Steve Biko

It was at the beginning of the seventies that I met them first. In Cape Town, one summer holiday. Two young black men. Vital, friendly. They were Steve Biko and Barney Pityane, the first President and General Secretary of the new South Africa Student's Organisation, SASO. The organisation became a movement, and was no longer a mere student movement Black pride went into the streets. This is Steve Biko's measure of greatness, realistically and soberly: that he was one of the initiators in this place and at this time of the black men walking tall upon the streets of South Africa, walking tall never to be bent again. There were others before him, before Barney Pityane... others. But Steve Biko's thinking placed the final stamp of pride, of rootedness in one own being, on blackness here and now: pride that cannot be lost any more. (Photographer unknown and source unknown)