Word: biko
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...MONTHS AGO, Steven Biko, leader of South Africa's Black Consciousness movement, died in prison as a result of brain damage following beatings by the South African police...
Last week, the South African magistrate in charge of the inquest into Biko's death found that no one connected with the case was guilty of any illegal act or omission. No one, the magistrate ruled, was responsible for Biko's death...
...ruling follows testimony from witness after witness showing that Biko's death could have been prevented at several different points. After the beating, doctors warned he had suffered brain damage. Nevertheless, he was driven, naked, 700 miles to Pretoria; somewhere on that trip he died...
...fact, the ruling may be more accurate than the magistrate intended. It may well be that no single person can be held guilty of the murder of Steve Biko; an indictment of the entire apartheid system is far more appropriate. Biko would not be dead if he had not been jailed for political activity, and he would not have been engaged in "illegal" political activity if his country's entire legal, economic and social system were not founded on racism and exploitation of 19 million blacks by 4.5 million whites. His death--like the deaths of so many other brave...
When the inquest continues this week, Kentridge is expected to attempt to show that Biko received his fatal head injury a full day before the alleged struggle with the police. Presumably he will also bear down on the fact that out of 28 affidavits sworn to by policemen and doctors, not one mentioned that Biko had knocked his head against a wall. Kentridge's implicit point: that the story was invented later by one or more of the participants to head off a possible murder charge...