within the Black man. So what we did was to design various types of programmes, present these to the Black community with an obvious illustration that these are done by the Black people for the sole purpose of uplifting the Black community. We believed that we teach people by example.”

Mamphela Ramphele, who was one of Biko’s main lieutenants in BCP, wrote:

“The Eastern Cape office was set up in response to Steve Biko’s banning and restriction to that area in 1973. Offices in the Transvaal and Natal followed in 1974 and 1975 respectively, but the Eastern Cape emerged as the dominant region in terms of projects and the calibre of staff it employed.”

Importantly, BCP became the publishing arm of the BCM, producing Black Review, annual reviews and other publications, such as Creativity in Development and Black Perspectives, as well as Black Viewpoint, through Ravan Press, an arm of Spro-cas.

Bannings: State reaction to BCM’s successes

The BCM was becoming a presence in the country and not only at tertiary institutions – it was visible in the media, at schools, at community theatres, and in events that broke the pattern of quiescence that followed the banning of the ANC and PAC. But the movement also began to suffer casualties, with Tiro perhaps the first of these when he was expelled from the Turfloop University.

Another setback came with the tragic death of Mthuli Shezi in December 1972, when he was pushed onto the path of an oncoming train after defending Black women who were being abused by a railway official. Although not an official response to BC, the incident demonstrates the challenges BC activists faced in trying to achieve normal relations in an abnormal society. What Shezi did was simply to halt one of countless incidences of everyday brutality that the Black population had become accustomed to, and which BC was trying to reverse.

BPC’s plans for myriad sectorial affiliates – unions, women’s organisations, school-based student representative councils, organisations dealing with theology, arts and culture, among others – presented a growing threat to the state’s determination to implement the homeland policy and ensure that Blacks were not allowed to become anything more than ‘temporary sojourners’ in the cities and White areas.

In March 1973, the state cracked down, banning Drake Koka and Bokwe Mafuna , who were engaged in union projects. Biko and Pityana were banned in the same month. In August 1973, Mosibudi Mangena was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly recruiting two policemen to join the armed struggle. Tiro followed the way of Shezi when he was killed in January 1974 by a parcel bomb after he went into exile in Botswana , reflecting a new ruthlessness on the part of the security agencies.

The leaders who replaced those banned in March 1973 were in turn banned in August of the same year. Those who replaced these leaders were themselves banned in October.

Nevertheless the BCM continued to exert a growing influence on the politics of the country, and some decisions brought further repression from the state. The Frelimo Rallies precipitated another huge confrontation between the state and the BCM (more on this below).

The growth, development and outlawing of the broader BCM, which cannot be dealt with in detail in this article, can be read here. Suffice to say that Steve continued on a path that saw his involvement in the movement grow and develop in many directions.

Steve Biko: personal life, politics and return to the Eastern Cape

Steve’s medical studies suffered as a result of his political activism, and he was excluded from the medical school during the course of 1972. Having given up the idea of becoming a doctor, Steve enrolled for various courses at the distance-learning university, Unisa, and in 1973 he began studying law and political science, subjects more relevant to his political involvement.

Throughout this early period, Steve had been based in Natal, and the BCM had offices in Beatrice Street in the town centre.

By 1971 Ramphele’s marriage had broken down, and she resumed her romantic relationship with Biko, who by now had a son, with his wife Ntsiki Mashalaba. The situation proved to be stressful for all concerned, and added to the pressures of their political activities.

The state banned Steve in March 1973 and confined him to the magisterial district of King William’s Town. He returned to Ginsberg, and moved for a while into his mother’s house in Leightonville, the address to which he was restricted by his banning order.

With Steve working for the Black Community Programmes, earning a stipend, the family relied on the income of Ntsiki, who had been the main breadwinner for some time. But with the move to Ginsberg, the Apartheid authorities ensured that Ntsiki would not easily find a job, and the family struggled to make ends meet.

Steve asked Malusi Mpumlwana, who had been his constant companion in Durban, to join him in King William’s Town to help set up an office for the BCM. Mpumlwana went, according to Lindy Wilson, “thinking he could spare a couple of weeks. The weeks turned into months and years; in fact he never left.”

Steve met up with an old friend, Fikile Mlinda, and asked him to help in the establishment of a BPC branch in Ginsberg. They held their first meeting in St Andrews Church, where Anglican priest David Russell was based.

A core of strong comrades from all over the country attended the meeting, including Malusi Mpumlwana, Mapetla Mohapi , Peter Jones and Tom Manthata. Mlinda was soon arrested, evidence that the security agencies were keeping a close eye on Steve’s activities. But members of the local community were encouraged by the strong turnout, including the comrades from far-off regions.

The venue, the Anglican St Andrew’s Church, was provided by David Russell . Steve was drawn to Russell, who became his confidant. Russell had for some time been involved with people forcibly removed from Middelburg and Burgersdorp to Dimbaza , which was part of his parish. Russell had engaged in protests against the forced removals, in one instance going on a fast to draw attention to the hunger of the people moved to a barren area with no infrastructure. But Russell moved from the area in December 1973, depriving Steve of a close and trusted friend.

Steve was also in frequent contact with Father Aelred Stubbs, who had moved to Alice when he began serving at the Federal Seminary. Stubbs, an Anglican priest, came to South Africa to teach at St Peter’s in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. He also became a confidant, and Steve frequently wrote to him when Stubbs was moved back to Rosettenville in 1972.

Besides his BC comrades, Steve was lucky to have his family around him to provide a strong support system. His mother, Mamcete, and sisters Nobandile and Bukelwa all played a part in keeping not just Biko but his comrades in good health and spirits. The Biko family house was a gathering place for the movement, but also a place where they had meals, drank and enjoyed socialising.

Steve engaged in several projects in the area. BCP ran projects that created home industries, Njwaxa Home Industries being one of these. These were attempts, often successful, to create businesses and employment. Njwaxa manufactured leather goods and clothes, employing about 50 people in 1974. A further 70 people were employed by the Border Council of Churches, in collaboration with BCP.

Steve set up the Ginsberg Educational Fund, which provided bursaries for students, many of them going to Fort Hare University. The fund, run by Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana, Nohle Mohapi and Charles Nqakula, grew to include recipients in other Eastern Cape areas.

Steve also helped revive the Ginsberg Creche to look after toddlers whose mothers needed to leave their homes to go out to work.

Zanempilo Clinic

The Zanempilo Health Clinic, in Zinyoka village, 10km outside King William’s Town, was established with the help of a donation from a South African citizen of German origin. Steve approached B ka T Tyamzashe, who asked Rev James Gawe to help. Steve and BCP were given permission to build the clinic on Gawe’s church land. Steve had a good relationship with Tyamzashe, who was a composer of choral music which Steve was drawn to.

Zanempilo, which opened its doors in January 1975, became the nerve centre of BCM activities. Activists would converge on the site from all over the country, and Ramphele writes that it became a “guesthouse for visitors from far and wide that came to see the project and consult with Steve over a range of issues. These visits increased as Steve’s stature grew both nationally and internationally.”

Steve Biko and Donald Woods

With the emergence of the BCM, several White commentators and institutions reacted to the development of what they saw as a separatist Black grouping that conformed to the wishes of Apartheid plans for an intensified segregation. Donald Woods , the editor of the East London based Daily Despatch, was one of these. Woods, an honorary president of NUSAS, published several pieces condemning SASO and the BCM for their rejection of Whites, arguing that the movement was doing exactly what Apartheid prescribed. Increasingly irritated at Woods’s disparaging comments and arguments for the kind of liberalism he was critical of, Steve sent Mamphela Ramphele to meet with Woods and set him straight on the true nature of the BCM.

The meeting is remembered differently by each of the two protagonists. Ramphele recounts that she explained what BC was all about and urged Woods to meet with Steve so the latter could explain the philosophy, strategy and practices of the BCM. Woods remembers a confident, feisty, woman whose straight talk and intelligence forced him into a reconsideration of BC.

Woods met Steve sometime after Zanempilo opened its doors. The two hit it off, and became firm friends, with Woods and his family becoming frequent visitors to Zanempilo. Woods gave Steve a regular column in the Daily Despatch, but the articles went out under the name of one of Steve’s closest friends, Mapetla Mohapi, since Steve was banned and not allowed to publish anything. Mohapi was later arrested and killed while in detention.

The Frelimo Rallies and the BPC/SASO Trial

With the first generation of BC leaders officially – but not effectively – prohibited from political activity, a second generation of leaders emerged, among them Muntu Myeza. Appointed SASO secretary general for 1974, Myeza came up with the idea of holding rallies to celebrate the transitional government of Frelimo, and the impending independence of Mozambique.

The students decided to hold rallies at Curries Fountain in Durban, and at Turfloop University in the north near Pietersburg (today’s Polokwane). The rallies were banned soon after they were announced, but Myeza and his colleagues were defiant, determined to hold the rallies nonetheless. Biko was cautious, arguing that they were putting the lives of supporters at risk. He was backed by Mapetla Mohapi and Malusi Mpumlwana, but the younger leaders ignored their advice, and the Curries Fountain rally went ahead, with Myeza addressing 5,000 people. At Turfloop, students clashed with the police.

The State’s response was swift: 200 BCM activists were raided by the security police, and 13 leaders were put on trial. After charges against four of the leaders were dropped for various reasons, the State proceeded to put the remaining nine on trial: Saths Cooper, Muntu Myeza, Strini Moodley, Patrick ‘Terror’ Lekota, Nchaupe Mokoape, Pandelani Nefolovhodwe, Nkwenkwe Nkomo, Kaborone Sedibe and Zithulele Cindi. The trial, officially named ‘the State vs Cooper and eight others,’ quickly became known as the SASO/BPC trial, and became a major political event in the history of resistance politics.

Steve was subpoenaed as a defence witness, and he appeared in the dock at the Pretoria Supreme Court from 3 May to 7 May, 1976 for an entire week. He was faced with a difficult task: he had to present Black Consciousness as a progressive anti-apartheid movement, but he had to take care not to provide the state with ammunition to find the defendants guilty of ‘terrorism’ or incitement to insurrection, which were the charges the state levelled against the accused.

This was the first time Steve spoke in public after being banned in March 1973.

According to Lindy Wilson:

“The prosecutor constantly led arguments in which he attempted to connect BC, and those charged, with the politics of the banned movements and their leaders. Biko was called at the very time that the BPC was embarking on its unifying role aimed at making contact with those banned organisations, and his genius lay in the way in which he kept many balls in the air at once, not compromising, not intimidating and yet maintaining the attention of the judge. Not everything he said was exactly the way it was.”

The country was gripped by the reports of Steve’s testimony, which some analysts have described as a ‘seminar on Black Consciousness’. Steve’s friend Ben Khoapa said to Aelred Stubbs: ‘Overnight, Steve became the toast of the Soweto shebeens. Here at last was the authentic voice of the people, not afraid to say openly what other Blacks think but are too frightened to say.’

The accused were all sentenced to terms ranging from five to six years on Robben Island – it is possible that they would have received harsher sentences were it not for Steve’s testimony.

Steve Biko’s Last Years: 1975-1977

Steve was still highly active in the everyday operations of BCP, and he was frequently consulted on issues relating to the larger BC movement, with activists making trips from the larger centres to confer with him. He kept abreast of developments throughout the country, and his appearance at the SASO/BPC trial brought him to the attention of the international community. He became a leader that foreign diplomats sought out to get a picture of the political situation in South Africa.

In August 1975, Steve’s elder sister Bukelwa died at the age of 33. A nurse at Fort Beaufort Mental Hospital, she came to Zanempilo complaining of chest pains and was sedated. But she returned home and died of a heart attack the next morning.

In 1975 Steve was arrested and detained for 137 days – but he was not charged or put on trial.

Meanwhile, the BPC held its fourth national conference in King William’s Town.

At the beginning of 1976, Biko’s banning order was tightened, and he could no longer operate as the director of BCP, a responsibility that was passed on to Ramphele. To testify at the SASO/BPC trial in May, special arrangements were made as he had been subpoenaed by the defence.

Following his testimony at the SASO/BPC trial, students in Soweto, who had throughout the year been protesting against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, organised a huge protest on June 16, 1976. Police, confronted by thousands of angry school pupils opened fire, killing hundreds of pupils. The Soweto youth uprising, and the police’s brutal response, sent shockwaves throughout the world, and the Apartheid regime was condemned even by its allies in the West.

A severe crackdown on BC activists followed the uprising. Mapetla Mohapi was arrested on 15 July 1976, and was killed three weeks later, a development that deeply disturbed Steve. Mpumlwana, Mxolisi Mvovo, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Thoko Mabanjwa were arrested in August. On 27 August 1976, at the height of the Soweto uprising , Steve was arrested and held in solitary confinement for 101 days.

Soon after his release, Biko met American Senator Dick Clark in December 1976, one of a string of diplomats who wanted to get a sense of Black thinking at the time. The chair of the Senate Sub-committee on Africa, Clark was an influential contact, but some BC leaders, especially those based in Cape Town , disapproved of the meeting with an American diplomat.

Steve was also close to the Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh, who often consulted Steve on political matters in South Africa, using the latter’s insights to inform Australian policy towards South Africa.

Steve was thoroughly immersed in community activities, both formal and informal, simply helping whenever and however he could. When five boys were accused of burning down Forbes Grant School in 1977, he organised lawyers to defend them, but they lost the case and were sentenced to terms of five years on Robben Island. Among the lawyers Steve roped in was Griffiths Mxenge .

But there was play as well as work. Biko enjoyed socialising with friends and people from the area. He frequented local shebeens, such as Getty’s Place in the Tsolo section of Ginsberg, where he was on many occasions protected by the patrons when the security police came in search of him.

Steve was close to Sonwabo Yengo, who lived in Zaula Street, where they would have gumbas (parties). The group loved singing, and Steve in particular loved the song by Donny Hathaway, To be Young, Gifted and Black, but they also sang struggle songs and choral classics. His favourite freedom struggle song, according to Xolela Mangcu, contained the lyrics: ‘We are leaders of Africa. Rise up, leaders, and let us move forward.’

When Yengo last saw Steve, he was bruised and limping, and told his friend he had been beaten by White men – it is unclear if they were policemen or ordinary people. He said to Sonwabo: ‘These Whites are really beating me now, Tshawe. But I am fighting back. But they are going to kill me at the rate they are going.’

Attempts to forge unity between the various tendencies

Perhaps the most significant activities Steve was involved in at this time were attempts to forge some kind of working unity between the various liberation organisations, especially the ANC, the PAC and the Non European Unity Movement (NEUM) . Steve began his efforts sometime in the mid-1970s – Malusi Mpumlwana and Mapetla Mohapi were especially active in these attempts, and it later emerged that Mohapi had recruited people into the ANC, among them Brigitte Mabandla

According to Lindy Wilson, Mpumlwana and Mapetla were driving from Pretoria to Natal after Mapetla was released from detention in 1975 when they “debated the role that BPC might now play. An idea grew that it (BPC) should explore its potential as a catalyst for uniting the liberation movements. This idea emerged for several different reasons: the logic that BC’s evolving ideology should develop from psychological unity to political unity; the fact that, in spite of the bannings, SASO and BPC still had mobility and continued to operate nationally on the ground; the recognition that the ANC and PAC were the established political movements and that BPC would not act as a third force but would endeavour to create a national consciousness involving all existing historical political movements against the common enemy.”

The idea was shared with a select group of BC leaders: Thami Zani, Tom Manthata and Kenny Rachidi among them. Steve met with banned PAC leader Robert Sobukwe, and also with Griffiths Mxenge, who was at the time an underground ANC operative. Both were sympathetic to the idea, and agreed to speak to their counterparts.

But some BC leaders were already moving to the view that the ANC was paramount and that the BPC should act to realise the aims of the Freedom Charter. At a workshop in Mafikeng (then Mafeking) in May 1976, Diliza Mji, Norman Dubazana, Nkosazana Dlamini and Mafika Pascal Gwala argued against Steve’s vision of BPC playing a central role in unifying the movements.

There were plans for Steve to meet with ANC leader Oliver Tambo . Harry Nengwekhulu , who had left the country after he was banned in March 1973, was tasked with securing a meeting with the leader of the ANC in exile. The plan was for Steve to leave the country for the meeting, perhaps through an invitation from a Western government. But the logistics and security issues proved too difficult, and several planned meetings had to be cancelled. According to Mark Gevisser, in his biography of Thabo Mbeki, Steve was to meet with Mbeki as well, but the security situation was not conducive.

Barney Pityana was also set to meet with Tambo after he left South Africa in 1978. He was to be accompanied by Ben Khoapa to Lusaka for the meeting, which had been arranged by Craig Williamson , purportedly the chief of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF). Pityana and Khoapa met in Lesotho , where they were told that they would meet with Tambo in Lesotho, flying via Bloemfontein.

Fortunately for them, however, they suspected a trap had been laid, and stayed away. Indeed, the next day the newspapers, informed by security police, published a story saying the two had been detained, when in fact they never boarded the plane and abandoned the mission. This episode revealed that Craig Williamson was indeed an Apartheid spy.

In 1977, Steve was made the honorary president of BPC. Mpumlwana recounts the role Steve was to play in forging a broad movement together with the exiled organisations:

“It is here that you begin the process of looking out to negotiate with other organisations. It is here that you begin to see the need of having some kind of central figure. That’s why we decided to make Steve the honorary president of the BPC. Before that he had no formal authority, it was all about charisma and the influence he had as an individual.”

The state was desperate to prevent relations between the BCM and the exiled organisations, and Steve was questioned about supposed contacts when he was detained. This partly explains why Biko was detained so often during the last two years of his life. In March 1977 Biko was arrested and once again released. Mpumlwana was also arrested in March, and held for four months. Mamphela Ramphele was also banished to Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo).

With so many comrades neutralised, the plan for unity talks faltered. Steve asked Peter Jones, a BPC activist based in the Western Cape , to travel to King William’s Town to help run the local BPC offices. It was a fateful move. Jones and Steve, in consultation with their colleagues, decided to meet Neville Alexander in Cape Town, a trip that would end with the pair being detained.

The Trip to see Neville Alexander

Soon after midnight on the morning of 17 August 1977, Steve and Jones set out for Cape Town. Steve wanted to meet with Neville Alexander and with his BC counterparts in the city. The latter, led by Johnny Issel, had been critical of Steve’s meeting with Dick Clark and of economic policies Steve had contemplated.

The pair arrived in Cape Town by 10am, and after resting at Jones’s home, Steve drove to meet Fikile Bam , who was a close comrade of Alexander. Jones meanwhile drove to see Alexander, who informed him that he could not meet with Biko. When Jones returned, Bam decided that the trio would go to Alexander’s house despite his decision. They drove there and parked in Alexander’s yard while Bam went into the house to convince Alexander to meet with Steve.

Alexander was reluctant for several reasons: both he and Steve were banned and it would be a crippling blow to the movement if they were caught and convicted. Also, he was heeding the recommendations of Cape Town’s BC activists. He later recalled:

“Fiks tried every trick in the book to convince me to meet with Steve. But I would not budge. In order to put pressure on me he said Steve was sitting in the car in the backyard. But I was instructed by my guys not to meet Steve because of problems within the Black Consciousness Movement in Cape Town. I did not want to be caught in the crossfire.

Steve decided to immediately drive back to King William’s Town on the same evening – August 17. Jones and Steve undertook the 12-hour journey and reached the outskirts of King William’s Town when they were stopped by a police roadblock. They were identified after a heavily disguised Steve, realising the hopelessness of denial, decided to announce that he was indeed the man the police were looking for.

Jones was taken to Algoa Police Station and Steve to Walmer Police Station, both in Port Elizabeth. Jones underwent severe torture over a prolonged period, and never saw Steve again.

The Death of Steve Biko

Steve 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 Steve fought back.

Steve 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 Steve’s injuries. Dr Ivor Lang could find nothing wrong with Steve on 7 September. When specialist Dr Benjamin Tucker examined Steve, 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 Steve to Pretoria, 700km away. This they did, on 11 September, in the back of a van, with Steve still naked, frothing at the mouth, and unable to speak. In Pretoria, a district surgeon examined Steve and tended to him, but it was too late.

Alone in his cell, Steve died some time on the night of 12 September 1977.

The reaction to Steve Biko’s death

Steve’s death was announced and there was outrage from many quarters. The government was at pains to contradict the obvious interpretation of the event – that the police had killed Steve.

On Wednesday, 14 September, a Rand Daily Mail report read:

“Mr Steve Biko, the 30-year-old black leader, widely regarded as the founder of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, died in detention on Monday (12th). Mr Biko, honorary president of the Black People’s Convention and the father of two small children, is the 20th person to die in Security Police custody in 18 months.”

The report quoted a statement by the Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger, in which the minister presented the government’s version of Steve’s death, saying that he had been on a hunger strike since 5 September, refusing food. Kruger acknowledged that a district surgeon had been called to examine Steve on 7 September ‘because Mr Biko appeared unwell’. The medic, Kruger continued, found nothing wrong with Biko.

Kruger continued his account, glossing over the serious injuries Steve sustained while in detention. Later, addressing a National Party (NP) congress on 14 September, Kruger announced: “I am not glad and I am not sorry about Mr Biko. It leaves me cold. I can say nothing to you. Any person who dies; I should also be sorry if I die.” There was laughter at this last sentence. Kruger went on to justify the detention of Steve, saying that he had been found in possession of pamphlets inciting arson and violence. He proceeded to give a ridiculous and fictitious account of Steve’s detention and death.

According to Donald Woods: “The next day Kruger implied that Steve had died of a hunger strike, but I knew this couldn’t be true because he (Biko) had once said he would never take or endanger his own life in detention, and that if he were to die in jail, and it was claimed he had hanged or suffocated or starved himself or cut his wrists, I was to know it was a lie.”

Die Burger, an Afrikaans government-supporting newspaper, presented the government’s sentiments regarding the death of ‘the black power activist Steve Biko’: “Concern over detainees’ deaths becomes deep dismay when the hysterical propaganda against authorities is observed. A vehement campaign is in progress which surpasses all previous protests. The venomous suggestions are of such an extravagant nature that it fills an objective observer with trepidation: The purpose is to discredit the security police.”

Similarly, the state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), took the government’s version as fact, and speculated that if Steve had committed suicide, this would have fitted the pattern of many recent detainee suicides. It went on: “To their critics the police point out that so far a court of law has never established that the police have been responsible for torturing and killing a single detainee.”

There was international outrage at Steve’s death, with many governments making statements and sending condolences.

Donald Woods published a moving portrait of his friend Biko, saying:

“In the three years that I grew to know him my conviction never wavered that this was the most important political leader in the entire country, and quite simply the greatest man I have ever had the privilege to know.”

A post-mortem was carried out soon after Steve’s death was announced, but the Biko family’s pathologist was informed only after the autopsy had begun. Newspapers reported that Steve had sustained brain damage. Woods challenged Kruger about the hunger-strike claims, and “got a reliable tip-off that he (Kruger) had received the coroner’s report on Steve’s post-mortem, that it revealed that Steve had died of brain damage, and that although Kruger had had his report for more than a week he had not yet ordered an inquest or corrected his ‘hunger strike’ story.”

The funeral

A nation weeps. Mourners gather to pay their last respects as Steve Biko's body lies in state in his home before the funeral, attended by 20,000 mourners at King William's Town, November 1977. Photo: Bailey's African History Archives)

Steve Biko’s funeral, on 25 September 1977, 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 the heavily armed officials. Convoys in the major cities were stopped even before they set out for the funeral.

People from the Transvaal who managed to get through had to pass through seven roadblocks before arriving in King William’s Town. According to Hilda Bernstein : “One of the speakers, Dr Nthato Motlana , who flew from Johannesburg after he was blocked off when attempting to travel by road, said at the funeral that he had watched as black policemen hauled mourners off the buses in Soweto and assaulted them with truncheons. The physician said he had treated 30 of the mourners, some for fractured skulls, and said he had witnesses who would testify that a number of young women were raped.”

Yet, the authorities could not hide or dampen the significance of the occasion, which was attended by diplomats from 13 Western countries – from the United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Holland, Canada, Australia, Brazil and the Scandinavian countries. A small number of South Africans also attended, including Woods, his wife Wendy, and her brother Peter Bruce. Members of the Progressive Federal Party included Helen Suzman , Zac de Beer and Alex Boraine .

The 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.

The Inquest

Calls for an inquest were made by many individuals and organisations, and the Minister of Justice eventually relented. The inquest began on 14 November, two months after Steve’s death, at the Old Synagogue in Pretoria. But already, in October, two attorney-generals, of the Transvaal and the Eastern Cape, announced that there would be no criminal proceedings related to the findings of the inquest.

The inquest sought, ostensibly, to determine how Steve had died, and was presided over by a magistrate, Marthinus Prins, with the Deputy Attorney-General Klaus von Lieres acting as prosecutor to lead the evidence. But Hilda Bernstein, in her booklet No. 46 – Steve Biko, writes:

“This was no ordinary inquest. It was in essence a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice; a conspiracy in which almost all the witnesses and most of the court officials joined. Their purpose was not to establish the cause of death but to conceal it; not to discover who might be responsible, but to hide them.”

Bernstein quoted the impressions of the Past President of the British Law Society, Sir David Napley, who had been invited to observe the inquest by the Association of Law Societies of South Africa:

“I may be wrong but I came away with the clear impression that, on such occasions as he (Deputy Attorney-General Von Lieres) intervened, his questions were directed to preserve the position previously taken up. To this end on occasions he intervened to support the police and doctors, although they were already represented by other counsel.

Bernstein goes on to paint the scene: “The inquest was high drama. Never before at an inquest of someone who died in detention have there been television cameras and reporters from so many countries: every day a crowd of black spectators sang outside the Synagogue.”

Over the next few days the security policemen, doctors and pathologists presented their testimonies about the sequence leading up to the death of Biko. In his submission, Deputy Attorney-General Klaus von Lieres said:

“Our respectful submission is that you (the judge) will come to the conclusion that in this particular case there is no positive evidence that the deceased’s death was caused by an act or omission of any person.”

The judge repeated these words, almost verbatim, in his final ruling.

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.

Two years later a South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) disciplinary committee found there was no prima facie case against the two doctors who had treated Biko shortly before his death. Dissatisfied doctors, seeking another inquiry into the role of the medical authorities who had treated Biko shortly before his death, presented a petition to the SAMDC in February 1982, but this was rejected on the grounds that no new evidence had come to light. Biko's death caught the attention of the international community, increasing the pressure on the South African government to abolish its detention policies and calling for an international probe on the cause of his death. Even close allies of South Africa, Britain and the United States of America, expressed deep concern about the death of Biko and added their support to those asking for an international probe.

It took eight years and intense pressure before the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) took disciplinary action. On 30 January, 1985, the Pretoria Supreme Court ordered the SAMDC to hold an inquiry into the conduct of the two doctors who treated Biko during the five days before he died. Judge President of the Transvaal, Justice W G Boshoff, said in a landmark judgment that there was prima facie evidence of improper or disgraceful conduct on the part of the "Biko" doctors in a professional respect.

The Aftermath

Soon after Steve’s death, the state banned 18 organisations on 17 October 1977, the majority of them allied to the BCM. These included, SASO, BPC, BCP and many others. The Christian Institute (CI), led by the Reverend Beyers Naude, was also banned, as was Reverend Naude himself. Scores of BC activists were banned, and Donald Woods was also served with a banning order.

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.

Steve is survived by his wife, Ntsiki, and their child, Nkosinathi. He also had a child, and Samora, with Mamphela Ramphele.

His son Nkosinathi launched the Steve Biko Foundation, which has become a non-profit organisation with a large presence in the Eastern Cape. In 2013, the institute celebrated the opening of a large community centre in Ginsberg, in King William’s Town. The foundation promotes debates on current issues and is growing into a valuable resource in Biko’s hometown.

Former Nelson Mandela paid tribute to Biko in 2002, saying:

“Living, he was the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa. His message to the youth and students was simple and clear: Black is Beautiful! Be proud of your Blackness! And with that he inspired our youth to shed themselves of the sense of inferiority they were born into as a result of more than three hundred years of white rule.”

Arnold, Millard (editor) 1978: The Testimony of Steve Biko, Panther: Granada Publishing|Badat, Salim (2009): Black Man, You Are On Your Own, Steve Biko Foundation, Sue Publishers|Bernstein, Hilda (1978), No. 46 ”“ Steve Biko, London, International Defence and Aid Fund|Bizos, G. (1998). “Steve Biko” in No one to blame?: in pursuit of justice in South Africa|Gevisser, Mark (2007): The Dream Deferred, Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers (Pty) Ltd|Karis, Thomas & Gerhart, Gail, (1997): From Protest to Challenge, A Documentary History of African Politics in SA, 1882-1990, Volume Five, Nadir and Resurgence, 1964-1979|Mangcu, Xolela (2012): Biko, A Biography, Tafelberg|Mzamane, Mbulelo Vizikhungo; Maaba, Bavusile; and Biko, Nkosinathi, ‘The Black Consciousness Movement’, in The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 2, 1970-1980, UNISA Press|Pityana, Ramphele, Mpumlwana & Wilson (Editors) (1991): Bounds of Possibility: The Legacy of Steve Biko & Black Consciousness, David Philip: Cape Town.|Woods, Donald (1980): Asking for Trouble, Autobiography of a Banned Journalist, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd|Bernstein, H. (unknown): No. 46-Steve Biko [online]. South African History Online|Mufson, S. (1990): Fighting Years: Black Resistance and the Struggle for a New South Africa, Boston: Beacon Press|Ndlovu S. M. (1978): The Soweto Uprisings: Counter-memories of June 1976|Woods Donald (1978): Biko, London: Penguin

Youth and the National Liberation Struggle 1894-1994 June 16th Soweto Riots and the Youth Struggle Steve Biko: The Early Years - Photo Gallery Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 1) Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 2) Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 3) Video interview segment with Ahmed Kathrada (Part 4)<

The grim legacy of Steve Biko's killer , Nosipiwo Manona and Nicki Gules, City Press, 2017-09-17

Collections in the Archives

Know something about this topic.

Towards a people's history

Steve Biko: The Black Consciousness Movement

The saso, bcp & bpc years.

By Steve Biko Foundation

Stephen Bantu Biko was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement. While living, his writings and activism attempted to empower black people, and he was famous for his slogan “black is beautiful”, which he described as meaning: “man, you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being”. Scroll on to learn more about this iconic figure and his pivotal role in the Black Consciousness Movement...

“Black Consciousness is an attitude of mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time” - Biko

1666/67 University of Natal SRC

On completion of his matric at St Francis College, Biko registered for a medical degree at the University of Natal’s Black Section. The University of Natal professed liberalism and was home to some of the leading intellectuals of that tradition. The University of Natal had also become a magnet attracting a number of former black educators, some of the most academically capable members of black society, who had been removed from black colleges by the University Act of 1959. The University of Natal also attracted as law and medical students some of the brightest men and women from various parts of the country and from various political traditions. Their convergence at the University of Natal in the 1960s turned the University into a veritable intellectual hub, characterised by a diverse culture of vibrant political discourse. The University thus became the mainstay of what came to be known as the Durban Moment.

At Natal Biko hit the ground running. He was immediately influenced by, and in turn, influenced this dynamic environment. He was elected to serve on the Student's Representative Council (SRC) of 1966/67, in the year of his admission. Although he initially supported multiracial student groupings, principally the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), a number of voices on campus were radically opposed to NUSAS, through which black students had tried for years to have their voices heard but to no avail. This kind of frustration with white liberalism was not altogether unknown to Steve Biko, who had experienced similar disappointment at Lovedale.

Medical Students at the University of Natal (Left to Right: Brigette Savage, Rogers Ragavan, Ben Ngubane, Steve Biko)

Correspondence designating Biko as an SRC delegate at the annual NUSAS Conference

In 1967, Biko participated as an SRC delegate at the annual NUSAS conference held at Rhodes University. A dispute arose at the conference when the host institution prohibited racially mixed accommodation in obedience to the Group Areas Act, one of the laws under apartheid that NUSAS professed to abhor but would not oppose. Instead NUSAS opted to drive on both sides of the road: it condemned Rhodes University officials while cautioning black delegates to act within the limits of the law. For Biko this was another defining moment that struck a raw nerve in him.

Speech by Dr. Saleem Badat, author of Black Man You Are on Your Own, on SASO

Reacting angrily, Biko slated the artificial integration of student politics and rejected liberalism as empty echoes by people who were not committed to rattling the status quo but who skilfully extracted what best suited them “from the exclusive pool of white privileges”. This gave rise to what became known as the Best-able debate: Were white liberals the people best able to define the tempo and texture of black resistance? This debate had a double thrust. On the one hand, it was aimed at disabusing white society of its superiority complex and challenged the liberal establishment to rethink its presumed role as the mouthpiece of the oppressed. On the other, it was designed as an equally frank critique of black society, targeting its passivity that cast blacks in the role of “spectators” in the course of history. The 7th April 1960 saw the banning of the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress and the imprisonment of the leadership of the liberation movement had created a culture of apathy

Bantu Stephen Biko

“ We have set out on a quest for true humanity, and somewhere on the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize. Let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and our brotherhood. In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible - a more human face.”

Biko argued that true liberation was possible only when black people were, themselves, agents of change. In his view, this agency was a function of a new identity and consciousness, which was devoid of the inferiority complex that plagued black society. Only when white and black societies addressed issues of race openly would there be some hope for genuine integration and non-racialism.

Transcript of a 1972 Interview with Biko

At the University Christian Movement (UCM) meeting at Stutterheim in 1968, Biko made further inroads into black student politics by targeting key individuals and harnessing support for an exclusively black movement. In 1969, at the University of the North near Pietersburg, and with students of the University of Natal playing a leading role, African students launched a blacks-only student organisation, the South African Student Organisation (SASO). SASO committed itself to the philosophy of black consciousness. Biko was elected president.

Black Student Manifesto

The idea that blacks could define and organise themselves and determine their own destiny through a new political and cultural identity rooted in black consciousness swept through most black campuses, among those who had experienced the frustrations of years of deference to whites. In a short time, SASO became closely identified with 'Black Power' and African humanism and was reinforced by ideas emanating from Diasporan Africa. Successes elsewhere on the continent, which saw a number of countries, achieve independence from their colonial masters also fed into the language of black consciousness.

SASO's Definition of Black Consciousness

Cover of a 1971 SASO Newsletter

“ In 1968 we started forming what is now called SASO... which was firmly based on Black Consciousness, the essence of which was for the black man to elevate his own position by positively looking at those value systems that make him distinctively a man in society” - Biko

Cover of a 1971 SASO Newsletter

Cover of a 1972 SASO Newsletter

Cover of SASO newsletter, 1973

Cover of a 1975 SASO Newsletter

Steve Biko speaks on BCM

The Black People’s Convention By 1971, the influence of SASO had spread well beyond tertiary education campuses. A growing body of people who were part of SASO were also exiting the university system and needed a political home. SASO leaders moved for the establishment of a new wing of their organisation that would embrace broader civil society. The Black People’s Convention (BPC) with just such an aim was launched in 1972. The BPC immediately addressed the problems of black workers, whose unions were not yet recognised by the law. This invariably set the new organisation on a collision path with the security forces. By the end of the year, however, forty-one branches were said to exist. Black church leaders, artists, organised labour and others were becoming increasingly politicised and, despite the banning in 1973 of some of the leading figures in the movement, black consciousness exponents became most outspoken, courageous and provocative in their defiance of white supremacy.

BPC Membership Card

Minutes of the first meeting of the Black People's Convention

In 1974 nine leaders of SASO and BPC were charged with fomenting unrest. The accused used the seventeen-month trial as a platform to state the case of black consciousness in a trial that became known as the Trial of Ideas. They were found guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, although acquitted on the main charge of being party to a revolutionary conspiracy.

SASO/BPC Trial Coverage SASO/BPC Trial Coverage BPC Members

SASO/BPC Coverage

Poster from the 1974 Viva Frelimo Rally

Their conviction simply strengthened the black consciousness movement. Growing influence led to the formation of the South African Students Movement (SASM), which targeted and organised at high school level. SASM was to play a pivotal role in the student uprisings of 1976.

Barney Pityana, Founding SASO Member

In 1972, the year of the birth of the BPC, Biko was expelled from medical school. His political activities had taken a toll on his studies. More importantly, however, according to his friend and comrade Barney Pityana, “his own expansive search for knowledge had gone well beyond the field of medicine.” Biko would later go on to study law through the University of South Africa.

Steve Biko's Order Form for Law Textbooks

Upon leaving university, Biko joined the Durban offices of the Black Community Programmes (BCP), the developmental wing of the Black People Convention, as an employee reporting to Ben Khoapa. The Black Community Programmes engaged in a number of community-based projects and published a yearly called Black Review, which provided an analysis of political trends in the country.

Black Community Programmes Pamphlet

Overview of the BCP

BCP Head, Ben Khoapa

86 Beatrice Street, Former Headquarters of the BCP

"To understand me correctly you have to say that there were no fears expressed" - Biko

Ben Khoapa, Beatrice Street Circa 2007

Biko's Banning Order

When Biko was banned in March 1973, along with Khoapa, Pityana and others, he was deported from Durban to his home town, King William’s Town. Many of the other leaders of SASO, BPC, and BCP were relocated to disparate and isolated locations. Apart from assaulting the capacity of the organisations to function, the bannings were also intended to break the spirit of individual leaders, many of whom would be rendered inactive by the accompanying banning restrictions and thus waste away.

Following his banning, Biko targeted local organic intellectuals whom he engaged with as much vigour as he had engaged the more academic intellectuals at the University of Natal. Only this time, the focus was on giving depth to the practical dimension of BC ideas on development, which had been birthed within SASO and the BPC. He set up the King William’s Town office (No 15 Leopold Street) of the Black Community Programmes office where he stood as Branch Executive. The organisation focused on projects in Health, Education, Job Creation and other areas of community development.

No 15 Leopold Street , Former King William's Town Offices of the BCP

It was not long before his banning order was amended to restrict him from any meaningful association with the BCP. Biko could not meet with more that one person at a time. He could not leave the magisterial area of King William’s Town without permission from the police. He could not participate in public functions nor could he be published or quoted.

Zanempilo Clinic, a BPC Clinic

These restrictions on him and others in the BCM and their regular arrests, forced the development of a multiplicity of layers of leadership within the organisation in order to increase the buoyancy of the organisation. Notwithstanding the challenges, the local Black Community Programme office did well, managing among other achievements to build and operate Zanempilo Clinic, the most advanced community health centre of its time built without public funding. According to Dr. Ramphele, “it was a statement intended to demonstrate how little, with proper planning and organisation, it takes to deliver the most basic of services to our people.” Dr. Ramphele and Dr. Solombela served as resident doctors at Zanempilo Clinic.

Community Member from Njwaxa

Other projects under Biko’s office included Njwaxa Leatherworks Project, a community crèche and a number of other initiatives. Biko was also instrumental in founding in 1975 the Zimele Trust Fund set up to assist political prisoners and their families. Zimele Trust did not discriminate on the basis of party affiliation. In addition, Biko set up the Ginsberg Educational Trust to assist black students. This trust was also a plough-back to a community that had once assisted him with his own education.

Click on the Steve Biko Foundation logo to continue your journey into Biko's extraordinary life. Take a look at Steve Biko: The Black Consciousness Movement, Steve Biko: The Final Days, and Steve Biko: The Legacy.

—Steve Biko Foundation:

Steve Biko: The Early Years

Steve biko foundation, 11 february 1990: mandela's release from prison, africa media online, detention without trial in john vorster square, south african history archive (saha), steve biko: the inquest, what happened at the treason trial, steve biko: final days, 9 august 1956: the women's anti-pass march, steve biko: legacy, the signs that defined the apartheid, leadership during the rise and fall of apartheid.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Download Free PDF

Stephen Biko’s Philosophy and Its Pedagogical Implications in South Africa

2013, Creative Education

There are many approaches that need to inform education systems around the world. It also matters to know whether policymakers have followed (for example), a socialist or an individualist approach in for- mulating an education system. Furthermore, teachers and other role-players need to understand the para- digm that undergirds their system of education. This article focuses on the ideas of Stephen Biko, a South African political activist whose ideas proliferated in the 1970s. The article shows that certain values are crucial in building education founded on sound social justice policies. Most importantly, it displays that education is never a neutral act and that it will always be influenced by political debates and philosophies in a country.

Related papers

Abstract This paper probes the problems of pedagogy within the South African context. The paper is written against the backdrop of the South African educational system that is at the crossroads regarding its adoption of a participatory form of education (i.e., an educational system that is rooted on egalitarian ideals) or a system of education that is more elitist and has little, if any, to do with the uplifting of the historically marginalized. Since the paper is based on a conceptual analysis of theories of non-formal and/or adult education, the praxis of the argument is informed by philosophers who have written extensively on the subject. Solid and educational policies are also compared in order to formulate conclusions and strategies based on the analysis of educational trends that encourage democratic ideals. Keywords Education for socio-economic change, egalitarianism, language and power, democracy

The issue of social justice, with Rawls (1971) theory of justice in particular, underlies this thesis. It is introduced and illustrated within the context of education in post-apartheid South Africa, together with aspects such as Bourdieu’s (1997) social and cultural capital, hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses and the anti-colonial framework. Through the findings collected in five South African high schools of various socioeconomic, cultural and racial background, located in the province KwaZulu-Natal, this thesis focus on the ways in which South African schools have addressed issues of difference and inequality inherited from their apartheid past. Moreover, the thesis looks into the value of various cultures and knowledge traditions as perceived by the learners, teachers and principals participating in this study. The research employs a mixed-method research strategy, which has integrated both qualitative and quantitative research methods through interviews, focus groups, observations and questionnaires. It examines the extent to which there is an acknowledgement of different knowledge and cultural backgrounds within current educational policy and practice. The thesis argues that the current approach to social justice and redress is limited by a narrow interpretation of the country’s social inequalities.

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Education-Collected-Perspectives-Volume/dp/0990360709, 2014

Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2013

Arguably, one of the major achievements in the 1990s in South Africa was the final toppling of apartheid government and the triumph of democracy over the unjust and unequal past legislation. Since then schools are some of the institutions that have infused democracy ideals into their policies, curriculum and other aspects of school life. The post-apartheid education was formulated with direct links to the Constitution of the Republic. “Education is the key because it empowers us to exercise our democratic rights, and shape our destiny, by giving us the tools to participate in public life, to think critically, and to act responsibly” [1]. The post-apartheid education policy proclaimed in 1997 also declared that education and the curriculum in particular have an important role to play in realizing the democratic aims of the Constitution. Furthermore, the curriculum aimed to develop the full potential of learners as citizens of a democratic South Africa. The post-apartheid education in South Africa is based on noble values born out of the years of struggle. Education is perceived as a perfect tool to realize the ideals of democracy because it would lead people to be critical citizens, hence they would play a pivotal role in the transformation of society. Yet, there are paradoxes in a democratic society and this article explores some of them.

This is a transcript of the Strini Moodley Memorial Lecture organised by the Umtapo Centre and delivered at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on the 22nd of May, 2015. I was asked to speak to the theme of education and to acknowledge the prodigious legacy to educational praxis of two other close comrades who passed away recently, Professor Mbulelo Mzamane, an Umtapo Board member, and Professor Neville Alexander, an Umtapo patron. The lecture begins by addressing the appalling xenophobic violence that occurred in the city of Durban before discussing some of the egregious problems in education, youth struggles and what matters toward changing the education system. It is easy to become despondent about the state of education when we read about practices such as unions selling teacher and principal posts, rampant cronyism, the dismal state of infrastructure and facilities in our schools and the abysmal performance of our learners in international benchmark tests. Over two decades since the first democratic elections in South Africa, the combined weight of apartheid’s legacy exacerbated by neo-liberal policies over the past twenty years has meant that the promise of a quality public education system remains a chimera. While a mélange of new official policies on every conceivable aspect of education exists and racially based laws have been removed from the statutes, the education system as a whole reflects and reproduces the wider inequalities in society. Above all we need to understand that education is embedded in social class relations and largely reflects, reinforces and reproduces the inequalities in a racial capitalist society. This does not mean that resistance and counter-hegemonic efforts are fruitless, but that in doing so we must be cognisant of the combined impact of social class, gender and a racist history. A bland consensus-seeking constitutionalism often serves as a barrier to social analysis and the assumptions it makes about rights. Sixteen campaigning issues to turn public education around are identified, necessary to revive the ideas, strategies and passions that informed the struggles against apartheid education in line with Alexander’s view as expressed in his essay, ‘Some are more equal than others’, that “it is no longer disputed that in education, as in every other major sphere of society, the interests and the ideas of the ruling class(es) and ruling strata are the dominant ones. They tend to shape and to limit the processes and practices that are possible at any given time. Of course, we know, from both theory and practice, that particularly in the sphere of education, the control of the rulers is not absolute: counter-hegemonic practices and mobilisations are possible. They are the lifeblood of struggle …”

Koers, 2018

International Journal of Whole Schooling, 2006

Journal of Learning for Development, 2022

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

African Studies Review, 2005

Nordic Journal of African Studies, 2007

Roteiro, 2019

Educational research for social change, 2016

Journal of Social Sciences, 2012

Journal of Transformative Education, 2020

Education And Urban Society, 2014

Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning, 2013

In the World Yearbook of Education 2023: Racialization and Educational Inequality in Global Perspective. Edited By Janelle Scott and Monisha Bajaj, published November 7, 2022, by Routledge. ISBN 9781032148434. Chapter 11, pp 189-203., 2023

Perspectives in Education, 2018

We're Hiring!
Help Center
Find new research papers in:
Health Sciences
Earth Sciences
Cognitive Science
Mathematics
Computer Science
Academia ©2024

Humanities ›
History & Culture ›
African History ›

Biography of Stephen Bantu (Steve) Biko, Anti-Apartheid Activist

Bfluff / Wikimedia Commons

American History
African American History
Ancient History and Culture
Asian History
European History
Latin American History
Medieval & Renaissance History
Military History
The 20th Century
Women's History
Postgraduate Certificate in Education, University College London
M.S., Imperial College London
B.S., Heriot-Watt University

Steve Biko (Born Bantu Stephen Biko; Dec. 18, 1946–Sept. 12, 1977) was one of South Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement . His murder in police detention in 1977 led to his being hailed a martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle. 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."

Fast Facts: Stephen Bantu (Steve) Biko

Known For : Prominent anti-apartheid activist, writer, founder of Black Consciousness Movement, considered a martyr after his murder in a Pretoria prison
Also Known As : Bantu Stephen Biko, Steve Biko, Frank Talk (pseudonym)
Born : December 18, 1946 in King William's Town, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Parents : Mzingaye Biko and Nokuzola Macethe Duna
Died : September 12, 1977 in a Pretoria prison cell, South Africa
Education : Lovedale College, St Francis College, University of Natal Medical School
Published Works : "I Write What I Like: Selected Writings by Steve Biko," "The Testimony of Steve Biko"
Spouses/Partners : Ntsiki Mashalaba, Mamphela Ramphele
Children : Two
Notable Quote : "The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves."

Early Life and Education

Stephen Bantu Biko was born on December 18, 1946, into a Xhosa family. His father Mzingaye Biko worked as a police officer and later as a clerk in the King William’s Town Native Affairs office. His father achieved part of a university education through the University of South Africa, a distance-learning university, but he died before completing his law degree. After his father's death, Biko's mother Nokuzola Macethe Duna supported the family as a cook at Grey's Hospital.

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 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.

Black Consciousness Movement

In 1972 Biko was one of the founders of the Black Peoples Convention, 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 , which later 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 recognized under the apartheid regime.

In a book first published posthumously in 1978, titled, "I Write What I Like"—which contained Biko's writings from 1969, when he became the president of the South African Students' Organization, to 1972, when he was banned from publishing—Biko explained Black consciousness and summed up his own philosophy:

"Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression—the blackness of their skin—and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude."

Biko was elected as the first president of the BPC and was promptly expelled from medical school. He was expelled, specifically, for his involvement in the BPC. He started working full-time for the Black Community Programme in Durban, which he also helped found.

Banned by the Apartheid Regime

In 1973 Steve Biko was banned by the apartheid government for his writing and speeches denouncing the apartheid system. Under the ban, Biko was restricted to his hometown of Kings William's Town in the Eastern Cape. He could no longer support the Black Community Programme in Durban, but he was able to continue working for the Black People's Convention.

During that time, Biko was first visited by Donald Woods , the editor of the East London Daily Dispatch , located in the province of Eastern Cape in South Africa. Woods was not initially a fan of Biko, calling the whole Black Consciousness movement racist. As Woods explained in his book, "Biko," first published in 1978:

"I had had up to then a negative attitude toward Black Consciousness. As one of a tiny band of white South African liberals, I was totally opposed to race as a factor in political thinking, and totally committed to nonracist policies and philosophies."

Woods believed—initially—that Black Consciousness was nothing more than apartheid in reverse because it advocated that "Blacks should go their own way," and essentially divorce themselves not just from White people, but even from White liberal allies in South Africa who worked to support their cause. But Woods eventually saw that he was incorrect about Biko's thinking. Biko believed that Black people needed to embrace their own identity—hence the term "Black Consciousness"—and "set our own table," in Biko's words. Later, however, White people could, figuratively, join them at the table, once Black South Africans had established their own sense of identity.

Woods eventually came to see that Black Consciousness "expresses group pride and the determination by all blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self" and that "black groups (were) becoming more conscious of the self. They (were) beginning to rid their minds of the imprisoning notions which are the legacy of the control of their attitudes by whites."

Woods went on to champion Biko's cause and become his friend. "It was a friendship that ultimately forced Mr. Woods into exile," The New York Times noted when Woods' died in 2001. Woods was not expelled from South Africa because of his friendship with Biko, per se. Woods' exile was the result of the government's intolerance of the friendship and support of anti-apartheid ideals, sparked by a meeting Woods arranged with a top South African official.

Woods met with South African Minister of Police James "Jimmy" Kruger to request the easing of Biko's banning order—a request that was promptly ignored and led to further harassment and arrests of Biko, as well as a harassment campaign against Woods that eventually caused him to flee the country.

Despite the harassment, Biko, from King William's Town, helped set up the Zimele Trust Fund which assisted political prisoners and their families. He was also elected honorary president of the BPC in January 1977.

Detention and Murder

Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977 under Apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation. On August 21, 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. According to the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa" report, on September 7, 1977:

"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 the hospital. Biko was, however, transported nearly 750 miles 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.

South African Minister of Justice Kruger initially suggested Biko had died of a hunger strike and said that his murder "left him cold." The hunger strike story was dropped after local and international media pressure, especially from Woods. It was revealed in the inquest that Biko had died of brain damage, but the magistrate failed to find anyone responsible. He ruled that Biko had died as a result of injuries sustained during a scuffle with security police while in detention.

Anti-Apartheid Martyr

The brutal circumstances of Biko's murder 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 Woods) and organizations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely associated with Biko.

The United Nations Security Council responded by 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 inquiry in 1985, eight years after Biko's murder, that any action was taken against them. At that time, Dr. Benjamin Tucker who examined Biko before his murder lost his license to practice in South Africa. The police officers responsible for Biko's killing applied for amnesty during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, which sat in Port Elizabeth in 1997, but the application was denied. The commission had a very specific purpose:

"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created to investigate gross human rights violations that were perpetrated during the period of the Apartheid regime from 1960 to 1994, including abductions, killings, torture. Its mandate covered both violations by both the state and the liberation movements and allowed the commission to hold special hearings focused on specific sectors, institutions, and individuals. Controversially the TRC was empowered to grant amnesty to perpetrators who confessed their crimes truthfully and completely to the commission.

(The commission) was comprised of seventeen commissioners: nine men and eight women. Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu chaired the commission. The commissioners were supported by approximately 300 staff members, divided into three committees (Human Rights Violations Committee, Amnesty Committee, and Reparations and Rehabilitation Committee)."

Biko's family did not ask the Commission to make a finding on his murder. The "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa" report, published by Macmillan in March 1999, said of Biko's murder:

"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."

Woods went on to write a biography of Biko, published in 1978, simply titled, "Biko." In 1987, Biko’s story was chronicled in the film “Cry Freedom,” which was based on Woods' book. The hit song " Biko ," by Peter Gabriel, honoring Steve Biko's legacy, came out in 1980. Of note, Woods, Sir Richard Attenborough (director of "Cry Freedom"), and Peter Gabriel—all White men—have had perhaps the most influence and control in the widespread telling of Biko's story, and have also profited from it. This is an important point to consider as we reflect on his legacy, which remains notably small when compared to more famous anti-apartheid leaders such as Mandela and Tutu. But Biko remains a model and hero in the struggle for autonomy and self-determination for people around the world. His writings, work, and tragic murder were all historically crucial to the momentum and success of the South African anti-apartheid movement.

In 1997, at the 20th anniversary of Biko's murder, then-South African President Mandela memorialized Biko, calling him "a proud representative of the re-awakening of a people" and adding:

“History called upon Steve Biko at a time when the political pulse of our people had been rendered faint by banning, imprisonment, exile, murder and banishment....While Steve Biko espoused, inspired, and promoted black pride, he never made blackness a fetish. At the end of the day, as he himself pointed out, accepting one’s blackness is a critical starting point: an important foundation for engaging in struggle."

Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like . Bowerdean Press, 1978.
“ Cry Freedom .” IMDb , IMDb.com, 6 Nov. 1987.
“ Donald James Woods .” Donald James Woods | South African History Online , sahistory.org.
Mangcu, Xolela. Biko, A Biography. Tafelberg, 2012.
Sahoboss. “ Stephen Bantu Biko .” South African History Online , 4 Dec. 2017.
“ Steve Biko: The Philosophy of Black Consciousness ." Black Star News, 20 Feb. 2020.
Swarns, Rachel L. “ Donald Woods, 67, Editor and Apartheid Foe .” The New York Times , The New York Times, 20 Aug. 2001.
Woods, Donald. Biko . Paddington Press, 1978.

“ Apartheid Police Officers Admit to the Killing of Biko before the TRC .” Apartheid Police Officers Admit to the Killing of Biko before the TRC | South African History Online , 28 Jan. 1997.

Daley, Suzanne. “ Panel Denies Amnesty for Four Officers in Steve Bikos Death .” The New York Times , The New York Times, 17 Feb. 1999.

“ Truth Commission: South Africa .” United States Institute of Peace , 22 Oct. 2018.

Biography of Donald Woods, South African Journalist
South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s
Understanding South Africa's Apartheid Era
What Was Apartheid in South Africa?
Biography: Joe Slovo
Biography of Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu, South African Activist
The End of South African Apartheid
Memorable Quotes by Steve Biko
South Africa's Extension of University Education Act of 1959
Biography of Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu, Anti-Apartheid Activist
Women's Anti-Pass Law Campaigns in South Africa
Apartheid 101
Pass Laws During Apartheid
Apartheid Quotes About Bantu Education
The Origins of Apartheid in South Africa
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act

History & Society
Science & Tech
Biographies
Animals & Nature
Geography & Travel
Arts & Culture
Games & Quizzes
On This Day
One Good Fact
New Articles
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Philosophy & Religion
Politics, Law & Government
World History
Health & Medicine
Browse Biographies
Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
Environment
Fossils & Geologic Time
Entertainment & Pop Culture
Sports & Recreation
Visual Arts
Demystified
Image Galleries
Infographics
Top Questions
Britannica Kids
Saving Earth
Space Next 50
Student Center

What is apartheid?
When did apartheid start?
How did apartheid end?
What is the apartheid era in South African history?

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

African American Registry - Stephen Biko, African Freedom Fighter born
My Hero - Biography of Bantu Stephen Biko
Stanford University - Steve Biko
South African History Online - Biography of Stephen Bantu Biko
Digital Innovation South Africa - Steve Biko (1946 - 1977)
CORE - Incomplete Histories: Steve Biko, the Politics of Self-Writing and the Apparatus of Reading
Academia - Steve Biko: The Intellectual Roots of South African Black Consciousness
Steve Biko - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
Steve Biko - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Steve Biko (born December 18, 1946, King William’s Town , South Africa—died September 12, 1977, Pretoria) was the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa . His death from injuries suffered while in police custody made him an international martyr for South African Black nationalism .

After being expelled from high school for political activism, Biko enrolled in and graduated (1966) from St. Francis College, a liberal boarding school in Natal , and then entered the University of Natal Medical School. There he became involved in the multiracial National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), a moderate organization that had long espoused the rights of Blacks. He soon grew disenchanted with NUSAS, believing that, instead of simply allowing Blacks to participate in white South African society, the society itself needed to be restructured around the culture of the Black majority. In 1968 he cofounded the all-Black South African Students’ Organization (SASO), and he became its first president the following year. SASO was based on the philosophy of Black consciousness , which encouraged Blacks to recognize their inherent dignity and self-worth. In the 1970s the Black Consciousness Movement spread from university campuses into urban Black communities throughout South Africa. In 1972 Biko was one of the founders of the Black People’s Convention, an umbrella organization of Black consciousness groups.

Biko drew official censure in 1973, when he and other SASO members were banned; their associations, movements, and public statements were thereby restricted. He then operated covertly, establishing the Zimele Trust Fund in 1975 to help political prisoners and their families. He was arrested four times over the next two years and was held without trial for months at a time. On August 18, 1977, he and a fellow activist were seized at a roadblock and jailed in Port Elizabeth . Biko was found naked and shackled outside a hospital in Pretoria , 740 miles (1,190 km) away, on September 11 and died the next day of a massive brain hemorrhage.

Police initially denied any maltreatment of Biko; it was determined later that he had probably been severely beaten while in custody, but the officers involved were cleared of wrongdoing. In 1997 five former police officers confessed to having killed Biko and applied for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (a body convened to review atrocities committed during the apartheid years); amnesty was denied in 1999. Donald Woods, a South African journalist, depicts his friendship with Biko in Biko (1977; 3rd rev. ed., 1991), and their relationship is portrayed in the film Cry Freedom (1987).

IMAGES

⇉Steve Biko In the Film Cry Freedom Essay Example
Biography of Stephen Biko, Anti-Apartheid Activist
Steve Biko
Steve Biko (English)
Steve Biko, the Anti-Apartheid Activist Who Fought to End White
steve biko essay grade 12 pdf

VIDEO

১৫ আগষ্ট, স্বাধীনতা দিবসৰ ওপৰত ৰচনা
STUDY WITH ME #MOTIVATIONAL 📚✍
(Part Two) Steve Biko Academic Hospital Kidney Awareness Interview
Steve Biko plays at forward for BlakBlad RC #rugbyke #rugby
Steve Biko #history #africa #facts #southafrica #shorts
Steve Biko Public Lecture I Adv. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC delivers the keynote address

COMMENTS

PDF Steve Biko and the philosophy of Black consciousness
A post by Mubarak Aliyu on the LSE student writing competition Black Forgotten Heroes. It introduces Steve Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, and his ideas of Black theology and indigenous values.
PDF Black Consciousness and The Quest for True Humanity
by Steve Biko It is perhaps fitting to start off by examining the real reasons which make it necessary for us to think collectively about a problem we never created. In doing so, I do not wish to appear to be unnecessarily concerning myself with the White
PDF THE QUEST FOR A TRUE HUMANITY
A PDF document of an exhibition commemorating the 30th anniversary of the death of Steve Biko, a leader and philosopher of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. The exhibition explores Biko's life, ideas, legacy and the history of the apartheid regime.
(PDF) Black Consciousness and Anti-Capitalism: The Legacy of Steve Biko
The first was the formation of a Black organisation of student protest in 1968. The South African Student Organisation (SASO) was founded during a meeting exclusively attended by black students. Biko became the new organisation's first President. The second was the astonishing friendship that developed between Steve Biko and Rick Turner.
Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement
The Rise of Black Consciousness. The Black Consciousness movement became one of the most influential anti-apartheid movements of the 1970s in South Africa. While many parts of the African continent gained independence, the apartheid state increased its repression of black liberation movements in the 1960s. In the latter part of the decade, the ...
PDF Steve Biko: The Intellectual Roots of South African Black Consciousness
Keywords: Steve Biko, apartheid, Hegel 1. Introduction Steve Biko was born in Tylden, Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape), South Africa on 18 December 1946. His father, Mzingayi Matthew, pressured Biko to excel academically, but Biko's education occurred simultaneously with the implementation of the Bantu Education Act.
PDF Intellectual Legacy of Steve Biko
The Intellectual Legacy of Stephen Bantu Biko (1946-1977) Article by: H.P.P. (Hennie) Lötter SUMMARY In this essay I will attempt to explain the significance of Stephen Bantu Biko's life. This I will do in terms of his intellectual contribution to the liberation of black people from the radically unjust apartheid society in South Africa ...
PDF Stephen Biko: Black Consciousness, Black Struggle, Black Survival
Fortunately, our three observers have taken time to discuss also the symbol, the ideology, that is Steve Biko. Black Consciousness is the name; 'Black man, you are on your own', is the cry. More than the other two, Woods places the movement in a socio-historical context since consciousness is not a prodigy of the I970s.
Biko Lives!: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko
But, by far, the most important chapters in the book are Gail Gerhart's hitherto unpublished 1972 interview with Biko and Neville Alexander's recollection of Biko and the Azanian Manifesto." - R. I. Rotberg, Choice"Taken as a whole, this collection of essays is an important addition to the scholarship on Steve Biko.
I write what I like : selected writings : Biko, Steve, 1946-1977 : Free
Biko, Steve, 1946-1977. Publication date 2002 ... Pdf_module_version 0.0.18 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20220615183458 Republisher_operator [email protected] Republisher_time 159 Scandate 20220614064532 Scanner station64.cebu.archive.org ...
Rightful Power and an Ideal of Free Community: The Political Theory of
Biko is a cultural and political inspiration—of an "uncritical" glorification of Biko as more than human (3).1 This tendency also explains why, despite steady documentation of Biko's political activism (Pityana 1988, 3), our the-oretical, critical understanding of his ideas remains poor.2 This article
Microsoft Word
For me it began when we shared a desk in class IVa at. 1 The 2007 Steve Biko Lecture to mark 30 years of the death of Black Consciousness leader Stephen Bantu Biko, delivered in the Senate Hall, Unisa, Wednesday 12 September 2007. This lecture was first given at the Winter School of the Grahamstown Arts Festival, Eastern Cape, 3 July 2007.
PDF Opening Address Reflections on 30 Years Since the Death of Steve Biko
a. It is a personal reflection on the 30 years that have passed since Steve was murdered. From the perspective of present-day South Africa I want to analyse the meaning and rel. vance of the life and times of Steve Biko, and their impact on contemporary South Africa.Recently I received by e-mail a copy of my paper "Black Consciousness a.
(PDF) Stephen Biko's Philosophy and Its Pedagogical Implications in
For example, Steve Biko the anti-apartheid activist is known to have read Paolo Freire's seminal work 'The Pedagogy of the Oppressed' and agreed that education should be a political act, related ...
(PDF) Steve Biko. I Write what I like
At the 1st General Students Council of SASO in July 1970 Steve was succeeded as President by Barney Pityana. Steve was elected Chairman of SASO Publications. The following month the monthly SASO Newsletter began to appear carrying articles by himself called "I write what I like" and signed Frank Talk.
Steve Biko and the philosophy of Black consciousness
This post is a winning entry in the LSE student writing competition Black Forgotten Heroes, launched by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. Born 18 December 1946, Steve Biko was a South African activist who pioneered the philosophy of Black Consciousness in the late 1960s. He later founded the South African Students Organisation (SASO) in ...
Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement Grade 12 Essay Guide
Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement Summary: A Legacy of Empowerment and Resistance. Stephen Bantu Biko, born in 1946 in South Africa, was a prominent anti-apartheid activist and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM).The movement played a crucial role in the fight against apartheid by empowering black South Africans to embrace their identity, instilling pride and self ...
Stephen Bantu Biko
Kwazulu Natal. Introduction. Stephen (Steve) Bantu Biko was a popular voice of Black liberation in South Africa between the mid 1960s and his death in police detention in 1977. This was the period in which both the ANC and the PAC had been officially banned and the disenfranchised Black population (especially the youth) were highly receptive to ...
Steve Biko: The Black Consciousness Movement
By Steve Biko Foundation. Stephen Bantu Biko was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement.
(PDF) Stephen Biko's Philosophy and Its Pedagogical Implications in
Theory: Fanon and Black Power Gibson (2011, p. 1) points out that, "Perhaps the most important recreation of Fanon's philosophy of liberation on the African continent was by Steve Biko, whose emphasis on the liberation of the 'mind' of the oppressed became essential to the new stage of revolt against apartheid in the 1970s".
Steve Biko : Black consciousness in South Africa
Steve Biko : Black consciousness in South Africa by Biko, Steve, 1946-1977; Arnold, Millard W. Publication date 1978 Topics ... Pdf_degraded invalid-jp2-headers Pdf_module_version 0.0.25 Ppi 400 Scandate 20100928004335 Scanner scribe16.sfdowntown.archive.org ...
Biography of Stephen Biko, Anti-Apartheid Activist
Updated on December 05, 2020. Steve Biko (Born Bantu Stephen Biko; Dec. 18, 1946-Sept. 12, 1977) was one of South Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement. His murder in police detention in 1977 led to his being hailed a martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle.
Steve Biko
Steve Biko (born December 18, 1946, King William's Town, South Africa—died September 12, 1977, Pretoria) was the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. His death from injuries suffered while in police custody made him an international martyr for South African Black nationalism. After being expelled from high school for ...