Category: Let's talk
A young black politician who died under brutal and degrading circumstances during the apartheid period. Biko's life reflected the lot of frustrated young
black intellectuals. In his death he became a symbol of the martyrdom of black nationalists whose struggle focused critical world attention on South Africa
more strongly than at any time since Sharpeville in 1960.
Biko was a black consciousness exponent who developed intellectually and emerged with others out of the changing literate African population in the major
urban centres during the 1960s. Feeling deeply their subservience, they searched for self-identity and hoped to build up pride in a culture that was not
emasculated by white state rule. Biko and his student colleagues had been receptive to the political ideas expressed by many black intellectuals and they
learned to use the sheer emotional power of the message of black consciousness with bitter assertiveness. These ideas and slogans filtered down to a much
broader group of socially unorganised people, angry and impatient for meaningful action, who made up a new African petty bourgeoisie.
Black university students had tried for many years to make progress through the multiracial National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) because it
was outspoken in its criticism of government actions, especially at English-speaking universities where NUSAS membership was strong. Several young liberal
white leaders of NUSAS were moved by the black cause and tried to protect politically active black students from government counter-action by speaking
out for them. Media coverage of these dissident activities caused a dismayed response from the parents of white students who wished to shield their children
from political involvement that could shatter their lives in detentions and banning orders. In a backlash of reaction white students disaffiliated themselves
from NUSAS. This swing to the right left no channels for black students to express their anti-apartheid feelings. Dissatisfaction was intense. In the period
1967-68, one of the students who began to analyse and criticise the situation was Steve Biko, a medical student at Natal University. He was to become the
hero of millions of Africans who rejected apartheid.
Biko, the son of a government clerk, was born in Kingwilliamstown. In 1963, when Poqo unrest in the eastern Cape was severe, Steve Biko had just entered
Lovedale College when his brother was arrested and jailed on suspicion of outlawed Poqo activity. Steve was interrogated by the police and subsequently
expelled. Thus began his resentment against white authority. In 1964 he went to Marianhill in Natal and attended a private Roman Catholic school, Saint
Francis College. Though Christian principles had meaning for him, Biko, who was an articulate youth, resented whites influencing the thinking of the future
of Africans.
At Wentworth, Natal University's medical school for blacks, he was elected to the Student's Representative Council (SRC), and in 1967 participated as a
delegate to a NUSAS conference at Rhodes University. Here, black students were affronted when the host university prohibited mixed accommodation and eating
facilities at the conference site. Reacting bitterly, he slated the artificial integration of student politics and rejected liberalism as empty gestures
of people who really wished to retain the status quo. Black students were drawn to Biko in frank discussions about their predicament as second class citizens.
At the University Christian Movement (UCM) meeting at Stutterheim in 1968 these usually reticent young people were enthusiastically supportive of Biko's
idea for an exclusively all-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 union, the South African Students' Organisation. SASO made clear its common allegiance
to the philosophy of black consciousness. Biko was elected president.
Biko was scathingly critical of white liberals who 'could skillfully extract what suits them from the exclusive pool of white privileges'; and he was resentful
that blacks were experiencing a situation from which they were unable to escape. The principles of liberty, equality, fraternity, rule of law, and civil
liberties were incidental to those who were struggling for fundamental freedoms. Blacks had to 'go-it-alone'. The whole ideology of liberalism was questioned
and rejected openly and emotionally by SASO with Biko as its main mouthpiece. With ever-growing radicalism he explained why he was against integration:
'I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people.' (S. Biko. [Frank Talk] 'Black Souls in
White Skins' in Gerhart, 1970: 263, 266)
South Africa's complex society of blacks accepted these negative ideas with mixed reactions. Shocked white liberals, with their sincerity and deep convictions
in question, felt they had become easy scapegoats for another racist organisation. The idea that blacks might determine their own destiny, the movement's
pride in black consciousness, and a new Africanism swept black campuses, strongly influencing those who had experienced the frustrations of the system
of Bantu Education, of continual deference and feelings of inferiority to whites. In a short time SASO became identified with 'Black Power' and African
humanism and reinforced by ideas emanating from black America and Africa.
In particular, Biko preached to moderate blacks that racial polarisation of society into hostile camps was a preliminary to race conflict and a strategy
for change. He was convinced that, if blacks were not to sink into apathetic acceptance of the system of separate development, continuous agitation had
to take place to shake them up.
In 1971, to shake up adults and promote their bold objectives, SASO leaders tried to establish an adult wing of their organisation. At the 1972 SASO conference
hostility towards black leaders operating from officially approved institutions of separate development was made manifest when the outgoing president of
SASO, Temba Sono, was ousted because he recommended some form of co-operation with selected leaders within the apartheid system. Biko described Sono's
speech as 'very dangerous' (Black Review, 1972:25). In fact, Sono had Chief Gatsha Buthelezi in mind when he pleaded for some sort of co-operation with
selected leaders, saying he was a 'force you cannot ignore' (Horrell, 1972:30).
But Biko saw all moderates working within the system as 'collaborators' and, with the expulsion of Sono, the radical ideology was entrenched. They faced
many difficulties in this period before the 1976 Soweto Riots when youth erupted in the lead. Not least was the ingrained African custom of youth being
required to defer to age. Dismayed parents, who had sacrificed much for the education of their children, were reluctant to see their schooling disrupted.
More cautious older political leaders feared such open militancy would get their children nowhere.
For security reasons Biko and the young leaders stressed the psychological dimensions of culture and identity, but they never lost sight of their revolutionary
political objectives as they endeavoured to turn a student activity into a participating national organisation backed by financial resources and much needed
mobility. An adult wing called the Black Peoples Convention was eventually launched in 1972. Almost immediately it clashed with the police. Eight black
consciousness leaders were banned in 1973 and publication of BPC material became difficult. But by the end of the year forty-one branches were said to
exist, black churchmen were becoming increasingly politicised and black consciousness speakers highly courageous and more provocative in their outspokenness
and defiance of white authority. Growing politicisation of the high schools resulted in mounting expulsions and stinging attacks on black education. Boycotts
and school closures followed as developing black-white confrontation began to bring about the sought after racial polarization needed to bring about change.
At the black schools Biko and his student leaders became heroes and high school youth organisations became the nurseries for revolt.
The government reacted by systematically depriving SASO of its leaders. In 1973 a flurry of banning orders were issued: Biko, Pityana and other SASO and
BPC leaders were detained under the Terrorism Act and the following year nine leaders of SASO and BPC were charged for fomenting disorder. The accused
used the seventeen-month trial as a platform to state the case of black consciousness. They were found guilty and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment,
but were acquitted of being party to a revolutionary conspiracy. Their convictions simply strengthened the black consciousness movement for the repression
under the Terrorism Act caused blacks to lose sympathy with moderate evolutionary policies, creating more militancy and hope for emancipation. In June
1976 high school students and police clashed violently and fatally, and continuing widespread urban unrest threatened law and order.
In the wake of the urban revolt of 1976 and with the prospects of national revolution becoming increasingly real, security police detained Biko, the outspoken
student leader, on August 18th. He was thirty years old and said to have been extremely fit when arrested. He was taken to Port Elizabeth and on 11 September
1977 he was moved to Pretoria, Transvaal. On 12 September, he died in detention - the 20th person to have died in detention in the preceding eighteen months.
A post-mortem was done the day after Biko died, at which the family were present, but skepticism was widespread about the explanation by Minister of Justice
and Police Jimmy Kruger that Biko died while on a hunger strike. Medical reports received by Minister Kruger were not made public.
Three South African newspapers carried reports that Biko did not die as a result of a hunger strike. One of these papers, The World, was banned. Minister
of Justice Kruger took the Rand Daily Mail to the South African Press Council after it had published a front page story claiming that Steve Biko had suffered
extensive brain damage. Furthermore, the Johannesburg Sunday Express said that sources connected with the forensic investigation maintained that brain
damage had been the cause of death. In Britain it was understood from South African sources that fluid drawn from the spine revealed many red cells - an
indication of brain damage.
Twelve western countries sent envoys to his funeral. A photograph of Biko lying in his coffin was taken secretly just before the funeral and sent by an
underground South African source to Britain and seen as added proof that the leader had been beaten to death while in prison.
These disclosures were very damaging to South Africa, caused an international outcry and condemnation of South Africa's security laws, and led directly
to the West's decision to support the UN Security Council vote to ban mandatory arms sales to South Africa (Resolution 418 of 4 November 1977). Biko's
brutal death made him a martyr in the history of black resistance to white hegemony, inflamed huge black anger and inspired a rededication to the struggle
for freedom. Progressive Federal Party parliamentarian Helen Suzman warned Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger that 'the world was not going to forget the
Biko affair', and she said, 'We will not forget it either.' Kruger's reply that Biko's death 'left him cold' echoed around the world.
A widespread crackdown of black student organizations and political movements followed, and in October, just before the inquest, police swooped on seventeen
Black Consciousness resistance organizations. Two of Biko's white friends, the Reverend Beyers Naudé and Donald Woods were banned, and Percy Qoboza, editor
of the World, was banned for allegedly writing inflammatory articles about the manner of Biko's death. Prime Minister Vorster called a snap election and
a large majority of white voters united in a call for Vorster's Nationalist Government to remain in power to face the formidable challenge of a distinctly
polarized black population.
Prior to this, at the inquests of a number of detainees who died under suspicious circumstances magistrates declined to examine the interrogation methods
used and attributed death to natural causes, suicides or prison accidents. At the inquest into Biko's death no government official was prepared to condemn
the treatment meted out to Biko. The circumstances of his death were said to be inconclusive and death was attributed to a prison accident. Yet, evidence
led 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, on 12 September
1977, 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.
It took eight years and intense pressure before the South African Medical Council 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 Steve Biko during the five days before he died. Judge President of
the Transvaal Mr Justice W G Boshoff said in judgment handed down that there was prima facie evidence of improper or disgraceful conduct on the part of
the `Biko' doctors in a professional respect.
Biko's death did not put an end to ill treatment, however. Years later, when young Dr Wendy Orr made her disclosures about the treatment of detainees in
the eastern Cape it became clear that conditions had changed very little. In September 1987 Helen Suzman once again produced claims of torture and ill
treatment in detention with thirty-seven signed affidavits.
February 6, 1997
Not Only Was Activist Beaten,
He May Have Been Poisoned
By KEN WELLS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
PRETORIA, South Africa -- Two decades after the fact, it is official: The apartheid state and its police helpers killed activist Steven Bantu Biko. But
it may be worse than the world thought. There are new allegations that he wasn't only tortured and beaten, but poisoned.
Those allegations, which came to light only Wednesday, were made by a yet unnamed informant to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the constitutional
body charged with investigating apartheid-era crimes and human-rights violations.
[Media]
They follow last week's admission by five white former security policeman who say they methodically assaulted, tortured and eventually killed Mr. Biko in
1977. A figure of the stature of Nelson Mandela, his death shocked the world and provided fresh outrage to antiapartheid forces who were being worn down
by aggressive government harassment.
Those close to the commission say it is too early to tell how seriously to take the allegations that Mr. Biko was poisoned with a substance whose effects
mimic brain damage. But the panel has subpoenaed for Feb. 10 a former medical officer with the South African Defense Forces who commissioners believe may
have some knowledge of the matter, people close to the commission say. Testimony in previous murder trials of antiapartheid activists has established that
the notorious Special Branch police force in South Africa's Eastern Cape province used poison -- including whiskey laced with rat poison -- to kill and
maim black targets.
Power to Grant Amnesty
The commission, which began operating about 18 months ago, has the power to grant amnesty to perpetrators of so-called political crimes in cases where it
is convinced that the assailants are making full disclosure and were following state orders.
The five policeman who came forward last week -- Harold Snyman, Gideon Niewoudt, Ruben Marx, Daantjie Siebert and Johan Beneke -- maintain that they killed
Mr. Biko unintentionally, with blows delivered while following official orders to rough him up. As many as five other police officers with knowledge of
the activist's death are also expected to file applications before the commission.
In Port Elizabeth, Francois van der Merwe, attorney for the five policemen, confirmed the Truth Commission amnesty filings but declined to comment beyond
that.
Commissioners are thus far unsatisfied with the individual details the policemen have provided and will investigate lingering "gaps" in the testimonies
before deciding whether they deserve full amnesty hearings, says Dumisa B. Ntsebeza, a commissioner with the agency's investigative branch. Those whose
amnesty applications are rejected -- or who are found to have committed crimes unreported in their amnesty pleas -- may face criminal prosecutions.
Too Lenient?
Whatever the case, Mr. Ntsebeza is optimistic that, before the year's end, the commission will come as close as is possible to learning the truth about
Mr. Biko's death. Though many in South Africa, including Mr. Biko's widow, Ntiski, have criticized the commission as potentially too lenient toward the
racist murderers of the old regime, many believe it is the only reasonable way to get to the bottom of myriad crimes of the apartheid era.
The benefit of the commission is that "it puts on trial the entire system of apartheid, and not just the foot soldiers of the regime," says Shun Chetty,
a South African lawyer, once exiled to Australia, who helped represent Mr. Biko's family during the inquest into his death two decades ago. "In that way,
I think it's vital to the future of the country. But unquestionably it means that some individuals and some families who suffered heinously under the system
will be asked to sacrifice for the greater good."
The Case
Whatever the final findings, a reconstruction of the Biko case -- through interviews with friends, associates, investigators and a review of inquest testimony
-- shows that Mr. Biko suffered horribly at the hands of his captors.
On a warm September morning in 1977, 24 days after Mr. Biko had been detained incommunicado for interrogation by Special Branch police, his body was delivered
to his family, bruised and battered. Once a robust 30-year-old, he had died naked and frothing at the mouth on the floor of a Pretoria jail hospital after
an inexplicable 11-hour ride in a Land Rover from a dank prison in Port Elizabeth, 600 miles away.
When official explanations that he had succumbed to a hunger strike met with howls of derision, police offered a second explanation: One night, he had scuffled
violently with his captors, hit his head against a wall and died of brain injuries while awaiting medical attention. He hadn't otherwise been assaulted
or tortured, they said.
"I never thought they would kill him," recalls Donald Woods, a white newspaper editor who was exiled from South Africa for his antiapartheid views and his
muckraking about the Biko case. "Steve had been in detention before and he had not been tortured ... . It was the very worst thing they could have done."
Indeed it was. Mr. Biko was a daring and articulate founder and mainstay of the Black Consciousness Movement and, except for Mr. Mandela, perhaps the best
known and most fervent of South Africa's antiapartheid activists. His death was mourned throughout the free world, and its suspicious circumstances proved
an enraging and galvanizing event in the simmering antiapartheid movement here and abroad.
Thousands, including numerous Western diplomats, mobbed his funeral in a run-down cemetery in King William's Town, in the Eastern Cape province, despite
police efforts to keep them away. And it was the blow that finally convinced the U.S. government to impose an arms and oil embargo against the white South
Africa regime.
In its own way, Mr. Biko's death on Sept. 12, 1977, signaled the beginning of the end of white rule here. Though Jimmy Kruger, South Africa's police minister
at the time, stood before the world and declared no remorse over Mr. Biko's death, many inside the hated state police apparatus back then weren't so cocksure.
A typist overhead one supervisor of the dreaded Special Branch say upon learning of Mr. Biko's death: "Now we're in real trouble."
Beginning of the End
It all began on the evening of Aug. 18, when Mr. Biko, in a car driven by his antiapartheid ally Peter Jones, rounded a corner in the Eastern Cape city
of Grahamstown, about 40 miles from King William's Town where Mr. Biko lived.
Ahead was a police road block, recalls Mr. Jones, now a Cape Town lawyer and entrepreneur. A car before them was waved through; they were stopped. With
little fanfare, policemen climbed into their car and ordered them to follow a police car to a nearby Grahamstown jail. "They pretended they didn't know
us but took us in for questioning anyway," he says. Looking behind him, Mr. Jones saw the roadblock come down.
The pair was already exhausted from a 10-hour drive from Cape Town, where they had been in the midst of secret meetings that might certainly have given
the nervous white government reason to worry. The African National Congress, Mr. Mandela's party that now leads South Africa's nonracial government, says
it was clear back then that Mr. Biko had decided to play a major role in unification talks between the various black liberation movements, including the
ANC and the radical Pan African Congress; to the white government's delight, those groups had been waging sometimes splintered and fractious antiapartheid
campaigns.
'Not Antiwhite'
"Steve was a charismatic figure and a conciliator," recalls Mr. Chetty, his sometime attorney. Though the government and many whites saw his Black Consciousness
Movement as a vehicle for black separatism, "what Steve really believed and what the BCM stood for was the empowerment of black people. It was the underdog
trying to be defined as equal, but it wasn't antiwhite."
It was at the Grahamstown jail that one of the grimmest nightmares of the apartheid-era began in earnest. When a search of Mr. Jones's car turned up his
identification card, the police turned up the heat on Mr. Biko to identify himself. No stranger to detention, "He told them he was Steven Bantu Biko,"
Mr. Jones recalls.
Before long, he and Mr. Biko found themselves manacled to cell bars, charged under Section 6 of South Africa's Terrorism Act. This was "detainment": Imprisonment
with no chance of a lawyer, no contact with the outside world, no pretense of due process.
Held for several hours, the two were separated and thrown into police cars for a ride to a prison in nearby Port Elizabeth. Mr. Jones was kept face down
on the back seat, pinned there by the feet of policemen.
Brutal Interrogation
He never saw Mr. Biko again. But if his own treatment was a barometer, he knew the fate of his friend. For the next 20 hours, Mr. Jones says he was stripped,
beaten with fists and pipes, kicked, screamed at, and humiliated as five Special Branch policemen interrogated him for alleged antistate activities.
He would emerge from prison 533 days later, with the acts of assault and torture that first greeted him repeated many times. How Mr. Biko fared has largely
been drawn from an autopsy report and the results of the 14-day inquest that followed a month after his death. Such inquests were pro forma when blacks
turned up dead in detention; so were the results.
"What's forgotten about that era," says Mr. Chetty, the lawyer, is that of an estimated 50 cases similar to Mr. Biko's, "nobody was ever found guilty of
killing a detainee. It is one of the disgraceful chapters in the history of South African legal tradition."
If no one admitted murder, what was admitted was appalling enough. For his first 20 days, Mr. Biko, except during periodic interrogations, was kept naked
and chained to his bedpost, and was never allowed to leave his cell. On Sept. 1, Mr. Biko was visited by a magistrate, a jurist assigned technically to
monitor prisoners' conditions, and complained to him about this and the fact that he hadn't been allowed to wash himself. He asked the magistrate, according
to testimony, "Is it compulsory that I have to be naked?" The magistrate declined to answer.
The Alleged Scuffle
Five days later, on Sept. 6, Mr. Biko was moved temporarily to a prison interrogation room. He had two groups of questioners, a day and a night squad. Day-squad
interrogators said they turned him over to the night squad sometime after 6 p.m. It was apparently that evening that the alleged scuffle took place and
Mr. Biko suffered what might have been the fatal blow to his head. The police even testified that it was serious enough that they could no longer question
him.
Mr. Biko's friends don't doubt that there could have been a scuffle. Mr. Woods, the journalist, noted that during a prior incident, Mr. Biko had slapped
a policeman who had slapped him. "If they taunted Steve, he was likely to taunt them back."
A prison doctor was dispatched to check Mr. Biko, and he reported that despite the obvious head injury, there was no sign of anything abnormal. Two days
later, with Mr. Biko back in his cell, the doctor came back with a more senior physician and found the prisoner lying in urine-soaked trousers. The doctors
continued to insist, according to inquest testimony, that Mr. Biko wasn't seriously injured. Yet they ordered him taken to a lab where, tapping fluid from
his spine, they found traces of blood -- a common indication of a brain damage.
"A first-year medical student would have picked that up," says Mr. Chetty, the Biko family lawyer. But instead, Mr. Biko was sent back to his cell, to languish.
Long Road to Pretoria
No one has yet come forward to say when Mr. Biko may have been poisoned. On the morning of Sept. 11, a guard checking Mr. Biko found him lying naked on
his prison cot, semiconscious and foaming at the mouth. A doctor came back to examine him and -- for reasons that have never been explained -- ordered
him transferred to the prison hospital in Pretoria. Mr. Woods posits that police knew Mr. Biko was dying, and feared his death in Port Elizabeth might
foment rebellion among his masses of black supporters in the Eastern Cape.
So Mr. Biko was stashed naked, with only a bottle of water, in the back of a Land Rover for the long drive to the capital. He was dumped on the floor of
the Pretoria hospital room. He came in and out of consciousness and muttered a few indecipherable words before he died the next night.
Despite the obvious maltreatment, the magistrate of the inquest into Mr. Biko's death took only 80 seconds to render a verdict. It was delivered in Afrikaans,
the language of the policemen who had interrogated him. The policemen were cleared of any culpability.