UPDATED: 10:45 a.m. ET, Sept. 12, 2023
Originally published: Jan. 28, 2013
Legendary anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died on Sept. 12, 1977, as a political prisoner who was murdered by the police in South Africa because he was against the country’s government-sanctioned racial segregation. Monday marks the 46th year since he was killed.
MORE: Steve Biko In His Own Words: Anti-Apartheid Icon’s Legendary Quotes Of Liberation
The suspicious details surrounding Biko’s beating death after spending hundreds of days in custody took two decades to finally come to light. Although South African officials rebuffed claims by Biko supporters that the killing was essentially a political assassination, four police officers ultimately confessed to their crimes.
Biko rose to infamy in the eyes of the South African government in the 1960s and 1970s alongside current human rights lawyer Barney Pityana as leaders of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), which rejected apartheid and the ideology of white domination in South Africa. Biko and the BCM attracted the ire of the Afrikaner government, and he was banned in 1973 from participating in political matters in a most extreme fashion by making it illegal for him to talk to more than one person at a time or speaking in public. Deemed a terrorist under South African law, Biko was arrested in August of 1977 at a police roadblock and then taken into custody.
Biko was interrogated and tortured for 22 hours, suffering a head injury that resulted in a coma.
Biko’s inhumane treatment continued into the following month after they stripped him naked and threw him to the back of a jeep and drove nearly 700 miles to the city of Pretoria in order to gain access to a prison with a hospital.
Near death during the journey, Biko succumbed to his injuries on September 12 at the age of 30.
Listen to Biko discuss Black unity and the Black Consciousness Movement here:
