History And Ideologies Who Was Steve Biko?

WHO WAS STEVE BIKO?
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Introduction
Ideologically an African socialist and African nationalist, Bantu Stephen Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist, who was always at the vanguard of a proletarian anti-apartheid movement known as the Black Consciousness. While his legacy has largely been contested, he remains an icon of anti-apartheid movement that became successful in decolonizing the people of South Africa. Stephen Biko was born on December 18, 1946 in Kingwilliamstown, Cape Province. He was the third child in his family and the second son born to Mr. and Mrs. Mzimgayi Biko. Biko’s father passed away when he was only four years old. He pursued his primary and secondary education locally prior to joining Lovedale Institution, Alice. After a short stint at Lovedale, which was run by the Bantu Education Department, he later proceeded to the Roman Catholic Mariannhill in Natal where he received his formative higher schooling. Towards the end of 1965, Biko joined the University of Natal to pursue his medical degree. He was active in National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), an anti-apartheid group, but later broke with the union in 1968 to establish South African Student’s Organization (SASO) where he served as the first President in 1969 after elections. His frustrations opposition to the apartheid system of white-minority rule and racial segregation in South Africa led to his parting ways with NUSAS, which was dominated by white liberals. The “apartheid” term is an Afrikaans word to mean separation of the whites from blacks. He served SASO as a Publicity Secretary following his appointment in July 1970. SASO’s official philosophy was Black Consciousness, an ideology developed by Biko and influenced by the African-American Black Power Movement and Frantz Fanon, an influential revolutionary and philosopher.[Michael, Cloete, “Steve Biko: black consciousness and the African other – the struggle for the political, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 24, no.2(2019), p.1014] [Steve, Biko, I write what I Like: A selection of his writings (Johannesburg: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1978), p.1] [Amry, Vandenbosch. South Africa and the world: the foreign policy of apartheid. (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), p.24]
SASO membership was open to “blacks”, a term Biko used to refer not just to Africans who spoke Bantu, but also Indians and people of color. Biko met his wife Miss Nontsikeleo Mashalaba from Umtala and married in December 1970. His interest in political activism sparked in 1971 and in the mid-1972, Wentworth terminated his course. In 1972, Biko and his compatriots founded the Black People’s Convention (BPC) to support ideologies of Black Consciousness among the wider population. In Durban, Biko started working for Black Community Programs (BCP), but by the start of March 1973, Biko and seven leaders of SASO were banned. The government had considered the Black Consciousness a threat and sought to stop Biko’s involvement by placing a banning order on him. Biko was restricted from accessing his hometown and speaking to more than one person at any given time. The government also canceled his me...