Raymond Whitaker: Biko - the forgotten martyr
[Thirty years after he was murdered in police custody, the African trade unionist remains a thorn in the side of the ANC and a stark reminder of a more radical approach to dealing with apartheid and its aftermath. ]
I met Steve Biko once. His miserable death on the floor of a South African prison cell, 30 years ago today, still lay a few years in the future. So did his friendship with the white newspaper editor, Donald Woods, resulting in the book and film, Cry Freedom!, which made him an icon. But if the name of Biko became a thorn in the side of the white regime, today's commemorations will be equally uncomfortable for South Africa's black majority government.
In the early 1970s, few whites had heard of Steve Biko. I had, because I was covering "alternative" politics – such stirrings against apartheid that white liberals and their allies in other communities could get away with – for a South African newspaper, The Star. However it was anything but a full-time assignment.
Never did the grip of apartheid seem as complete as it did then. Nelson Mandela had been locked up on Robben Island for the best part of a decade; in the all-white parliament, the lone dissenting voice was that of Helen Suzman. Blacks could only practise politics in the "homelands" created for them in the poorest, most arid parts of the country.
A handful of organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), of which I had been a member not so long before, sought to keep the non-racial flame alive. But the enforced segregation of the universities, and the sheer gulf between the daily lives of whites and the rest, made it increasingly difficult to find any common ground. To the horror of the well-meaning whites at the head of Nusas, their black counterparts began to accuse them of holding back the cause of black empowerment through paternalism and unconscious racism.
At the forefront of those levelling the charge – which many of those liberals might now admit had considerable truth – was a young activist called Steve Biko. A former leader of strikes and sit-ins at his segregated medical school near Durban, he had quit his studies and formed the South African Students' Organisation, which excluded whites. Now he was coming to Johannesburg for a conference where the split with Nusas would become final, and I hoped to interview him about his espousal of Black Consciousness, which argued that blacks had to overcome the feelings of inferiority instilled into them, the "oppression within", before they could deal with whites as equals. "It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life," he explained in 1971....
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
I met Steve Biko once. His miserable death on the floor of a South African prison cell, 30 years ago today, still lay a few years in the future. So did his friendship with the white newspaper editor, Donald Woods, resulting in the book and film, Cry Freedom!, which made him an icon. But if the name of Biko became a thorn in the side of the white regime, today's commemorations will be equally uncomfortable for South Africa's black majority government.
In the early 1970s, few whites had heard of Steve Biko. I had, because I was covering "alternative" politics – such stirrings against apartheid that white liberals and their allies in other communities could get away with – for a South African newspaper, The Star. However it was anything but a full-time assignment.
Never did the grip of apartheid seem as complete as it did then. Nelson Mandela had been locked up on Robben Island for the best part of a decade; in the all-white parliament, the lone dissenting voice was that of Helen Suzman. Blacks could only practise politics in the "homelands" created for them in the poorest, most arid parts of the country.
A handful of organisations such as the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), of which I had been a member not so long before, sought to keep the non-racial flame alive. But the enforced segregation of the universities, and the sheer gulf between the daily lives of whites and the rest, made it increasingly difficult to find any common ground. To the horror of the well-meaning whites at the head of Nusas, their black counterparts began to accuse them of holding back the cause of black empowerment through paternalism and unconscious racism.
At the forefront of those levelling the charge – which many of those liberals might now admit had considerable truth – was a young activist called Steve Biko. A former leader of strikes and sit-ins at his segregated medical school near Durban, he had quit his studies and formed the South African Students' Organisation, which excluded whites. Now he was coming to Johannesburg for a conference where the split with Nusas would become final, and I hoped to interview him about his espousal of Black Consciousness, which argued that blacks had to overcome the feelings of inferiority instilled into them, the "oppression within", before they could deal with whites as equals. "It seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life," he explained in 1971....