THE PRESS THE PRESS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1977. Steve Biko’s death

Press, 1 November 1977, Page 20

THE PRESS THE PRESS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1977. Steve Biko’s death

The South African Government, under the pressure of public opinion both at home and abroad, has belatedly decided to investigate the circumstances in which the young African, Steve Biko, founder and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, died in a prison cell in Pretoria. An inquest is to be held, with the full hearing beginning on November 14. It will be the responsibility of the Vorster Government to ensure that it is fully and publicly reported, and that Mr Biko’s relations, including his mother, wife and two young children, are adequately represented. There must be no suspicion of a cover-up. It is clear from the delay in ordering an inquiry (Mr Biko died on September 12) that the Minister of Justice, Mr Kruger, had no wish to bring the case into the full glare of publicity. There was a post-mortem immediately after Mr Biko’s death, but the findings were withheld, allegedly to await laboratory tests. Now the time for concealment is over.

Mr Kruger, who surely must be heading for the political limbo, had tried to give the impression that the death was the result of a hunger strike. When the “Rand Dailv Mail” and the

“Sunday Express.” in Johannesburg, began publishing the results of their own inquiries, he sought to have them silenced by the Press Council, a handpicked body which seemed only too eager to co-operate, apparently with the threat of the Prime Minister, Mr Vorster. to impose a rigid censorship, in mind. But the newspapers — Afrikaans as well as English — refused to let the matter drop. Mr Vorster, it seems, has accepted the situation, although he has tried to create some sort of diversion by calling what, has been described as a wholly unnecessary general election on November 30.

Whether Mr Kruger knew that Mr Biko had been brutally treated in prison has not yet been disclosed. But he will not find it possible to escape questioning now, as he did when he summoned the Press Council into session but refused to attend himself. Moreover, the facts about Mr Biko’s death are already known. His body showed no signs of starvation: but he had clearly been beaten. He had extensive brain damage and also chest injuries. Mr Kruger will also be reminded of a grim record of prison administration during his period of office. Mr Biko was the twentieth prisoner to die in custody in 18 months. Ten of the deaths were attributed to suicide, two to falls from prison windows, two to the use of force during disturbances, and only' five to “natural causes.”

Mr Biko was no stranger to detention without trial. He had experienced it four times, including, on one occasion, 42 days of solitary confinement. He had been banned from university study: and when he switched from medicine to law and managed to pass some stages after secret study, he was prosecuted again for breaking the ban on entry to “any place of education.”

Mr Vorster’s excuse for calling a snap election is that he wants to show that external interference with government in South Africa will not be tolerated. He regards his Government as the last bastion against the spread of communism in Africa: and he insists that what the rest of the world thinks of South African politics does not concern him at all. When world opinion reacts to the facts of Mr Biko’s shameful death as they become known he may have to change his tune.