Reopened Inquest Into Steve Biko’s Murder Underscores the Legacy of a Freedom Fighter

Forty-eight years after his death, justice is yet to be meted out to those involved in the tragic killing of the late, great Steve Biko. South African prosecutors have reopened an inquest into the death of the anti-apartheid activist and radical organizer, who died in a prison cell after he was brutally beaten and tortured by police.

An initial inquest after his death submitted that Biko died after he hit his head on the wall, with no one prosecuted for his death. However, during the hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), tasked with collecting testimonies and evidence of heinous acts committed during apartheid, former police officers admitted to assaulting Biko. While the TRC refused to grant amnesty to the officers, none have since been prosecuted for Biko’s death.

The decision to reopen this inquest is in line with recent moves to look into significant deaths that took place during the apartheid era, but there’s some uncertainty as to what this renewed interest is meant to achieve, considering the halfway conclusion of the previous inquest.

“I’m actually perplexed by it all,” the activist’s youngest son, Hlumelo Biko, says, citing the apartheid police’s known penchant for wanton brutality when interrogating Black people in custody. “And it’s possible that in this case that there was barely an interrogation, but an attempt to harm and kill him, which is what they achieved. So that much is not a mystery.”

Steve Biko was 30 years old when he was killed, but in his very short life, he left an eternal impact. The popular saying, “Black is beautiful,” is indelibly tied to the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) that he pioneered. Biko’s praxis was rooted in his unvarnished belief in the dignity of Black people under a state that practiced white supremacy. It was the consistent foundation as he evolved his fiercely pro-Black ideologies, taking the apartheid system to task and walking the talk by organizing to help elevate the discourse, beliefs, and actions of Black people in South Africa.

Biko’s social work properly started when he was elected to serve in the 1966/67 Students’ Representative Council (SRC) shortly after gaining admission to the University of Natal, where he registered for a medical degree in the institution’s Black Section. As part of the SRC, he initially supported the multiracial National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), but he soon grew dissatisfied with the organization due to its rather tepid opposition to apartheid laws.

Earlier that decade, the apartheid government had proscribed the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan African Congress, and several leaders of the liberation struggle were arrested and imprisoned, while there were gruesome events like the Sharpeville massacre, all contributing to apathy, bordering on existential dread, among many Black people. Biko believed an embrace of a radically pro-Black agenda was the only way forward.

In 1969, the South African Student Organization (SASO), a Blacks-only student body, was formed, and Biko was elected its president. As part of its manifesto, SASO dedicated itself to “the intellectual and physical development of our community and to the realization of the liberation for Black Peoples of South Africa.” The organization rooted itself in Black consciousness, which it defined as “an attitude of mind, a way of life,” with the basic tenet that rejects “all value systems that seek to make [the Black person] a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his human dignity.”

Biko and SASO’s message struck a chord with hundreds of registered Black students across South Africa, and also extended to the general Black populace, which led to the formation of the Black People’s Convention (BPC) in 1972. After leaving the University of Natal for academic reasons, Biko worked in the Black Community Programmes (BCP), the developmental wing of the BPC that engaged in community projects.

In that timeframe, he regularly wrote in SASO’s publications, sharing profound thoughts on the Black Consciousness Movement. “Being Black is not a matter of pigmentation — being Black is a reflection of mental attitude,” he wrote in his seminal book of essays, I Write What I Like. “Merely by describing yourself as Black, you have started on a road towards emancipation. You have committed yourself to fight against all the forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.”

Naturally, the apartheid government saw Biko and the BCM as a threat as they gained momentum in the early ‘70s. Biko was banned in 1973 under the Suppression of Communism Act, a bogus move to take the air out of the movement. He was also deported from Durban, where he was working with the BCP, back to his hometown of Qonce – then known as King William’s Town, in the Eastern Cape province. Many leaders of the SASO, BPC, and BCP were also banned and deported to disparate parts of South Africa.

Biko’s deportation did little to tarnish his fervor; he continued to write, speak, organize, and set up an office for the BCP in Qonce to cater to community programs in healthcare, education, and other developmental areas. The continued verve led to a modification of his ban: he could not meet with more than one person at a time, he wasn’t allowed free movement in Qonce without police permission, and he couldn’t be published or quoted.

Regardless of these restrictions, Biko didn’t fold or compromise in his faith in the dignity of Black people, seemingly resigned to being a martyr for the cause if needed. He continued to criticize the flagrant racism of apartheid as the effect of the minority white ruling class’s devotion to capitalism, prioritizing economic exploitation over the lives of the Black and non-white majority. Biko was detained multiple times by the police, and for the final time in August 1977, for violating the terms of his ban. He died about a month later.

After gaining access to the autopsy photographs of “Steve Biko’s poor body,” artist Paul Stopforth produced the Biko Series, a collection that recreated the images Stopforth saw. The striking and raw paintings reflected “the brutality of the apartheid system.” Stopforth’s grim exposition and the testimonies of involved police officers have shed a light on the horrendous circumstances of Biko’s death — at this point, the effectiveness of the reopened inquest will be moot if no one is convicted of this heinous crime.