47 years ago, on 12 September, South African anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko was killed in police custody, and his death marked him an international martyr for black nationalism.
Who killed Steve Biko?
Biko was born in Qonce (formerly known as King William’s Town), Eastern Cape, on 18 December 1946. At the age of 31, he founded the Black Consciousness Movement, a grassroots activist group that rose from the ashes of the infamous Sharpeville Massacre and advocated for the oppressed majority to find dignity and worth in the self.
What was deemed extremist ideology by the apartheid government did not necessarily pose a threat until the early 1970s. As the founding member and president of the South African Students’ Organisation (SASO), Biko created the Zimele Trust Fund, which was used to help free political prisoners and provide financial support to their families.
Between 1975, the year the trust fund was founded, and 1977, Steve Biko was arrested four times without trial.
The last arrest took place at a roadblock in Gqeberha (formerly known as Port Elizabeth) on 18 August 1977. The Black Consciousness leader was detained for weeks, and on 11 September 1977, the pro-black martyr was found barely clinging onto life outside of a hospital in Pretoria, Gauteng, more than 1 190km away from where he was last seen alive.
He died the next day of a massive brain haemorrhage. Following years of denial, five apartheid police officers, Harold Snyman, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Ruben Marx, Daantjie Siebert, and Johan Beneke, applied for amnesty and gave a detailed account of what happened to Biko in custody at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Their application was declined in 1999.
Five Steve Biko quotes that are still relevant today
Decades after his brutal death, Biko’s legacy lives on, and his ideologies about the ‘black’ condition are still relevant today.
Here are five famous quotes from Biko that still speak to issues faced by blacks in South Africa and around the world in 2024.
I Write What I Like – A letter to SRC presidents (1978)
“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.”
Steve Biko, 1978
I Write What I Like – The quest for a true humanity (1978)
“We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds.”
Biko, 1978
A SASO slogan coined by Biko
“So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.”
The Meaning of Death – Biko quoted in the Boston Globe (1977)
“You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can’t care anyway.”
A Speech in Cape Town – 1971
“The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.”
Biko, 1971
Tributes pour in on the 47th anniversary of Biko’s death
Tributes have been pouring in on the 47th anniversary of Biko’s death.
Here are more tributes to Biko we picked out on social media:
