ABBY ZIMET
TO mark Black History Month, music legend Peter Gabriel has teamed up with the non-profit Playing For Change and artists around the world to re-record his soaring 1980 anthem “Biko,” inspired by the savage murder of anti-apartheid icon Steve Biko by South African police while in custody.
A gifted medical student and charismatic organizer, Bantu Steve Biko was arguably the most famous martyr of the struggle against South African apartheid.
Filling the void left by the ban on the African National Congress and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and other leaders, Biko launched the South African Students Organization in 1969, and a few years later the Black People’s Convention.
His “black consciousness movement” sought “the cultural and political revival of an oppressed people” and stressed the need for self-reliance under the rubric, “Black man, you are on your own.”
His goal:”The realization by the Black man of the
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