Word: biko
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...groups to deal with those who do not heed this plea. Beat them, burn their books, burn their cars and shops. Show no mercy to informers and collaborators. They must all be killed. Long live the revolution! Power to the people!" I'm not pinning this [directly] on Biko, but this pamphlet is heavy meat. I cannot allow the black people to be intimidated by this sort of activism, just as I am not going to allow them to try and overthrow our state...
...MYSTERIOUS DEATH in a South African prison five weeks ago of Stephen Biko, a prominent leader of the anti-apartheid "Black Consciousness Movement" among South African blacks in the past decade, has justly provoked an international furor. But the Biko case must not serve simply as a short-lived cathartic outlet for anger and moral outrage. Rather, it should be seen as just the latest and most visible reminder of the larger pattern of ongoing government repression in South Africa--a pattern that has grown increasingly pervasive and brutal since the outbreak of anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa...
World attention is now focused on the frightening array of questions surrounding the circumstances of Biko's death. The most recent reports in one of South Africa's largest daily newspapers, The Rand Daily Mail, based on interviews with six doctors who examined Biko a week before his death, suggest he showed no medical signs of being on a hunger strike-a strike that the Vorster government has claimed was the cause of Biko's death. The Mail also indicated that Biko had already suffered extensive brain damage, possibly as the result of severe beatings on the head...
...Vorster regime's only response to the Biko controversy has been a sickening mixture of callous indifference, duplicitous disclosures to the press, and continued delay in releasing Biko's autopsy report. Now in response to these latest disturbing reports, the government has issued a formal complaint against The Mail, and thus tacitly threatened a future crack-down on all newspapers critical of its increasingly unconscionable policies...
...Biko's death and the Vorster regime's response have only highlighted issues that have become sadly routine in South Africa. Biko was the 43rd black South African since 1963 and the 21st in the past 18 months to die while being held in prison under the Detention Act, which allows the government to imprison dissidents without specifying charges. The South African Institute of Race Relations, an organization that opposes apartheid, recently issued a report challenging the official police versions of nine of these last 21 deaths. The report also lists 662 political prisoners currently being detained in South African...