Word: biko
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...already chosen violence. South Africa chose institutionalized violence when it erected its system of apartheid decades ago, and every time it strengthened that system in recent years with bantustans and pass laws. South Africa chose violence at Sharpeville in 1960, at Soweto in 1975, with the murder of Steve Biko last year. Supported by South Africa, Rhodesia chose violence with its raids last week. When the two countries are not choosing violence, they are backing and filling, stalling for time, as in the now-on, now-off elections in Namibia, as in the mockery of a transitional government in Rhodesia...
...YEAR AGO Tuesday, a young man named Steve Biko died in a South African prison. Biko was a man of some stature in the black community, known for his intelligence and his dedicated work against apartheid through the Black Consciousness Movement. Realizing his popularity and the damaging publicity that could result from his jailing, the South African police told the press that the cause of his death was suicide--the result of a hunger strike complicated by a fall from a chair that fractured his skull...
...tragic circumstances of Biko's death underscore the brutally inhumane, coldly rascist nature of John Vorster's apartheid regime. Biko has become a martyr, a symbol of the growing struggle against apartheid inside South Africa and around the world. We can only hope that the outrage over his death hastens the day when the black majority in South Africa rules itself...
...with many foreign affairs, it is all too easy to dismiss Biko's murder as something distasteful, but far away. The South African tragedy, however, extends far beyond the borders of the bantustans such as Soweto; in fact, through American companies with operations there, it reaches all the way back to investors in this country, up to and including Harvard. The presence of these U.S. dollars propping up Vorster's government--directly or even indirectly--mocks the concepts of justice and equality...
...Southern African Solidarity Committee and the United Front in this work against this great evil. The task will not be easy, and with an important but unfortunately unexciting slate of case-by-case reviews in the offing, it will take real dedication. But the memory of Steve Biko and all he stood for compels us to do no less. It may be a new year, but the goal remains the same: Harvard and U.S. dollars out of South Africa...