Learn more about Steve Biko

Visitors to the blog are encouraged to research Steve Biko on their own. Links to useful pages have been inserted and can simply be clicked on and it will open the relevant page.

The reason for this self-exploration is that no first-hand information could be found in Fingo Village about Steve Biko. Any information found on this blog would therefore be taken from foreign sources. This is not the ideal or the objective of a public history project. There is an abundance of information available on the life and work of Steve Biko. There is also the great 1987 film, Cry Freedom, about the life of Steve Biko.

Readers, or rather public history explorers, will find that doing their own investigation about Steve Biko will allow for a broader and deeper understanding about the driving forces behind his political aspirations and how he came to be the symbol of the Black Consciousness Movement. Steve Biko's legacy lives on today. His legacy is most noticeable on the Rhodes University campus throught the SASCO (South African Students Congress) society. Steve Biko was one of the founders of SASCO.

We want to encourage explorers to share any interesting things that they have learnt about Steve Biko on the blog. This can be done by posting comments or by contacting the producers of the blog (an email address can be found on the blog) and we will upload any information that readers of this blog want to share about the life and work of Steve Biko, or how they were personally influenced or inspired by him.

It is perhaps important to mention at this point that the purpose of a blog is for it to function as a journal, where regular postings can be made about events or thoughts or ideas. A blog is something that can be updated as frequently as any one group or individual chooses to update it.

As previously mentioned, this year (2007) marks the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Biko and special events will be held to commemorate his life. This will probably take place in Fingo Village and on the Rhodes campus. The event will hopefully be covered in this blog.

A brief biographical history of Stephen Bantu Biko

Biko was born on 18 December 1946 in King Williams Town. He was the youngest of three children. His father was a government-employed clerk and his mother a domestic worker. Biko’s father died when he was four years old.

Biko had shown a keen interest in anti-apartheid politics from a young age. His parents had placed an emphasis on the importance of education as the only means to a career and some level of independence. Jucks suggests: “Biko’s pursuit of education suggests that early influences, notably that of his parents, and subsequently that of his teachers, consistently supported education as a promising means toward a better life and, presumably, the gradual transformation of society ”. Biko was expelled from his first school in Lovedale for what was called ‘anti-establishment’ behaviour. Despite the Lovedale school being one of those under Verwoerd’s Bantu Education, Biko was increasingly exposed to a worldview or an ideology that promoted the importance of education. It is suggested that his expulsion from Lovedale contributed to his political orientation and resulted in his resentment of oppressive white authority .

Juckes, J.T. Opposition in South Africa: The leadership of Z.K. Matthews, Nelson Mandela, and Stephen Biko (USA, 1995), p. 119
Ibid., p. 121.

Freedom and Fire

The original buildings that made up the Native Secondary School are nowhere on this blog. We were unable to locate archived images of the school. At Nathaniel Nyaluza Public Secondary School today, the oldest buildings date to the mid-1980s when the school was rebuilt after it was destroyed by fire during a student protest.

Students at Nyaluza found themselves at the centre of resistance to apartheid in Grahamstown during the late seventies and eighties. The Fingo high school was particularly affected by student boycotts. Some Nyaluza students were leaders in COSAS, and many more began, in this period, to be politically active.

A timeline of Student Action at Nathaniel Nyaluza Public Secondary School, and other high schools in the Grahamstown township:

1975
Nyaluza students staged a sit-in, refusing to sit their mid-year exams.
Only sixteen students sat for their Matriculation exams.

1977
Nyaluza students participated in marches against Bantu Education.

1980
Students from Ntsika and Nyaluza secondary schools initiated a boycott, which was ended at Mary Waters High School in May.
Government-appointed "Peacemakers" engaged in open aggression with the students.

1984
Students from Ntsika drafted a list of demands; including elected SRCs, curriculum reform and an end to corporal punishment in schools.
New boycotts were called, in honour of Steve Biko, and in response to the issue of police brutality.
Nyaluza students participated in a 500-strong, student led march from Joza to Fingo.
Attendance at Grahamstown schools dropped below 30%.

1985
The government declared a State of Emergency in Grahamstown in July.
Fingo village became subject to a curfew between 10pm and 4am.
Residents of the Grahamstown townships met, and lodged a list of 33 demands to the Government - four of these issues were centred on education.

(all of the information contained in the timeline was drawn from the first two chapters of Ryota Nishino's Honours thesis:
Ryota Nishino, 'The Dynamics of School Protests: Grahamstown School Boycotts c.1984-1987' Submitted to the History Department, Rhodes University, South Africa, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a BA (Hons) degree in History, Rhodes University, 1999)

Steve Biko

This year, 2007, marks the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Stephen Bantu Biko in police custody. In recognition of this and in celebration of his life, a biography of his life will be included in the Fingo Village Blog. Biko visited Rhodes and Grahamstown in 1967 for a NUSAS (National Union of South African Students) conference. Rhodes was at that stage a white campus. In terms of a ministerial decree the university authorities did not allow black delegates to stay in the residences or to eat in the dining halls. Biko was outraged by this and made his dissatisfaction known. It is said that it was at this point that Biko realised the exact nature of what he was fighting for and the enormity of the challenge he faced in fighting and campaigning for a non-racial South Africa.

Member of the Fingo Village community remember seeing Biko. Steve Biko was one of the key figures in the anti-apartheid struggle, someone whose legacy still lives today and whose life and ideas continue to inspire many young people.