48 years after Steve Biko died in police custody, South Africa to reopen research on the anti-apartheid icon

Johannesburg – South African and anti-activistracial segregation The leader Steve Biko died almost five decades ago at the age of 30 in police custody. Family members and others who saw their body that day said he was tortured and killed by the South African police, and that he had not died due to the effects of a hunger strike, as the officers affirmed at that time.

Prosecutors announced on Friday that they would reopen a formal investigation into Biko’s death, exactly 48 years after the day after his death.

Biko, a liberation leader who founded and directed the black consciousness movement of South Africa, became one of the most recognized victims worldwide in the Apartheid era after his death in 1977 in a prison cell.

The national tax authority of the country, in a historical decision, confirmed that it would reopen an investigation to allow judges to rule if a crime had been committed.

No one has been considered to account for the death of Biko, and several police officers requested, but did not receive, amnesty for their alleged participation during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) after Apartheid (TRC).

Biko was arrested in an obstacle in what was then called Grahamstown, now Makhanda, in August 1977. He was accused of violating a so -called “prohibition order”, a measure in the racial segregation laws of the Apartheid era that allowed the authorities to restrict the movement of individuals considered a threat.

Twenty days after his arrest, he was taken to more than 600 miles, naked, with the legs in shackles in the rear of a police vehicle, to Pretoria. He died in prison on the day after arriving.

According to the reports of the family members and others who saw their body shortly after their death, Biko was brutally tortured by the police of the Apartheid regime during their imprisonment and finally died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The only government investigation into the death of Biko was held in 1977, decades before the end of the apartheid government, and a judge concluded that no one was to blame.

But his death was received by an international protest, and demands sanctions against the apartheid government and its leaders helped feed the global movement against the racist regime.

Biko’s life was immortalized in the music by “Biko” by Peter Gabriel, only three years after his death, and then again by Reggae Dancehall artist “Steve Biko” by Beenie Man in 1997. Denzel Washington played the Anti-Apartheid icon in the 1987 Hollywood movie “Cry Freedom.”

Five former police officers of the feared special branch of the South African regime testified in the TRC that Biko had attacked one of his colleagues with a chair, and that during a later fight to contain him, he hit his head against the wall, causing his death.

However, they admitted under the interrogation that they had colluded and presented false affidavits during the initial investigation of 1977.

“My dad was a very healthy man, and we know he died of severe cerebral hemorrhage,” said Biko’s son, Nkosinathi Biko, in an interview this week with broadcaster Newzroom Africa. “During the TRC process it was clear under an intense interrogation that one of the men admitted that they grabbed their head and attacked it on the wall, which caused their death. They were denied the amnesty in the Due Trc due, of course, they lied.”

The TRC, which did its work between 1996 and 2001, recommended more than 300 cases of prosecution by the National Prosecutor’s Office. To date, no one has been prosecuted for those alleged crimes of the Apartheid era, however, leaving many families, including those of Biko, frustrated.

“It is very clear that the history books of this country must be corrected,” said Nkosinathi Biko in the interview. “My father’s body is a living testimony of his last minutes and the torture and violence that was visited.

In April, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, ordered an investigation into whether the previous governments had intentionally blocked investigations and prosecutions of crimes of the Apartheid era.

The National Authority of the Prosecutor has been under pressure to present formal positions for the crimes of the Apartheid era allegedly committed by people who did not receive amnesty through the TRC process, as well as to provide responsibility and responses to unresolved cases of human rights violations during the Apartheid regime.

Nkosinathi Biko said his father’s legacy was to give and invest in a shared society, and said that leaving the record was a vital step for the nation.

“I think our sense of triumph, our sense of healing, rests on prosecution, which is necessary in investigations,” he said. “But it is also based on ensuring that we correct the history of this country and accentuate the value of human life and human dignity.”

• Africa
• South Africa
• Nelson Mandela
• racial segregation
• Steve Biko
• Racism