https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko: Stephen Bantu Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, until his death while in police custody.
A student leader who went on to found the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) which empowered and mobilized much of South Africa's urban black population, he died in police custody and has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement. While he was alive, his writings and activism had the goal of empowering black people. He was famous for his slogan "black is beautiful", which he described as meaning: "man, you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being".
Biko was never a member of the African National Congress (ANC), but the ANC nonetheless included him in the pantheon of struggle heroes, going so far as to use his image in campaign posters in South Africa's first non-racial elections in 1994. Nelson Mandela said of Biko: "They had to kill him to prolong the life of apartheid."
Like Frantz Fanon, Biko originally studied medicine, and, like Fanon, Biko developed an intense concern for the development of black consciousness as a solution to the existential struggles that shape existence, both as a human and as an African. Biko can thus be seen as a follower of Fanon and of Aimé Césaire, in contrast to more multi-racialist ANC leaders such as and Albert Lutuli and Nelson Mandela after his imprisonment at Robben Island, who were initially disciples of Gandhi.
Biko saw the struggle for African consciousness as having two stages, "Psychological liberation" and "Physical liberation". The nonviolent influence of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. upon Biko is then suspect, as Biko knew that for his struggle to give rise to physical liberation, it must exist within the political realities of the apartheid government, so Biko's nonviolence may be seen more as a tactic than a personal conviction.
In the present post-apartheid South Africa, Biko is revered across the political spectrum regardless of ideology. Some people see Biko's philosophy as irrelevant after 1994, since his dream was not achieved and the ANC became the ruling party after the first democratic elections. However, in 2004, he was voted 13th in the SABC3's Great South Africans. Many present-day social movements, activists, and academics continue to stress the relevance of Biko's black consciousness as well however. This includes a strong critique of voting by writer and political activist Andile Mngxitama who has said that if Biko were alive today, he would not be supporting any political party, would not even vote, but would be marching with the social movements against government.
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