On 18 August 1977, Stephen Bantu Biko was arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967.
Officers of the Port Elizabeth security police including Harold Snyman and Gideon Nieuwoudt interrogated Biko for 22 hours in police room 619, torturing and beating him to the point of a major head injury resulting in a coma.They then chained him to a window grille for a day.
On 11 September 1977, police loaded him in the back of a Land Rover, naked and shackled, and drove 1 100 km to Pretoria Central Prison.
Today, 12 September 2012, is 35 years to the day that Stephen Bantu Biko died in that prison.
The post-mortem revealed multiple bruises and abrasions, and concluded he died of a brain haemorrhage from massive injuries to the head.His funeral was attended by over 10 000 people, including numerous ambassadors and other diplomats from the United States and Western Europe.
He was 30 years old.
I never met Steve Biko but there are many who are near and dear to me who counted him as a friend and comrade – among them Saths Cooper and the late Strini Moodley. Largely through them, and subsequently through his writings, Steve Biko came to play a pivotal role in my own intellectual development.
His words — “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” — have been my personal signature for as long as I can remember.
Biko, like another of Africa's influential thinkers Franz Fanon, originally studied medicine before events pushed him into political philosophy. It's difficult to contrast the brilliance of that mind with what passes for leadership today, particularly those who are as old today as Biko was when he was murdered.
Julius Malema for example, now 31 years old, took longer than usual to complete secondary school, finishing matric at the age of 21 at Mohlakaneng High School in Seshego, Limpopo where he failed most of his subjects.
And so, on this 35th anniversary of the death of a man I have called South Africa's greatest youth leader, I find myself heading Yfm which, with a listenership of more than 1,5 million, is South Africa's largest and most influential medium to target the youth of this country. And I found myself asking what benefit could the youth of today draw from the legacy of Stephen Bantu Biko that would give them an intellectual alternative to the buffoonery of Julius Malema and his cohorts.
I already had a long friendship with the Biko family to draw upon. Nkosinathi Biko as Chief Executive of the Steve Biko Foundation, had delivered the opening address of the Generation Y Keynote lecture series at my invitation. We were both in agreement connecting the ideas of his father with a generation crying out for inspiration was an idea worth pursuing.
And thus was born the Frank Talk Dialogues.
Frank Talk, named after the pseudonym under which Biko wrote, is an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation that aims to advance public education about the Bill of Rights by constructively engaging young professionals aged 25-40 in national discourse.
Frank Talk focuses on this generation, because many do not have histories of engagement with struggle organisations or current affiliations with socially relevant institutions.
While there are many disparate views on South Africa’s past and present, common ground for the majority of the nation’s people is the Constitution. In order for the Constitution to be an effective tool in nation building, South Africans from all walks of life must have a deeper understanding of their rights and responsibilities.
Last night, Yfm and the Steve Biko Foundation held the inaugural FrankTalk Radio Dialogue at our studios in Johannesburg. As September is heritage month and marks the 35th anniversary of Steve Biko’s death, the topic under discussion was Culture, Heritage and Identity, themes that were critical in Biko’s work.
It's a return to the past in many ways. Live radio broadcasts before a studio audience were commonplace during the Black Consciousness era.Today, we are able to augment that by live audio streaming on the Internet, live updates from commentators via twitter, and participation from those outside the studio via live call-ins and SMS.
Can this initiative make a difference? I believe so. You see, Julius Malema said: “We are prepared to die for Zuma.” Steve Biko said: “It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.”
I know which of those ideas deserves a larger audience.