EFF marks the 47th anniversary of the Death of Steve Bantu Biko
12 September 2024
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) observes the 47th anniversary of the killing of Steve Bantu Biko by the Apartheid Regime, after being detained at a roadblock and tortured to his death by the security branch of the regime of terror. Steve Biko represented a rare breed of activist, who was able to marry militancy and ideas to achieve the liberation of black people, and it was because of his ideas of strong black solidarity against white supremacy, that he was brutally murdered.
Steve Biko was bom in King Williams Town in the Eastem Cape, on the 18th of December 1946 and raised in the dusty township of Ginsburg, where he would begin his political life. At a very young age Biko showed his rebellious nature, and this was marked by expulsions from school due to his activism As a youth leader, Steve Biko laid the seeds of resistance to collaboration with our oppressors, who maintained their white privilege while pretending to form part of the cause of liberating black people from the very system they were benefactors of. It was Steve Biko in his infamous rejection of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), who showed us that white liberals can never be true allies, because they live in two worlds, where they prefer to reflect on the problems confronting black people without ever meaningfully wanting to change them, because black suffering gives life to the white privilege.
He went on to form the South African Students' Association (SASO), and later on his life formed the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), which preached the ideals of pride in the black identity as a mark of resistance, beauty and a rich history of civilisation. Biko was a leading thinker in the idea of resisting the depiction of black and African identity as one of underdevelopment, savagery and a lack of humanity and sophistication.
It was Biko who grabbed the definitions of what it meant to be black out of the hands of colonisers, and painted a picture of black people as producing beauty, identity, history and resistance, whilst shackled by the chains of racial domination. Further to this, Biko used this idea to forge a movement that was rooted in the struggles of our people, and pursued self-determination, using the BCM to build clinics, educate impoverished youth and resist Apartheid legislation.
It is the ideas of the BCM that sparked the youth of 1976 into the greatest resistance moments not only in the continent but in the world. The Youth of 1976 fought against being given inferior education in the language of their oppressors as a result of the ideas of Steve Biko that black people are unjustly cut off from knowledge production to keep them perpetually subservient.
Biko was a strong advocate of black unity, but to Biko this unity had to be of purpose and rooted in the idea of blackness as an identity of resistance. He was a strong opponent of the Bantustan system, wherein the Apartheid system segregated black people into tribal enclaves and granted leadership status to homeland leaders who were funded by and accounted to the Apartheid regime in Pretoria.
Steve Biko detested liberalism, in particular white liberalism, which was and continues to be paternalistic, patronising and condescending, as those who benefit from black landlessness and poverty, continue to want to dictate to black people what are the appropriate ways to wage our struggle for liberation from the oppression and exploitation that they perpetuate.
He was a strong proponent of non-racialism, and not the empty and meaningless non-racialism that has defined South Africa since 1994, but a non-racialism that centred justice and the defeat of white supremacy as a core ideal of attaining true humanity in South Africa. For Steve Biko, true humanity and non-racialism could only be achieved through the forming of strong black solidarity leading to the defeat of the privileges of white control over the economy and political system of South Africa.
As things stand, South Africa is in pursuit of a false non-racialism that is not rooted in justice, but based on the sharing of amenities and cultural moments with our white counterparts, while they are able to retreat to comfort, and blacks are permanently stationed in indignity and poverty. Even today, it is the same white oppressor camp that defines what is unity in South Africa, and this unity remains in celebrating their cultural symbols and memorabilia, such as the Springboks, singing of the Apartheid anthem, "Die Stem" and sharing public spaces and services with the white race.
Outside of this, there is no true non-racialism in South Africa.
White people are able to murder black women and feed them to pigs, white Ministers under a so-called "Government of National Unity" are able to appoint racists and homophobes as advisors, and right-wing racist groups have the audacity to parade the Apartheid flag and take black people to court for honouring the liberation struggle.
The ideals of Steve Biko have not been achieved, and as the EFF we recommit ourselves to championing true non-racialism based on justice, and the retum of the land and the economy to the hands of the black majority. The EFF reiterates the call for Rhodes University, in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, to be renamed after this great African icon, and undoubtedly, a pioneer of black philosophy and liberation in Africa.
Biko's ideas remain relevant today, and as he did until his dying day, we commit ourselves to retake the mind of the black child from the hands of those who oppressed us.
Biko Lives!
Issued by Leigh-Ann Mathys, National Spokesperson, EFF, 12 September 2024
