It's been 40 years since the merciless assassination of struggle hero Steve Biko. Yet today his story and image lives on. His legacy is more relevant to South Africans today than ever before. A breath of fresh air is being brought to his teachings and being adopted by revolutionaries at universities across the country.
Much like Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, Biko has transcended time and even artists have embodied his image in their work. The arts, in particular, have treated him with a poetry that offers a different way to revisit his life.
If you're looking to memorialise Biko today, here are a few important works we think you should check out.
"You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire" -- remembering Peter Gabriel's Biko
The lyrics will move you:
September '77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead
The man is dead
When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead
The man is dead
You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
The man is dead
The man is dead
And the eyes of the world are watching now, watching now
When Denzel Washington was nominated for an Oscar for his role in "Cry Freedom"
The film adaptation of Donald Woods' novel of the same name features this moving speech of Biko's, which got Denzel Washington nominated as Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars and the Golden Globe for his retelling of it.
Watch the clip below:
Steve Biko by Pitika Ntuli
Poet and sculptor Pitika Ntuli's seminal poem of Biko is required reading for anyone trying to understand him today:
Friends, Africans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to protest about Steve Biko's death but not to praise him.
The evil that men do live after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it not be with Biko.
The noble Vorster hath told us that Biko was ambitious;
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grieviously hath Biko answered it.
Here under, leave of Vorster and the rest, –
For Vorster is an honourable man;
So are they all honourable men,
Come I to speak at Biko's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Vorster says he was ambitious;
And Vorster is an honourable man.
When that poor have cried, Biko wept:
Ambition must be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Vorster says he was ambitious;
And Vorster is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Vorster spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, -and not without cause
What cause withholds, you, then to mourn
O judgement, thou art fled to Verwoerdish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!-Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Biko,
And I will Not pause until he comes back to me.
But yesterday the words of Biko might
Have stood against the world:
Now lies he there
And none so poor to do him reverence.
O Africans, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Vorster wrong and Botha wrong
Who you all know, are honourable men.
I will not do them wrong;
I rather do myself wrong and you wrong
Than to wrong such honourable men.
O! Pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth;
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers,
Thou art the ruins of the noblest men
That ever lived in the tide
Of times
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds do I prophecy, –
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue,-
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all parts of our land
Blood and destruction shall be in so much use;
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers would but smile
When they behold their children quarterd
With the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Biko's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Tiro by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry Havoc, let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell upon the earth
With carrion men groaning for burial.
Composer Phillip Miller's BikoHausen
At the end of a working lecture tour to South Africa in March 1971, composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and his wife Mary Bauermeister visited Soweto. They were accompanied by Biko, but there is little archival evidence of this meeting of two revolutionary leaders: Biko -- a radical thinker, student and black consciousness leader and Stockhausen -- one of the foremost avant-garde composers of the 20th Century.
"No-one can ever know what exactly transpired when Biko met Stockhausen in Soweto on that day. What their conversation was? What were the topics they might have covered? Music? Politics?" composer Phillip Miller asked ahead of the composition's release.
"We can however imagine and extemporize."
Totes Biko
And then, of course, all the paintings of the famous icon