My Steve Bantu Biko

I finished reading my 1^st biography of Steve Biko in less than 12 hours. I turned after the last page to the sad realisation that I was actually done. What an insightful, intelligent young man who died too soon (at the age of 30). A great leader who not only believed and took pride in being black, but believed and took pride in other black fellows, both male and female. I have always heard of people speaking about Steve Biko on T.V. and I had read a sentence or two about him. In print, I most read passages where people were quoting him or speaking of his leadership and maybe about the ‘Black Consciousness Movement’. I knew that he had something to do with fighting for freedom but never really knew what he was, who he was and what he stood for. After reading Asanda Magaqa’s blog titled “Ndathi ukuze ndiziqonde, ndasabela kuBantu Stephen Biko” dated September 27, 2012 something in me said yide ufunde ngalomntu (read about this person already). I noticed that there’s something about the way people speak about Steve Biko that sets what he stood for apart. There are many struggle heroes that died back in the days that people write and talk about today but there is just something about Steve Biko that, somehow, inspires them. So, I decided I am not going to let my mind wonder any longer.

Bantu Stephen Biko had an “innate curiosity and fascination with the human condition, with humanity, with what being human truly is, particularly in Africa” (Wilson, 2011. Page 17). In my reading the “Steve Biko: A Jacana Biography” by Lindy Wilson (2011) I realised that this is a man I have a lot in common with, such an inspiration to anyone who has self identity issues, especially someone who is a South African and has experienced feeling inferior in the presence of another race other than her own. Steve Biko, like many other struggle heroes, believed that every human being on the living planet is equal despite the colour of their skin. As I read on I soon realised what set him apart from other struggle heroes I have read about; he was primarily concerned with the motivation of the black man. To make him believe that being black does not mean he is stupid or inferior to white. Being black means just that, being black. The blood is the same, the way you breath and what you breath.

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Steve Biko was born on 18 December 1946 and died on the 12^th of September 1977. “According to evidence given to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Det.-Sgt. Gideon Nieuwoudt at his amnesty hearing in 1998, Biko sat down on a chair facing his interrogator, Capt. Daantjie Siebert, who immediately ordered him to stand. Later, when Biko sat down again, Siebert grabbed him by the chest and yanked him to his feet. Nieuwoudt asserts that ‘Biko pushed the chair forward and lunged with his fist.’ Five men then assaulted him simultaneously, ‘Blows were aimed backwards and forwards’, which also flung him against the walls of the narrow room. Nieuwoudt thrashed him with a reinforced hosepipe. ‘In the momentum’, he said, ‘Mr Biko hit his head, fell, seemed confused and dazed... Siebert then told me to chain him to the [horizontal] bars of the security gate with arms outstretched [at shoulder height]... two sets of hand-cuffs and leg irons also attached – standing.’ He was left in this crucifying position for six hours, only able to move his head. Three to four hours later, when Biko asked for water his words were incoherent as if ‘under the influence of liquor’, Nieuwoudt went on to testify. That night Biko was left lying on a urine-wet mat, still shackled by leg-irons on his feet which were locked onto the walls. Although Lt.-Col. P.J. Goosen, Officer Commanding, Eastern Cape Security Police, spoke at the inquest into Biko’s death about his suspicion at the time that Biko had ‘suffered a stroke’ and said he had called in a doctor, Nieuwoudt reported at the TRC hearing that the first doctor only appeared 24 hours after the injury and to no effect, leaving Biko shackled in leg-irons and handcuffs for another night. On 11 September, though the specialist evidence indicated brain damage, medical approval was given for him to be driven (naked) in the back of a Landrover hundreds of kilometres to Pretoria, where he died from head injuries he had earlier sustained” (Wilson, 2011. Page 13).

This is very sad. It touches the very core of your being. It makes one wonder what is one doing with one’s life when someone died at such a prime time in his life, fighting for his country. Steve Biko was a man who believed in himself and his abilities as a human being and, as a result, instilled in others these same values- that they must ‘discover and empower themselves with their own resources’ (Wilson, 2011. Page 14). In the book, the most dominant of his quotes: “the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” with which he wanted to challenge the blacks not to be a part of their own oppression shows how he believed and “defined  ­

Black Consciousness as ‘an inward-looking process’ to ‘infuse people with pride and dignity’ and that ‘We have set out on a quest for a true humanity.’ (Wilson, 2011. Page 14)

In the book it states that in 1966 Biko went to UNNE at Wentworth in Durban to study medicine where he entered the university keen for debate and participation in student politics. It is said that in his first year he went as an observer to the July congress of the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), in spite of the many black student groups who disagreed with this decision and with his view of the non-racial approach. “In the following year, 1967, he went as a delegate to the congress held at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Biko immediately challenged Nusas to take active stance against the segregated residential facilities Rhodes University had imposed on the congress: those classified as ‘Indians’ and ‘Coloureds’ were to stay in the town whilst Africans were required to stay some distance away in a church hall in the ‘location’; whites, on the other hand, could stay in the university residences. At the outset of the conference the executive of Nusas dealt with this by bringing in a resolution condemning the Rhodes University Council for not allowing blacks into the residences. Biko then moved a private motion proposing that the conference adjourn until they could find a ‘non-racist venue’” (Wilson, 2011. Page 30). I am in awe as I read on. I come to the realisation of my own inhibitions, inhibitions of the mind. Inhibitions that have always made me feel inferior because I am black. Reading this book helped me realise that I no longer have to be ashamed of being black when I am amongst other races. I no longer have to speak ‘better English’ than my black counter parts when we are amongst other races so that they (other races) can see I am the better, more intelligent and smarter black so that they can accept me and regard me as one of their own.

See, this is what happens when you grew up amongst people that always made you doubt yourself. When you are small and English is not your mother tongue you are at a disadvantage. If you don’t read anything at all, I feel, you are at (some kind of) a disadvantage too because, I believe, that people that read have a kind of knowledge that non-readers do not have. Their imaginations and intellectuality is more challenged and therefore more exercised than non-readers. After reading this book I realised that being black is enough. It is not a curse, doom or condemnation that one  ­

must die or regard oneself as stupid or inferior to other races. One of the things that inspired me in the book was when he was still at the Rhodes visit when he realised “that for a long time I had been holding onto the whole dogma of non-racism almost like a religion, feeling that it was sacrilegious to question it... I began to feel there was a lot of lacking in the proponents of the non-racist idea... They had this problem, you know, of superiority, and they tended to take us for granted and wanted us to accept things that were second-class.” Also in the book it goes to show that

‘there was also an assumption that all affairs were conducted in English. This gave an immediate disadvantage to those for whom English was not their mother tongue. It was an extraordinary experience for blacks to listen to their own lives being articulated by whites, who had had an infinitely superior education, yet had had no experience of the reality of being black.” Biko recalls the effect: “You are forced into a subservient role of having to say ‘yes’ to what they are saying because you cannot express it so well.’’ (Wilson, 2011. Page 31). Being around whites and not knowing how to speak English (well) makes you feel inadequate. Their accent makes you feel they are the smartest beings alive. When you see white you see educated, money (or wealth) and smart and you feel so small and immobile like all of a sudden you can’t move or do anything. All in all you feel inferior. Generally black people think white people are more intelligent than them. So by Black Consciousness Steve Biko wanted to erase all this. I, too, hate succumbing to this idea so I will not anymore. I have experienced, at first hand, feeling inferior to a white person more than once. This was not due to how smart they were or their bank balance. It was not because of what they had said or did to me or anybody else. It was due to the idea I had in my head.

Steve Biko stirred within a germ of an idea that conscieted black people into analysing their socio-political condition by recognising that they could be their own liberators by resisting their oppressor with a different mental attitude (Black Conciousness). This attitude came as motivation to inspire and make black people see that they were actually not the opposite of inferior. He wanted blacks to be confident in themselves. For example, non-white is a negation of being. According to the biography, it indicates a desire to become white eventually. It implied that “whiteness” was the norm to which one attached all other people whose own culture and identity had been negated. So non-white was soon removed from Saso’s  ­

vocabulary (Wilson, 2011. Page 42). [SASO stands for South African Student Organisation of which Biko was its first president]. It is not nice to black people being referred to as if they’re retarded or non-existent. A lot of people like to refer to black people as if they are not around, like they’re not watching. Most people in power or those who think they’re better (or superior, if I may say) like to talk about (the majority) blacks as if they do not have any sense of responsibility about who they are and the things they do, their destiny and society, their values and where they come from. So being called non-white is like being called something that is non-existent. Non-something. Not there. And so Saso named themselves black.

Also, because Biko believed that nobody should be cast in a mould, he only became president of Saso for a year (1969-1970). He wanted everybody to be given a fair chance to shine, to be on top, educative and question authority with respect and good intent. And so in July 1970 Barney Pityana became the 2^nd president of Saso and Biko the editor of the Saso newsletter. In August that year he began the column “I write what I like” and always signed it “Frank Talk”. Throughout the following two years this column enabled the evolution of the philosophy of Black Consciousness to be recorded and expressed.

There is clearly something evident about Steve Biko; he was a force to be reckoned with. Whether he is dead or alive, that does not make a difference to me. His mark in South African politics is one that will always be fixed and one thing that is for sure is that he was an inspiration, not only to black South Africans but to people of the world too. He instilled in black people confidence and self-belief about themselves that no form of any kind of discrimination could ever defy, quite frankly.

Asanda Mcoyana

Ref:

http://asandamagaqa.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/ndathi-ukuze-ndiziqonde-ndasabela-kubantu-stephen-biko/ retreived December 12, 2012.

Lindy Wilson.2011.Steve Biko: A Jacana Pocket Biography.Jacana Media. Auckland Park, South Africa.