On this day September 12, 1977

Steve Biko after arrested at a police roadblock and suffered a major head injury while in police custody. Then police loaded him in the back of a Land Rover, naked, and began the 1,500 km drive to Pretoria to take him to a prison with hospital facilities in order to treat the already near-dead Biko.

Steve Biko

He died shortly after arrival at the Pretoria prison, on 12 September. The police claimed his death was the result of an extended hunger strike.

He was found to have massive injuries to the head, which many saw as strong evidence that he had been brutally clubbed by his captors. Then journalist and now political leader, Helen Zille, exposed the truth behind Biko’s death.

Due to his fame, news of Biko’s death spread quickly, opening many eyes around the world to the brutality of the apartheid regime. His funeral was attended by many hundreds of people, including numerous ambassadors and other diplomats from the United States and Western Europe. The liberal white South African journalist Donald Woods, a personal friend of Biko, photographed his injuries in the morgue.

Woods was later forced to flee South Africa for England, where he campaigned against apartheid and further publicised Biko’s life and death, writing many newspaper articles and authoring the book, Biko. On hearing the news of Steve Biko’s death in police custody, Minister of Justice, Jimmy Kruger, simply declared in a speech that the incident “left him cold”.

The following year on 2 February 1978, the Attorney General of the Eastern Cape stated that he would not prosecute any police involved in the arrest and detention of Biko. During the trial it was claimed that Biko’s head injuries were a self-inflicted suicide attempt, and not the result of any beatings. The judge ultimately ruled that a murder charge could not be supported partly because there were no witnesses to the killing. Charges of culpable homicide and assault were also considered, but because the killing occurred in 1977, the time limit for prosecution had expired.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was created following the end of minority rule and the apartheid system, reported in 1997 that five former members of the South African security forces had admitted to killing Biko who died a year after the Soweto riots which rocked apartheid South Africa, and were applying for amnesty.