Steve Biko

A martyr for Black Consciousness, Biko helped to build a movement of political action—in life, and in death.

Steve Biko
1946–1977, b. Tarkastad, South Africa
Worked in Ginsberg, South Africa

Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the Black world for a long time.
—Steve Biko, 1977 [source?]

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
—Steve Biko, speech in Cape Town, 1971

• Frustrated by the lack of Black voices in the anti-apartheid groups he observed while a student at university, Biko founded the South African Students Organization (SASO) in 1968 to resist apartheid through political action.
• Biko and SASO promoted the Black Consciousness Movement, which promoted Black self-empowerment and pride in the face of both the localized racism of the apartheid state and global postcolonial realities. Biko was placed under a government banning order in 1973.
• Following the 1976 Soweto uprising—in which the police brutally suppressed over 20,000 students protesting laws restricting education to the use of the Afrikaans language—Biko was arrested. While in police custody, Biko was severely tortured and beaten, causing his death. Those responsible were never tried.
• In death, Steve Biko became a global symbol of the apartheid state’s amoral violence, but also of resilience, dignity, and pride.