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Tiger32
Senior Member
Registered: Sep 2001
Posts: 222
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A Life Worth Living: How the Life and Death of Stephen Biko Changed Apartheid
You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway. And your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing. So I said to them, the police, to listen because if they wanted to do this their own way, they would have to bind my feet together and handcuff me so that I could not respond, because if they allow me to respond, I will fight back. And I told them that I will not stop being a Man for them and that even though this man is a non-violent man, that I am afraid they will have to kiil me, for I will not stop being a man, I will not shut up, I will not allow injustice to continue, I will not watch the shooting and killing of innocents, I will not be banned or silenced or hushed in my homeland. Never. For if I cannot find it in life to move the mountain of apartheid, then the horror of death surely will.
These are the words of Stephen Biko, spoken just three months before he was arrested, handcuffed, leg-ironed chained, interrogated and tortured naked for twenty-two hours, and beaten to death by South African police on Tuesday, September 6, 1977, in Port Elizabeth, Cape Province. Six days later, he was dead and the world would hear about it and hate it and begin to change it. Stephen Biko, in life and in death, became the straw that broke the back of the racist system of apartheid in South Africa.
School children in South Africa are taught that the history of South Africa began in 1652 when the Dutch arrived to settle there. Archeologists, however, have found fossils of the African tribe of Bantu that date as early as the fifth century. There are traces of the Bantu in the interior of the country, as well as on the shores of the Gamtoos River in the Cape Province well before the arrival of any white settlers. Dutch, German and French settlers all combined to become what is now known as Afrikaners, who speak the language of Afrikaans. Many of the native Africans and whole tribes in some cases were enslaved by the settlers. With the discovery of the world's richest reef of gold, white settlers from the U.S. and Great Britain arrived and by the early 1990s, a white nation of Afrikaners and English speakers under the leadership of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts had formed a government and split the country's rule. No one bothered to ask the black majority to become part of these decisions and the Afrikaners granted no political or civil rights to the continent's natives. The combination of white supremacy and black bigotry created the climate for the racist system of apartheid.
To be born Black any time after 1652 in South Africa was like being born into hell. Native tribes were broken up and the use of their languages forbidden. After many uprisings, Africans soon learned that their spears, bows and arrows, and other homemade weapons for war were just no match for the musket and later rifes and handguns and while there were several small victories, the war to reclaim their homeland peace was lost forever. In fact, for hundreds of years the Black response to white rule was to negotiate. Many Black political organizations rose up to try to be a voice for the masses. The Eastern Cape area was the center of this activity because it was one of the only places Blacks could be educated. The first Black liberation movements were started by Dr. T. Jabavu, Dr. A.B. Zuma, P. Mzimba, E. Makiwane, W. Rubusana, A.K. Soga, J. Dube, M. Pelemi, J. Gumede and P. Seme. These teachers and other professionals eventually became the founders of what is now known as the Afrikaner Nationalist Party. "The three most important Black leaders to emerge were Eastern Cape men - Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and Stephen Biko.
Born in King William's Town, December 18, 1946, Stephen Biko felt the blow of apartheid early in his life. At age four, his father Mzimkhayi Biko, was killed with several other activists by a white policeman who broke up their peaceful meeting in a Catholic Church with random gunfire. His body was dumped in a pile of other bodies just outside of town. Biko, as he was (and still is) called by his followers, and his older brother had to sort through the bodies to find his father. He carried the pain and indignity of his father's death his whole lifetime. Biko began his education at Browlee Primary. He graduated to Charles Morgan Higher Primary and then he went to Lovedale Institute. Lovedale was closed three months after his arrival because of student uprisings. He was transferred to Marianhill, a Catholic School, in Natal and in 1966 he enrolled as a medical school student at the University of Natal. While there he founded the South African Students Organization (SASO) and the Black Community Program. By 1968 he was considered a leader in the South African Black Consciousness Movement. It was in that year, as founder for SASO, that Biko wrote, "No race possesses the monopoly of beauty, intelligence and force, and I wish there is room for all of us in South Africa. The whites in this country have placed themselves on a path of no return. So blatantly exploitative in terms of the mind and body is the practice of white racism that one wonders if the interests of blacks and whites in this country have not become so mutually exclusive as to remove the possibility of there being room for all of us." That year he was banned from attending school and restricted to King William's Town.
Banning people's movement from town to town, their abilities to write articles for newspapers or magazines, forbidding them to give speeches, or even to gather with more than one person at a time was a common consequence to police and political fear of uprising. The police bugged phones, followed suspected Black sympathizers and raided homes. Often people were severely beaten or killed or just never heard from again. Steve Biko was banned and under Security Police surveillance for nine years, yet through the use of coded language and messages, he continued to get his message to the people, give interviews, publish articles, travel and hold meetings. This ability to go around and beyond the "all-powerful" Security Police only made him more popular with the black majority and therefore more of a threat to the white minority. He was described by white South African liberals as "unusually gifted . . . with a quick brain, superb articulation of ideas, and sheer mental force." Steve Biko was to the black majority what Moses was to the Hebrew slaves. Unfortunately, he was also Moses to the Security Police, and like Rameses cast Moses out from Egypt, so the Security Police had to eliminate Biko.
Stephen Biko was stopped at a roadblock in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape province and taken into custody for breaking his banning order by being outside of King William's Township. None of his friends or family was alarmed, since he had been jailed several times before and no one believed the Afrikaner Nationalist Security Police would ever allow anything to happen to Steve Biko while in detention, for fear of national and world outrage. Before being banned himself, his friend Donald Woods, publisher and writer for the South African Daily Dispatch, wrote, "He was the country's most important political leader . . . who was imprisoned without trial. I hold responsible all those associated with his detention because his death occurred while he was under their morally wrong powers and morally unjustifiable control." After the police listed his cause of death as "hunger strike", the country and the world responded. In the heat of world protest, the Security Police attempted to back away from the hunger strike explanation, but the damage was done and the world demanded to know how Biko died. They already knew why. When Biko's body was released for burial, Wood accompanied Biko's wife to the mortuary, and the effects of the beating were obvious. Wood took pictures of the condition of the body and smuggled them to a friend of his in London, who published the pictures. The beating of Biko was felt around the world and all involved were cleared of any wrongdoing. The world was in disbelief.
The backlash to the South African government and to the Afrikaner Security Police was swift and it came from all corners of the globe. Every politician who did not want to be viewed negatively around the world backed away from them. The death of Steve Biko was a national embarrassment. The country and the system of apartheid were now on trial, its fairness the subject of articles, speeches and movements around the globe. South Africa was headed for civil war. The crumbling of apartheid had begun.
His life and through his appalling death, Steve Biko did more to transform perceptions of the South African political situation, both internally and externally, than any other single individual. In killing Steve Biko in such a violent and repulsive way, internally, they forced the black majority into violent resistance. They lost to simple arithmetic. Blacks outnumbered them in their own boundaries six to one and add to that the renewed strength that world opinion was on their side. There were bloody revolts in the 1980s and a renewed focus on political prisoners like Nelson Mandela. Externally, they alienated the rest of the world and became powerless to negotiate inside and outside important political circles, resulting in economic and humanitarian sanctions, product boycotts, and export blockades from every developed country and continent. South African sports tours and athletes were ostracized and wherever they went, they were met with protests and hatred. South African diplomats could no longer travel freely and without fear. Developed countries, including the U.S. and Great Britain refused to grant some diplomatic visas and for a time they closed embassies. Mandela was a household name and his picture appeared in every free world newspaper. The South African government had isolated itself and its people from everyone it need to survive. Apartheid became a cinder block around the neck of South Africa that it had to shed.
Finally, on February 2, 1990, F.W. de Klerk, former President of South Africa, announced the unbanning of the African National Congress and several other black activist organizations. He released hundreds of political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela. In four years Mandela became President in the country's first democratic elections. Biko's influence on these events is impossible to ignore and one must wonder what he would say to the new South Africa. Biko's words speak loudly for themselves. "We have set on a quest for true humanity and somewhere on the distant horizon we can see the glittering prize. Let us march forth with courage and determination, drawing strength from our common plight and brotherhood. In time we shall be in a position to bestow upon South Africa the greatest gift possible.
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23rd May 2002 06:25
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Allan
Senior Member
Registered: Nov 2000
Posts: 198
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Tiger, why do you bother posting essays like these when you always ignore the response? I'd like to point out why I find many faults with your latest posting, with fact and fiction mixing indiscriminately.
"Stephen Biko, in life and in death, became the straw that broke the back of the racist system of apartheid in South Africa."
I believe that Steve Biko was one of many symbols of the antiapartheid movements. As you point out his death hardened world opinion even further, but this certainly did not break the back of apartheid. Sanctions were applied years later, and South Africa was not on its knees when De Klerk dismantled apartheid in his historic address to parliament in 1990. Had the masters of apartheid chosen to pursue the system it could have survived for several years if not decades longer, although such a course would certainly have lead to ruin and destruction.
"School children in South Africa are taught that the history of South Africa began in 1652 when the Dutch arrived to settle there"
School children are/were certainly not taught that (well at least I wasn't) although the impression may have been given since black Africans had an oral tradition, and no form of written records.
"Many of the native Africans and whole tribes in some cases were enslaved by the settlers."
Could you please find a reference to this claim as in all my
readings I have never heard of this. Nearly all slaves were
imported from the Dutch East Indies, with the VERY rare exception of Hottentots been taken as slaves. I have read reports of Portuguese slave traders launching isolated raids on the Natal coast in the 1500s from their settlement at Lourenco Marques (now Maputo), but never "whole tribes."
"With the discovery of the world's richest reef of gold, white settlers from the U.S. and Great Britain arrived"
That is definitely a load of rubbish. The first large contingent of British settlers arrived in 1820 (hence the massive 1820 settlers monument in Grahamstown) long before the discovery of gold or diamonds.
American influence in the independent Boer Republics was substantial due to the investment of American companies, and the Boers deliberate attempt to destroy British influence. Evidence of this is the Boer governments awarding "honorary white" status to black Americans at the request of the US state department. This priviledge was revoked after British conquest of the territories.
"Native tribes were broken up and the use of their languages
forbidden"
Use of their languages forbidden??????? If that were the case then the indigenous tongues would be all but extinct like they are (almost) in the former French, and Portuguese colonies where the majority of black Africans speak French and Portuguese.
"After many uprisings, Africans soon learned that their spears,bows and arrows...,"
Bows and arrows????
"The Eastern Cape area was the center of this activity because it was one of the only places Blacks could be educated."
I suspect the author is alluding to the University of Fort Hare in Alice in the Eastern Cape which was certainly the center of black intellect in the 1930s and 40s. Universities like Wits in Johannesburg and UCT in Cape Town had admitted blacks right from their inception, until the government forbid them to do so (except under exceptional circumstances), but they continued to defy the apartheid government and admit blacks anyway.
"These teachers and other professionals eventually became the founders of what is now known as the Afrikaner Nationalist Party."
AFRIKANER??? Nationalist Party . The National Party was the
creator of apartheid. I suspect you mean the African ational Congress.
"The three most important Black leaders to emerge were Eastern Cape men - Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe and Stephen Biko."
With the Eastern Cape being a Xhosa stronghold, the words "most important" are likely to anger many Zulu nationalists in particular.
"At age of four, his father Mzimkhayi Biko, was killed with
several other activists by a white policeman who broke up their peaceful meeting in a Catholic Church with random gunfire. His body was dumped in a pile of other bodies just outside of town."
With regards to the circumstances of his fathers death, I'd like a source on that.
"Unfortunately, he was also Moses to the Security Police, and like Rameses cast Moses out from Egypt, so the Security Police had to eliminate Biko."
Sadly Biko was one of many activists eliminated by apartheid
security forces. Another famous martyr was Ruth First, wife of SACP stalwart, Joe Slovo, who was killed by a letter bomb in Mozambique while in exile. The SADF air raids on ANC bases in Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique claimed many.
"South Africa was headed for civil war"
Really?? Killed in 1977,13 years before the dimantling of apartheid. Even Nelson Mandela admits that the overthrow of apartheid by military force was impossible. The SADF were simply too powerful. Blowing up restaurants and power lines can never topple a government (see Middle East) and that's all the "armed struggle" was ever capable of.
Even the Sharpeville Massacre in 1961 momentarily sent the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange plummeting, but the effects were short lived and life soon went back to normal. The same happened in the June 16th 1976 Soweto uprisings (famous picture of Hector Peterson), but the security police always maintained the states stranglehold on opposition.
You are quite right that time was against minority rule in South Africa, but as I've already pointed out, in 1990 the system was nowhere near the bitter end. In fact the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, and then apartheid in 1990 was no coincidence, as it was the communist threat that was one of the white governments greatest fears, and why it received tacit support from western powers. With that threat gone, it made negotiations that little
bit easier.
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23rd May 2002 23:43
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