Steve Biko - The African Mirror

Oct

2022

Hlako Rachidi – a leader of courage who defied the apartheid government

MATHATHA TSEDU THE picture has become as iconic as the one of the battered face of Steve in the coffin. But this is one of supreme defiance. The scene is Bantu Biko’s funeral on September 25, 1977, in Ginsberg outside King Williamstown. In it, Kenny Hlako(correct) Rachidi, clad in a long gold dashiki and a necklace, stands with a raised clenched right-hand fist, the left hand pulling up the long dashiki. The fist seems to touch the banner behind him, a banner of the Black People’s Convention (BPC), with its signature emblem of two chained hands with the chain however…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

New threats to media freedom come from unexpected directions

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

FRANZ KRÜGER, Adjunct Professor of Journalism and Director of the Wits Radio Academy, University of the Witwatersrand MEDIA Freedom Day in South Africa marks the anniversary of a brutal crackdown by the apartheid state on the media and the Black Consciousness Movement. The 1977 killing of Black Consciousness icon Steve Biko in police custody drew widespread rage and the state responded by closing newspapers, banning organisations and detaining journalists and activists. That was on October 19 of that year, which became known as Black Wednesday. Since then, South African journalists have used Black Wednesday to draw attention to the importance…

Sep

2020

By The African Mirror

Remembering Steve Biko, who died 43 years ago today, in police custody

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

MATTHEW GRAHAM, Lecturer in History, University of Dundee WHILE Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and Desmond Tutu are rightly venerated for their role in opposing and ending white minority rule in South Africa, another leader of the liberation years has been remarkably overlooked: Bantu Steven Biko, who led the enormously influential Black Consciousness Movement. Four decades after his death in police custody on September 12 1977, he deserves to be recognised as one of the towering heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle. Black Consciousness re-energised black opposition to apartheid and helped draw the world’s attention to the brutality of South Africa’s white…