“In the early hours of 18 August 1977 and about an hour away from King Williams Town, Steve Biko and Peter Jones ran into a police roadblock. At the roadblock the police asked Biko and Jones to step out and open the boot. Jones, who was driving, followed their orders but struggled to open the boot. After a while the senior officer, Colonel Alf Oosthuizen, ordered the unit to clear the roadblock and to take Biko and Jones to the nearby police station in Grahamstown.
At the police station Biko realised how awkward the situation was for his friend. On principle, Jones would not reveal Biko’s identity, exposing himself to torture and imprisonment. Yet in the end the police would find out anyway as Biko interjected: “I am Bantu Steve Biko.” And then there was silence. “Biko?” retorted Ooshuizen. “No, Bantu Steve Biko,”replied Biko.
The two men were separated. Jones was taken to Algoa Police Station and Biko to Walmer Police Station, both in Port Elizabeth. Over the next months Jones was repeatedly interrogated and tortured. He was detained for nearly 18 months.
At the Walmer Police Station Biko was kept naked and manacled for 20 days before being transferred to the notorious Sanlam Building in Port Elizabeth. On 6 September Biko sustained a massive brain haemorrhage. Biko suffered at least 3 brain lesions occasioned by the application of force to his head. After Biko had suffered a brain injury, he was still kept in a standing position. They shackled his hands and feet to the metal grille of the cell door. The police noticed that he was speaking with a slur but would not relent and continued with their interrogation.
On 7 September, 24 hours after Biko suffered the brain haemorrhage, the police called in Dr Lang, the district surgeon. Lang could find nothing wrong with Biko, despite the fact that he found him in a daze with a badly swollen face, hands and feet. Lang’s senior colleague, Dr Benjamin Tucker, was called in for his opinion on what should be done. Tucker suggested that Biko be taken to hospital, but the police strongly objected. By 10 September Biko’s condition had deteriorated alarmingly. The following day the police put Biko in the back of a Land Rover and drove him for more than 12 hours to Pretoria – naked, manacled and unconscious. Eleven hours later he was carried into the hospital at Pretoria Central Prison and left on the floor of a cell. Several hours later he was given an intravenous drip by a newly qualified doctor who had no information about him. Sometime during the night of 12 September Steve Biko died, unattended.
The minister of Justice and the police, Jimmy Kruger, issued a statement that Biko had died from a hunger strike, and at a National Party Congress proclaimed his now famous line: “I am not saddened by Biko’s death and I am not mad. His death leaves me cold.””
I urge you to read the above extract, and maybe even take a time-out, walk around your garden, or wherever you can find space to digest the extract. Think about what happened to Biko during his last weeks – never mind even the harassment he endured during the previous 30 years of his life. Let it resonate within your heart – not your head – your heart, and then realise that, when you boil it all down to the core, this happened to Biko (and all too many like him during the last decades of white rule), because, essentially, his crime was to be born black in apartheid South Africa. Imagine if your child was arrested, tortured and then detained for long periods because he had the wrong prevailing skin colour?
Now tell me, honestly, can we just forget about the apartheid years and move on?
I had to chuckle earlier this year when I saw an extract of The Big Debate on ETV, where this white woman was telling a largely black audience that “she feels their pain.” Do you think, after reading the above, she truly does? My blog, and this article in particular, isn’t my attempt to make white people feel guilty, because guilt is a negative emotion. Nor it is a suggestion that we dwell in the past. It is an attempt to say that we need to acknowledge, on an emotional/psychological level, the horrors of what happened prior to 1994, and again, accept the hand of forgiveness that has been extended and in doing so, work – together – at building a better country.