New inquest into anti-apartheid icon Steve Biko’s death
South Africa will launch a new investigation into 1977 death in the police custody of Steve Biko, the iconic anti-apartheid figure.
The investigation, the anniversary of Biko’s death, will be officially recorded in court about half a century ago.
Although South African officials have recently been criticized for not waiting for a long time, the police launched new investigations for other apartheid leaders and activists who died in detention or suspicious conditions.
These include the murder of Nobel Peace Prize owner Albert Luthuli, 1981 lawyer Griffiths Mxenge and a group of activists known as Cradock Four in 1985.
Biko was at the forefront of the black consciousness movement in South Africa in the 1960s.
In August 1977, he was arrested by the Apartheid security forces near the Grahamstown town on the southern coast, and was beaten and tortured at a police station and later at the local police station.
On September 11, 1977, more than 20 days in custody was loaded unconsciously on a police vehicle, and the next day he was deported to a prison hospital in Pretoria, where he still died in a cell with naked and legs -chained cells. He was 30 years old.
The cause of death was recorded as brain injuries and kidney failure. Later in that year, an investigation, which was largely rejected as a covering, found that Biko had hit his head against the wall in a friction with police officers.
Duzinesi activists died in custody during the apartheid system, and the investigations often cleared the security forces of any crime.
After Apartheid officially ended in 1994, South Africa organized a real and reconciliation commission to investigate and reveal Apartheid crimes. Some police officers were forgiven for their actions, but many were not.
Nevertheless, none of those who played a role in murders and other crimes were not tried in the years after Apartheid, and after successive Apartheid, South African governments were criticized for allowing cases to shift. President Cyril Ramaphosa announced an investigation into the allegations that investigations were deliberately blocked.
It is unclear whether any of the police officers in Biko’s death are still alive. South Africa’s National Prosecutor’s Office, 48 years later, the new investigation into the death of BİKO’s new investigation, “the past to address the brutality and the biko family and the society in general,” he said.
Biko inspired a Hit song with musician Peter Gabriel’s anti-Apartheid anthem and appeared as a biko in the actor Denzel Washington 1987.
