Word: biko
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
Under Kentridge's crossexamination, police witnesses revealed that Biko had been kept naked and chained in his cell for most of the 26 days he spent in detention-as well as during two full nights of interrogation. During the last 24 hours of his life, he had been driven, still unclothed but covered by a blanket, in the back of a police Land-Rover all the way to Pretoria, where he died of the head injuries 14 hours later...
There were gaping contradictions in the police testimony. Major Harold Snyman, head of the five-man interrogating team, testified that Biko, when shown several statements of "confession" written by friends, had "jumped up like a man possessed, grabbed a chair and threw it at me." Snyman then gave a vivid demonstration of how Biko had hit his head during the outburst-only to admit later that he had not seen the final incident himself. In subsequent testimony, two witnesses offered sharply varying accounts of the same interview. Furthermore, it was disclosed that the "confessions" Snyman referred to were actually dated...
Among the questions still to be answered: Why did the police at Port Elizabeth fail to tell the examining doctors that Biko had suffered a head bump? Why did the doctors fail to diagnose the brain injury, even though they all noticed that Biko was incoherent? Why was a dying man subjected to a 14½-hour road trip to Pretoria? And what ever happened to the story that he had been on a hunger strike...
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...