Steve Biko
Steve Biko founded the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa and was killed in police custody at thirty, an event that made him the most widely known martyr of the anti-apartheid struggle. Born in King William's Town in 1946, he was expelled from school after his brother's arrest and went on to study medicine at the University of Natal's black section. He was active in the multiracial National Union of South African Students and concluded that white liberals, however sympathetic, set the terms of the struggle and thereby confirmed black subordination. In 1968 he broke away to found the South African Students' Organisation, and in 1972 the Black People's Convention. Black Consciousness held that the first task was psychological: apartheid worked because it had persuaded its victims of their inferiority, so liberation had to begin with self-definition. Black, in his usage, meant all those oppressed by the system — African, Coloured and Indian. He wrote a column under the name Frank Talk, later collected as I Write What I Like. The movement filled the vacuum left by the banning of the ANC and PAC and shaped the generation that rose in Soweto in 1976. He was banned in 1973, restricted to King William's Town and forbidden to write, speak publicly or meet more than one person at a time. He continued organising, running community clinics and a trust for detainees' families. Arrested at a roadblock in August 1977 and held in Port Elizabeth, he was interrogated, sustained massive head injuries, and was driven 1,100 kilometres to Pretoria naked in the back of a Land Rover. He died on 12 September 1977. No officer was prosecuted; five admitted responsibility to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997 and were denied amnesty.
- Lived: 1946 CE – 1977 CE
- Nationality: South African
- Roles: activist
