SOUTH AFRICA MARKS 40 YEARS SINCE THE BRUTAL MURDER OF STEVE BIKO
President Jacob Zuma has called on South Africans to remember, celebrate and preserve the legacy of Black Consciousness Movement leader, intellectual and liberation struggle hero, Mr Stephen Bantu Biko, who died in police custody as a result of police brutality on 12 September 1977, as the country marks the 40th anniversary of his passing.
To mark this sad episode in the history of the South African struggle for liberation, President Jacob Zuma will visit Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Centre tomorrow and lay a wreath at the cell in which Mr Biko died.
Mr Biko died in a police cell at the then Pretoria Central Prison (now Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Centre) following his arrest in August 1977. He had been savagely beaten by apartheid security police while in police detention in Port Elizabeth and sustained serious injuries including brain damage. He had been kept naked and chained and was not accorded any dignity. Failed by doctors who connived with the security police, he was transported to Pretoria from Port Elizabeth despite being seriously ill from the beatings.
His death caused outrage locally and abroad.
President Zuma said Steve Biko’s leadership and ideals inspired not only South African liberation struggle activists in South Africa, but also many leaders and activists across the continent and the world who pursued an anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist agenda.