Biko’s ideal of black self-reliance more relevant than ever before, says Ramaphosa

CYRIL RAMAPHOSA|

ON this day 45 years ago, Stephen Bantu Biko died in police custody in Pretoria Central Prison.

Human dignity, the principle at the heart of his black consciousness activism, was denied him. In the words of the family lawyer Sir Sydney Kentridge, his was “a miserable and lonely death on a mat on a stone floor in a prison cell”.

It remains a source of great sorrow all these years later to recall that Steve Biko was just 30 years old when he died. He was cut down in his prime by those who feared the power and resonance of his ideas of self-liberation and his efforts to infuse black men and women with pride and dignity.

He never got to see in his lifetime what he called ‘the glittering prize’, the realisation of a true humanity. Writing about this ideal, he famously said: “In time we shall