Stephen Biko was born in King Williams Town , in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. He was a student at the University of Natal Medical School. He was initially involved with the multiracial National Union of South African Students , but after he became convinced that Black, Indian and Coloured students needed an organisation of their own, he helped found the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) in 1968, and was elected its first president. The SASO evolved into the influential Black Consciousness Movement . Ntsiki Mashalaba, Biko's wife, was also a prominent thinker within the Black Consciousness Movement. Ntsiki and Biko had two children together; a daughter, Lerato, born in 1974, who died at the age of two months, and a son, Hlumelo, who was born in 1978, after Biko's death.
In 1972 Biko became honorary president of the Black People's Convention. He was banned during the height of apartheid in March 1973, meaning that he was not allowed to speak to more than one person at a time, was restricted to certain areas, and could not make speeches in public. It was also forbidden to quote anything he said, including speeches or simple conversations.
When Biko was banned, his movement within the country was restricted to the Eastern Cape, where he was born. After returning there, he formed a number of grassroots organizations based on the notion of self-reliance, including a community clinic, Zanempilo, the Zimele Trust Fund (which helped support ex-political prisoners and their families), Njwaxa Leather-Works Project and the Ginsberg Education Fund.
In spite of the repression of the apartheid government, Biko and the BCM played a significant role in organising the protests which culminated in the Soweto Uprising of 16 June.In the aftermath of the uprising, which was crushed by heavily-armed police shooting 700 school children protesting, the authorities began to target Biko further.
On 18 August, Biko was arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967. He suffered a major head injury while in police custody, and was chained to a window grille for a full day. On 11 September police loaded him into the back of a car and began the 740-mile drive to Pretoria. He died shortly after arrival at the Pretoria prison, on 12 September. The police claimed his death was the result of an extended hunger strike. He was found to have massive injuries to the head, which many saw as strong evidence that he had been brutally clubbed by his captors. Then journalist and now political leader, Helen Zille, exposed the truth behind Biko's death.
Due to his fame, news of Biko's death spread quickly, opening many eyes around the world to the brutality of the apartheid regime. His funeral was attended by many hundreds of people, including numerous ambassadors and other diplomats from the United States and Western Europe, Journalist Donald Woods, a personal friend of Biko, photographed his injuries in the morgue. Woods was later forced to flee South Africa for England, where he campaigned against apartheid and further publicised Biko's life and death, writing many newspaper articles and authoring the book, Biko.
The following year on the 2 February, the Attorney-General of the Eastern Cape stated that he would not prosecute any police involved in the arrest and detention of Biko. During the trial it was claimed that Biko's head injuries were a self-inflicted suicide attempt, and not the result of any beatings. The judge ultimately ruled that a murder charge could not be supported partly because there were no witnesses to the killing. Charges of culpable homicide and assault were also considered, but because the killing occurred in 1977, the time frame for prosecution had expired.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was created following the end of minority rule and the apartheid system, reported in 1997 five former members of the South African security forces had admitted to killing Biko who died a year after the Soweto riots which rocked apartheid South Africa, and were applying for amnesty.
On 7 October the South African Justice Ministry officials announced that the five policemen who were accused of killing Biko would not be prosecuted because of insufficient evidence and the fact that the time span for prosecution had elapsed.
Like Frantz Fanon, Biko originally studied medicine, and also like Fanon, Biko developed an intense concern for the development of black consciousness as a solution to the existential struggles which shape existence, both as a human and as an African. Biko can thus be seen as a follower of Fanon and Aimé Césaire in contrast to more pacifist leaders such as Nelson Mandela after his imprisonment at Robben Island.and Albert Lutuli who were first disciples of Gandhi.
Biko saw the struggle to restore African consciousness as having two stages, "Psychological liberation" and "Physical liberation". The non-violent influence of Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. upon Biko is then suspect, as Biko knew that for his struggle to give rise to physical liberation, it was necessary that it exist within the political realities of the apartheid regime, and Biko's non-violence may be seen more as a tactic than a personal conviction. Thus Biko's BCM had much in common with other left-wing African nationalist movements of the time, such as Amilcar Cabral's PAIGC and Huey Newton.
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