Published in The Herald (South Africa) on 13 September 2024
By Nomazima Nkosi
LIFE CELEBRATED: Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi speaks at the 14th Annual Steve Biko Lecture at Nelson Mandela University’s Second Avenue campus last night. Picture: WERNER HILLS
The story of Steve Biko, who was killed by security forces in 1977, is a story about law, injustice and accountability and with that in mind, the South African government should forge ahead and prosecute those who were not granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
This was said by advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, the keynote speaker at the 14th Annual Steve Biko Lecture at Nelson Mandela University’s Second Avenue campus last night.
Ngcukaitobi said the nation or world at large did not have Biko’s moral clarity, his courage and intelligence to confront the many challenges faced in today’s society.
“Yet Biko is still here. Still relevant. Still asking us the difficult questions of the day.
“Granted, SA is crisis-ridden from multiple fronts [such as] racial inequality, crime which disproportionately affects black people, capitalism and accumulation which favours whites at the expense of black people, its progenies of racism and starvation, apartheid tentacles which stubbornly refuse to disentangle and deep-seated levels of poverty.”
Ngcukaitobi said Biko’s philosophy was a much simpler idea which was the idea of selfpride and that people should think for themselves and not like him.
“[It was the idea] that people as a whole were their own liberators.
“The apartheid state could not match Biko, word for word,” he said.
Ngcukaitobi said the aftermath of the June 16 1976 uprising was a dangerous time in an even more dangerous place, where black consciousness was identified by the white government as a poisonous influence.
Biko emerged as the new spokesperson for that political philosophy.
The decade of the ‘70s was a dangerous time for black intellectuals, who questioned the system and revived the spirit of the struggle. “The previous decade did not have an unhinged security branch police, operating outside the rules of law and the rules of morality.
“The leaders of the revolution in the 1960s were all sent to prison.
“But in the 1970s, were assassinated, executed, to create a climate of fear.
“This was the legacy of the securocrats in BOSS (Bureau of State Security), which had come into existence in 1969.
“Onkgopotse Tiro was a talented man. He was murdered. Mapetla Mohapi was a gifted man. They murdered him.
“Steve Biko, who had moved from medicine to law, by the time of his death, stood at the pinnacle of the talented sons of this country. He was murdered.
“Thenjiwe Mtintso fled for exile. Nkosazana Zuma, whom most of you don’t know was a member of the Black Consciousness Movement, left the country.
“What was unique is that they were the brightest and the most talented sons and daughters.
“But apartheid as a geographic thing had no place for them.”
Ngcukaitobi’s lecture was titled “A Blow to the Head” ,a poignant point considering an inquest into Biko’s death found that a blow to the head was what killed him.
Present in the room were leaders of the Azanian People’s Movement such as party president Nelvis Qekema.
Biko’s son, Nkosinathi, was also in attendance.
Taking to the podium, Nkosinathi acknowledged that his father was commemorated in various spaces across the country.
“Tonight, we gather here at this special place. I was born in this city. My mother moved here when the time came for me to come,” he said.
“It’s also this city that took away my father’s life.
“The state of this city is concerning and it’s important we rescue it and return safety to communities.
“We should defend the free spaces in our communities.”
Detained under the Terrorism Act, Biko was arrested in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), held at the Walmer police station in Gqeberha and interrogated at the Sanlam Building.
He died in Gauteng. Until his death, he was in solitary confinement, with his only visitors being his interrogators and torturers.
“If a person was detained under that Act, their fate was sealed. Basically an act of terrorism came down to one factor: intent,” Ngcukaitobi said.
“But in reality, a detainee under this Act had less rights than a convict.
“A detainee should have been entitled to food, to exercise, to go outside for fresh air, to clean clothes from his family.”
NMU acting vice-chancellor Luthando Jack said Biko had evidently been ahead of his time.
“Biko, if he was not taken away from us 47 years ago, would have been 78 years old this year.”
Jack said even though Biko was murdered by security forces, his legacy lived on.
“Ironically, his brutal killing also served as a watershed moment in the prosecution of the liberation struggle, for the liberation of the black majority in our country.
“It served as a turning point in the liberation struggle of the black majority and yet the fundamental struggle for cognitive justice, decolonisation of the mind which serves as a critical path in the fundamental and total liberation of Africans, has not yet been accomplished,” Jack said.