Steve Biko

Early life

Stephen Bantu Biko was born on 18 December 1946 in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. (South African History Online names both Tarkastad and Tylden as his birthplace.) In 1963 he was expelled from Lovedale school after police detained his older brother, Khaya. He completed his schooling at St Francis College, Marianhill, and in 1966 began studying medicine in the "non-European" section of the University of Natal.

Black Consciousness

At university Biko was elected to the Students' Representative Council and took part in the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), a liberal body led mainly by white students. Frustrated that NUSAS could not confront racism in government and the universities, Black students broke away in 1968 to form the South African Students' Organisation (SASO). At its inaugural conference in July 1969 at the University of the North, Biko was elected SASO's first president.

The philosophy he articulated, Black Consciousness, held that Black South Africans had to define and lead their own struggle rather than accept terms set by white liberals, and it stressed self-reliance and pride in Black identity. South African History Online emphasises that Biko opposed white supremacy and liberal paternalism rather than white people as such. The ideas spread beyond campuses: Biko helped launch the Black People's Convention in 1972 and worked in the Black Community Programmes, whose projects included the Zanempilo Clinic, opened in 1975.

Banning and detention

In March 1973 the government banned Biko, restricting him to the King William's Town area. He was detained repeatedly, including 137 days in 1975 and 101 days in solitary confinement in 1976. His testimony as a defence witness in the 1976 trial of SASO and BPC leaders brought his ideas to a wide audience at home and abroad.

Death in custody

Biko was arrested at a roadblock in August 1977. On 12 September 1977 he died in Pretoria from brain injuries sustained in the custody of the Port Elizabeth security police. The government first suggested he had died after a hunger strike. The 1977 inquest attributed his death to injuries from a supposed scuffle with officers and found no one criminally responsible, and no one was prosecuted. About 20,000 people attended his funeral, and on 19 October 1977 the state banned SASO and other Black Consciousness organisations.

Accountability and legacy

In February 1999 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission refused amnesty to four former security policemen who had applied in connection with his death, finding that their actions had no political objective and that they had not made full disclosure. On 12 September 2025, the anniversary of his death, South Africa's justice minister ordered the inquest reopened in the Eastern Cape High Court; the ministry's statement described the original inquest as widely criticised as superficial and compromised by police cover-ups. Biko's ideas continued in later organisations such as AZAPO, and his son Nkosinathi founded the Steve Biko Foundation.