Cape Town, South Africa \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>On an August evening in 1977, 30\u2011year\u2011old Steve Biko was on his way back from an aborted\u00a0secret meeting with an anti-apartheid activist in Cape Town, taking the 12\u2011hour drive back home to King William\u2019s Town. But it was a journey the resistance fighter would never finish, for he was arrested and, less than a month later, was dead.<\/p>\n Against the backdrop of increasingly harsh racist laws in South Africa, Biko, a bold and forthright youth leader, had emerged as one of the loudest voices calling for change and Black self-determination.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n A famously charming and eloquent speaker, he was often touted as Nelson Mandela\u2019s likely successor in the struggle for freedom after the core of the anti-apartheid leadership was jailed in the 1960s.<\/p>\n But his popularity also made him a prime target of the apartheid regime, which put him under banning orders that severely restricted his movement, political activities, and associations; imprisoned him for his political activism; and ultimately caused his death in detention \u2013 a case that continues to resonate decades later, largely because none of the perpetrators have ever been brought to justice.<\/p>\n On September 12 this year, 48 years after Biko died, South Africa\u2019s Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi ordered a new inquest into his death. The hearing resumed at the Eastern Cape High Court on Wednesday before being postponed to January 30.<\/p>\n There are \u201ctwo persons of interest\u201d implicated in Biko\u2019s death who are still alive, according to the country\u2019s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), which aims to determine whether there is enough evidence that he was murdered, and therefore grounds to prosecute his killers.<\/p>\n While Biko\u2019s family has welcomed the hearings, the long\u00a0wait for justice has been frustrating, especially for his children.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no such thing as joy in dealing with the case of murder,\u201d Nkosinathi Biko, Biko\u2019s eldest son, who was six at the time of his father\u2019s death, told Al Jazeera. \u201cDeath is full and final, and no outcome will be restorative of the lost life.\u201d<\/p>\n The Biko inquest is one of several probes into suspicious apartheid-era deaths that South Africa\u2019s justice minister reopened this year. The inquiries are part of the government\u2019s plan to address past atrocities and provide closure to families of the deceased, the NPA\u00a0says.<\/p>\n But analysts note that the inquest comes amid growing public pressure on the government to bring about the justice it promised 30 years ago, as a\u00a0new judicial inquiry<\/a>\u00a0is also probing allegations that South Africa\u2019s democratic government intentionally blocked prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.<\/p>\n Steve Biko was a medical student and national youth leader who, in the late 1960s, pioneered the philosophy of Black Consciousness, which encouraged Black people to reclaim their pride and unity by rejecting racial oppression and valuing their own identity and culture.<\/p>\n The philosophy inspired a generation of young activists to take up the struggle against apartheid, pushed forward by the belief that South Africa\u2019s future lay in a socialist economy with a more equal distribution of wealth.<\/p>\n In his writings, Biko said he was inspired by the African independence struggles that emerged in the 1950s and suggested that South Africa had yet to offer its \u201cgreat gift\u201d to the world: \u201ca more human face\u201d.<\/p>\n By 1972, Biko\u2019s student organisation had spawned a political wing to unify various Black Consciousness groups under one voice. A year later, he was officially banned by the government. Yet, he continued to covertly expand his philosophy and political organising among youth movements across the country.<\/p>\n In August 1977, despite the banning order still being in effect, Biko had travelled to Cape Town with a fellow activist to meet another anti-apartheid leader, though the meeting was aborted over safety concerns, and the duo left.<\/p>\n According to some reports, Biko heavily disguised himself for the road journey back east, but his attempts at going unnoticed were to no avail: When the car reached the outskirts of King William\u2019s Town on August 18, police stopped them at a roadblock \u2013 and Biko was discovered.<\/p>\n The two were taken into custody separately, with Biko arrested under the Terrorism Act and first held at a local police station in Port Elizabeth before being transferred to a facility in the same city where members of the police\u2019s\u00a0\u201cspecial branch\u201d \u2013 notorious for enforcing apartheid through torture and extrajudicial killings\u00a0\u2013 were based. For weeks in detention, he was stripped and manacled and, as was later discovered, tortured.<\/p>\n On September 12, the apartheid authorities announced that Biko had died in detention in Pretoria, some 1,200km (746 miles) away from where he was arrested and held.\u00a0The minister of justice and police alleged he had died following a hunger strike, a claim immediately decried as false, as Biko had previously publicly stated that if that was ever cited as a cause of his death, it would be a lie.<\/p>\n Weeks later, an independent autopsy conducted at the request of the Biko family found he had died of severe brain damage due to injuries inflicted during his detention. Following these revelations, authorities launched an investigation. But the inquest cleared the police of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n Saths Cooper, who was a student activist alongside Biko, remembers the moment he found out about his friend\u2019s death. Cooper was in an isolation block on Robben Island \u2013 the prison that also held Mandela \u2013 where he spent more than five years with other political prisoners who had taken part in the\u00a01976 student revolt<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe news stilled us into silence,\u201d the 75-year-old told Al Jazeera, recalling Biko\u2019s provocatively \u201cSocratic\u201d style of engagement and echoing Mandela\u2019s description of Biko as an inspiration. \u201cLiving, he was the spark that lit a veld fire across South Africa,\u201d Mandela said in 2002. \u201cHis message to the youth and students was simple and clear: Black is Beautiful! Be proud of your Blackness! And with that, he inspired our youth to shed themselves of the sense of inferiority they were born into as a result of more than 300 years of white rule.\u201d<\/p>\n After initial shock at the news of Biko\u2019s death, \u201cthen the questions flowed of what had occurred,\u201d Cooper recalled, \u201cto which we had no answers.\u201d<\/p>\n About 20,000 people, including Black and white anti-apartheid activists and Western diplomats, attended Biko\u2019s funeral in King Williams Town on September 25. The day included a five-hour service, powerful speeches and freedom songs. Though police disrupted the service and arrested some mourners, it marked the first large political funeral in South Africa.<\/p>\n His death sparked international condemnation, including expression of \u201cconcern\u201d from Pretoria\u2019s allies, the US and the UK. It also led to a United Nations arms embargo against South Africa in November 1977.<\/p>\n Three years later, the British singer Peter Gabriel released a\u00a0song<\/a>\u00a0in his honour, and in 1987, his life was depicted in the film\u00a0Cry Freedom<\/a>, in which Biko was played by Denzel Washington.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Biko\u2019s stature did nothing to hasten justice.<\/p>\n Under the apartheid regime, any further investigation into Biko\u2019s death was effectively put to rest for decades following the official 1977 inquest.<\/p>\n Then in 1996, two years after the end of apartheid, the\u00a0Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up to investigate past rights violations, with apartheid-era perpetrators given the opportunity to disclose their crimes and apply for amnesty from prosecution.<\/p>\n Former security police officers Major Harold Snyman, Captain Daniel Siebert, Warrant Officer Ruben Marx, Warrant Officer Jacobus Beneke and Sergeant Gideon Nieuwoudt \u2013 the five men suspected of killing Biko \u2013 applied for amnesty.<\/p>\n At TRC hearings the following year, the men said that Biko had died days after what they called \u201ca scuffle\u201d with the police at the Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth, while he was held in shackles and handcuffs. Up to that point, the commission heard, Biko had spent several days in a cell \u2013 naked, they claimed, in order to prevent him from taking his life.<\/p>\n In the decades since, it\u2019s come to light that after being badly beaten at the Sanlam Building on September 6 and 7, Biko suffered a brain haemorrhage and was examined by apartheid government doctors, who said they found nothing wrong with him. Days later, on September 11, the police decided to transfer him to a prison hospital hours away in Pretoria. Still naked and shackled, Biko was put in the back of a van and moved. Although he was examined in Pretoria, it was too late, and Biko died on September 12 alone in his cell.<\/p>\n Despite admitting to beating Biko with a hose pipe and noticing his disoriented, slurred speech, the former officers claimed at the TRC that they had no indication of the severity of his injuries. Therefore, they saw nothing wrong with transporting him 1,200km away.<\/p>\n Eventually, the men were denied amnesty in 1999, partly for their lack of full disclosure of the events that caused Biko\u2019s death. The suspected killers, some of whom have since died, were recommended for prosecution by the commission.<\/p>\n However, like most TRC cases, the prosecutions never materialised.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Biko case, along with others, must be viewed as the delayed activation of the unfinished business of the TRC \u2013 a matter that is a national imperative if we are to instigate a culture of accountability in South Africa,\u201d Nkosinathi, now 54, said of the reopened inquest into his father\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Though the scope of the Biko inquest has not been publicly stated, Gabriel Crouse, a political analyst and fellow with the South African Institute for Race Relations, worries that it will not examine new evidence, but that its goal will simply be to decisively determine whether Biko was murdered.<\/p>\n If this is the case, it would leave many questions unresolved, he says. For example, who pressured the initial forensic pathologist to declare a hunger strike as the cause of death; who ordered Biko\u2019s killing; and what was the official chain of command?<\/p>\n Although the Biko inquest has renewed hope among his family that some of the perpetrators of his death will finally be brought to justice, analysts warn that the process may reveal uncomfortable truths about the nation\u2019s past \u2013 including possible collusion between South Africa\u2019s current government and the apartheid regime.<\/p>\n Nkosinathi now heads a foundation that promotes his father\u2019s legacy. He points out that it is only pressure on the government that brought about this moment.<\/p>\n Months before the Biko inquest reopened, President Cyril Ramaphosa\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0the establishment of a commission of inquiry into whether previous governments led by his African National Congress (ANC) party intentionally suppressed investigations and prosecutions of apartheid-era crimes.<\/p>\n His move in April came after 25 survivors and relatives of victims of apartheid-era crimes\u00a0launched a court case<\/a>\u00a0against his government in January, seeking damages.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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