Stephen Bantu Biko: Brutally Murdered in Detention
On 12 September 1977, Stephen Bantu Biko died alone in a cell after having been driven in the back of a Land Rover, naked and manacled, for 1 190 kilometres from Walmer Police Station in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) to the Pretoria Prison hospital on 11 September 1977. On 12 September 1977, Biko died of injuries sustained during interrogation. His death stunned and shocked the world. But not Jimmy Kruger, the apartheid Minister of Justice, who stated that Biko’s death “left him cold”.
In August 1977, Biko broke his banning order by travelling to Cape Town, hoping to meet Unity Movement leader Neville Alexander and deal with growing dissent in the Western Cape branch of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), which was dominated by Marxist, like Johnny Issel. Biko drove to the city of Cape Town with his friend Peter Jones on 17 August, but Alexander refused to meet with Biko, fearing that he was being monitored by the police.
Biko and Jones then drove back toward King William’s Town, and on their way back on 18 August, they were stopped at a police roadblock near Grahamstown. Biko was arrested for having violated the order restricting him to King William’s Town. Unsubstantiated claims were that the security services were aware of Biko’s trip to Cape Town and that the road block had been erected to catch him. Jones was also arrested at the roadblock; and he was subsequently held without trial for 533 days,
