The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
On the 18th of Dec 1946, a future activist and anti-apartheid leader was born by the name Bantu Stephen Biko in South Africa. Biko grew up in Eastern Cape in Ginsberg, a township on the banks of the Buffalo River that is next to King William’s Town. Like many African Heritage descendants, Steve Biko grew up in a poor family.
SRC Picture, 1966/1967, Original Source: Biko Family Archive
Steve Biko attended primary school in King William’s Town and secondary school at Marianhill, a missionary school. He was a very academic student, and later registered for a degree in medicine at the University of Natal in 1966. Biko showed an expansive search for knowledge that far exceeded the realm of the medical profession. He would end up as a prominent student leader among his peers.
Two years into his time at Natal Stephen Biko and his friends founded the South African Students Organisation (SASO). He was elected the first President of the organisation at its inaugural congress held at Turfloop in 1969.
"You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway."
By the mid-1960s, the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) grew from the political vacuum created when the leaders of ANC (African National Congress) and PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) were banned and jailed. The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.
The movement was led by Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele, and Barney Pityana.
Part of the insight of the Black Consciousness Movement was in belief that, black liberation would come from two things. The first was from imagining and fighting for structural political changes, as older movements like the ANC did, and the second was from psychological transformation in the minds of black people themselves.
Along these lines, Biko saw the struggle to build African consciousness as having two stages: “Psychological liberation” and “Physical liberation”.
Along with political action, a major component of the Black Consciousness Movement was its Black Community Programs, which included the organisation of community medical clinics, aiding entrepreneurs, and holding “consciousness” classes and adult education literacy classes.
The Black Consciousness Movement heavily supported the protests against the policies of the apartheid regime which led to the Soweto uprising in June 1976. The June 16 1976 Uprising that began in Soweto and spread countrywide profoundly changed the socio-political landscape in South Africa.
Events that triggered the uprising can be traced back to policies of the Apartheid government that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953.
In 1977, Biko was arrested for having violated the order restricting him to King William’s Town. The security services took Biko to the Walmer police station in Port Elizabeth, where he was held naked in a cell with his legs in shackles. During an interrogation he was severely beaten by the police officers and suffered three brain lesions that resulted in a massive brain haemorrhage.
Biko died in a cell on 12 September 1977.
Biko’s death threatened to unleash a new wave of protests, and drew the attention of the world to the situation in South Africa. Biko’s funeral on 25 September was attended by some 15000 people.
Though Biko was killed before his thirty first birthday, his influence on South Africa was, and continues to be profound.
