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Letter of the President
14 September, 2007
The spirit of Steve Biko has not died
On the tragic day in our country 30 years ago, 12 September 1977, the Chairperson of the UN Special Committee against Apartheid was the Ambassador Leslie O Harriman, the Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Nigeria at the UN. This was the day that Stephen Bantu Biko died, after sustained and merciless torture by the Security Police of the apartheid regime.
Immediately after the death of Steve Biko was announced to the world, Ambassador Harriman issued a statement in which he said:
"I was shocked to learn that Mr Steven Biko, Honorary President of the Black People's Convention and an outstanding leader of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, died in detention on 12 September.
"This is one more despicable crime by the apartheid regime which has murdered a score of patriots in the past year in its police cells. It is a crime against the oppressed people of South Africa, and indeed, against the United Nations which has proclaimed special responsibility for them. It shows that the apartheid regime is incorrigible, and that any hesitation or delay in decisive international action to enable the national liberation movement to destroy that regime is, in effect, a condonation of crimes against the patriots."
Later, on 5 December 1977, Ambassador Harriman commented on the inquest finding of an apartheid magistrate that nobody could be blamed for the murder of Steve Biko. The Ambassador said:
"The judgment of the magistrate in the inquest over the death of Mr Steve Biko is a contemptible farce which can only be enacted by the institution of apartheid. It should open the eyes of those who saw a modicum of judicial propriety in racist courts managed by racist officials under racist laws...
"The people of South Africa and of the world have made their judgment, and the guilty men from the so-called Ministers to the Security Policemen will not escape just punishment."
A new anti-apartheid phase
The murder of Steve Biko, the mass arrests, and the banning of the organisations of the Black Consciousness Movement, the Christian Institute, newspapers and individuals, further energised the international community to intensify its offensive against the criminal apartheid regime. This motivated the UN Security Council unanimously to impose a mandatory arms embargo against apartheid South Africa.
Commenting on this historic development on 4 November 1977, less than two months after Steve Biko died, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, the Austrian, Kurt Waldheim, said:
"We have today clearly witnessed a historic occasion. The adoption of this (arms embargo) resolution marks the first time in the 32-year history of the Organisation that action has been taken under Chapter VII of the Charter against a Member State. It is not my purpose to seek to determine whether the Council's decision by itself is adequate to secure its objective.
"However, it is abundantly clear that the policy of apartheid as well as the measures taken by the South African Government to implement this policy are such a gross violation of human rights and so fraught with danger to international peace and security that a response commensurate with the gravity of the situation was required.
"It is also significant that this momentous step is based on the unanimous agreement of the Council members. Thus we enter a new and significantly different phase of the long-standing efforts of the international community to obtain redress of these grievous wrongs."
Recapturing our history
Quite correctly, many activities took place in our country to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Steve Biko. These helped us to recall the history of our liberation struggle and the role of the Black Consciousness Movement in that struggle.
Perhaps this should inspire us to take an initiative to conduct a comprehensive assessment of what we are doing as a country, and have done, properly to ensure that we capture and preserve this history and make it an integral part of our national public consciousness.
This is important not only to educate our youth but also to inspire our society as a whole to use the examples of heroism and commitment to the common good that were a feature of our struggle through all its phases.
Lessons from the past
The activities to mark the 30th anniversary of the murder of Steve Biko also gave all of us an opportunity once more to make an assessment of the meaning of what Steve Biko stood and died for, especially in terms of what we have to do today as we labour to build a new South Africa.
Again it would seem clear that we should carry out a careful audit in this regard, so that we use our history, the accumulated human experience that represents the formation of the nation, as the firm base on which we stand as we strive to build the new, for which Steve Biko sacrificed his life.
We began this Letter by citing developments at the United Nations in New York, representing the will of the peoples of the world, occasioned by the cruel death of Steve Biko on 12 September 1977. So important was this moment that, as we have reported, UN Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim, said the UN had entered "a new and significantly different phase of the long-standing efforts of the international community to obtain redress of these grievous (apartheid) wrongs".
International solidarity
This strongly suggests we should also make a thorough assessment of how we integrate in our national consciousness the contribution made by the international solidarity movement to our liberation. This is important not only to respect and preserve the historical record, but also properly to position the issue of internationalism within the work we are doing to rebuild our country, contribute to Africa's renewal and help to build a better world.
With these three initiatives we would ensure that we pay real tribute to Steve Biko and the thousands of martyrs who lost their lives to ensure that we attain the historic success represented by the democratic victory of April 1994.
Tributes by Oliver Tambo & Nelson Mandela
Quite appropriately, two of our most outstanding leaders, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela have, in the past, paid proper tribute to Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement.
In 1977, Oliver Tambo said: "In a way we started from the point of black consciousness too: we formed the ANC from just Africans - because the British had delivered themselves of a constitution which cut us out of power... Black consciousness, looked at from this point of view, is thus a phase in the struggle. It is not outside the struggle for human rights - on the contrary - it grows into the mainstream which has been set by the African National Congress."
Addressing the 1985 ANC Kabwe (Zambia) Conference, Oliver Tambo said: "We have already referred to the contribution that the BCM made to the activisation of our people into struggle. This is a positive contribution that we must recognise and to which we must pay tribute. We should also recognise the significant input that the BCM made towards further uniting the black oppressed masses of our country, by emphasising the commonness of their oppression and their shared destiny. These views were built on political positions that our movement had long canvassed and fought for."
On 12 September 1997, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela said: "History called upon Steve Biko at a time when the political pulse of our people had been rendered faint by banning, imprisonment, exile, murder and banishment. Repression had swept the country clear of all visible organisation of the people. But at each turn of history, apartheid was bound to spawn resistance; it was destined to bring to life the forces that would guarantee its death...
"And for its part the ANC from the first years of the 1970s welcomed black consciousness as part of the genuine forces of the revolution. It understood that it was helping give organisational form to the popular upsurge of all the oppressed groups of our society. Above all, the liberation movement asserted that, in struggle - in mass action, underground organisation, armed actions and international mobilisation - the people would most readily develop consciousness of their proud being, of their equality with everyone else, of their capacity to make history."
Like many others, neither of these leaders had the possibility to meet Steve Biko. As we tell the story of our liberation struggle and draw the necessary lessons, it is important that we pay close attention to Steve Biko's contemporaries and fellow-leaders.
Steve Biko's close comrade speaks
One of these is Professor Nyameko Barney Pityana, currently Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa (UNISA), who came into the struggle for liberation when he joined the ANC Youth League not that long before the ANC was banned in 1960.
Prof Pityana delivered a Steve Biko Memorial Lecture at UNISA on 12 September 2007. Below I cite only a few of his observations, both to indicate what we can learn from a close comrade of Steve Biko, and to illustrate the challenge we face to gain a deep understanding of our history. Among other things Prof Pityana said:
"Black consciousness as a strategy for liberation built its philosophy on the idea that the black oppressed shared common values and common aspirations. The ethic of black solidarity was critical for black consciousness. It was therefore important that students as the intelligentsia of their society, must remain connected to their social and cultural roots...
"I can assert that in its early formulations black consciousness had no desire to substitute the traditional liberation organisations, neither did it see itself as formulating an alternative ideology. Its primary thrust was that in the circumstances of its time, the disunity of the black people was a luxury that we could not afford. That explains why someone like me could be a loyal cadre of the movement even though I had a strong pedigree in the ANC Youth League. Indeed, at the time of BC I was regularly in touch with the underground at various levels...(This was) about seeking ways of transcending...divisions (within the broad liberation movement) by articulating a meta-narrative of liberation that was unifying rather than particularising...
"I must now come round to reflecting on what all this might mean for a new South Africa. What strikes me first and foremost is how much society needs both intellectuals and heroes. It is correct that this society should honour its heroes and heroines and celebrate its intellectuals. Heroes are never those who set themselves up as such, or who go about their business in the expectation of being hero-worshipped. Likewise intellectuals are not those who draw attention to themselves, but to ideas, their currency and to the critique of society. For both their currency is truth: to stand by the truth, to articulate reality as truthfully as they understand it without calculation of personal benefit...
"I believe that today, (Steve Biko's courage) should call us to a renewed connectedness to the values that sustained and entrenched the liberation struggles against all odds; in particular, to the abiding humanity, Ubuntu, that drove all aspects of the struggle. Today, it would mean I believe, that we would address poverty with vigour, and that we would place human development at the centre of our national development strategy."
Our current tasks
Many on our Continent and elsewhere in the world, inspired by the humanism courageously displayed by such undying heroes of our people as Steve Biko, look to our country to make a critical contribution to the reconstruction of human society globally, by taking the lead in placing human development at the centre of our national development strategy, as Professor Pityana put it.
This we must do to ensure the all-round development of our people, to honour the memory of the martyrs, such as Steve Biko, and to give substance to the confidence that all humanity, including such anti-apartheid activists as Ambassador Leslie O Harriman, had in us that we would use our freedom to build the people-centred society to which we are committed. The commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the brutal and untimely death of Steve Biko has reminded us of the urgency of this task.
This page was last updated on Friday September 14, 2007