The Testimony Of Steve Biko: Black Consciousness in South Africa

In May 1976, nine Blacks were arrested in South Africa and charged with terrorism for having ‘thoughts’ unacceptable to the regime. Bantu Stephen Biko, that country’s most important Black leader, stepped forward to testify on their behalf and thus broke the ban on his public speaking. In the late 1960s, Biko had founded the Black Consciousness movement, which called for the psychological and cultural liberation of the Black mind as a precondition to political freedom; the movement spread rapidly among students and the masses, and his goal of using group pride to break the strangle hold of White oppression was partly realized by the time that his colleagues were placed on trial. Biko’s courageous and delicate testimony, recorded here in the dramatic format of direct and cross examination, explores almost every issue in South Africa and..shows something of Biko’s brilliance, humor, vision and quickness of mind. This was to be his last public statement. In Sept. 1977, Bantu Stephen Biko was murdered in a South African jail.