STEVE BIKO MURDER REMEMBERED - 40 YEARS AGO AND NO JUSTICE YET!

South Africa - Daily Maverick

Remembering Biko: Black Consciousness Movement leader's killers must sit in the dock

• Greg Nicolson
• South Africa
• 12 Sep 2017 09:35 (South Africa)
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Forty years after police killed Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko, no one has been prosecuted. That’s despite five officers being denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As the country commemorates another year since the struggle hero was killed, the inquest into Biko’s death should be reopened. The recent inquest into Ahmed Timol’s death sets an example.

 By GREG NICOLSON.

In 2014, auctioneers Westgate Walding tried to sell Steve Biko and Ahmed Timol’s original autopsy documents. Biko’s had a reserve of R70,000 to R100,000. The families of Timol, who was allegedly killed by apartheid police in 1971, and Biko, killed by police in 1977, hired the same pathologist to conduct autopsies. He left his records to his assistant and when she died they ended up with her children. Then Westgate and Walding tried to sell the autopsies, including certificates from pathologists and post-mortem reports.

The auction was interdicted, but the grotesque attempt was symbolic. How can someone so blatantly disrespect South African struggle heroes, who were killed while fighting for freedom, their remaining loved ones, and the country? It’s simple, really: because justice, much like democracy, has never quite arrived and we commemorate the dead without actually honouring them.

Today marks 40 years since the 30-year-old activist and intellectual Steve Biko died of brain injuries after he was arrested in Port Elizabeth. He was severely beaten by cops, shackled and driven naked in the back of a police vehicle to Pretoria where he died in a prison cell. He had an international reputation and his death drew condemnation from around the world. But no one involved in the killing of one of the country’s most important struggle leaders has faced consequences. Not during apartheid. Not in democracy.

Biko was arrested in August 1977, like others who were seen as influential to the student protests a year before. The then minister of justice and police, Jimmy Kruger, claimed he died in custody while on a hunger strike. He was said to be the 20th person to have died in custody in the preceding 18 months. Journalists exposed Kruger’s lie and an inquest was established.

“On the available evidence the death cannot be attributed to any act or omission amounting to a criminal offence,” ruled the magistrate.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) disagreed. Five police officers applied for amnesty – Harold Snyman, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Ruben Marx, Daantjie Siebert and Johan Beneke. The TRC  rejected their version of events, calling them improbable and contradictory. It said they weren’t credible witnesses.

 “They had clearly conspired to conceal the truth of what led to the tragic death of Biko soon after the incident and have persisted in this attitude before us.”

The amnesty applications were rejected, but in 2003 the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) declined to prosecute. It said there was insufficient evidence to justify charges, with a lack of eyewitnesses, but it might reconsider its decision if new evidence emerged.

On Tuesday, President Jacob Zuma will visit Kgosi Mampuru Prison and lay a wreath in the cell where Biko died. “Steve Biko fought white supremacy and was equally disturbed by what he saw as an inferiority complex amongst black people. He emphasised the need for psychological liberation for black people, to accompany physical liberation to undo the damage caused by apartheid,” said Zuma on Monday. “He advocated black pride and black self-reliance, believing that black people should be their own liberators and lead organisations fighting for freedom.”

Commemorations that don’t call for justice are disingenuous. That’s where Timol comes back in. Officially, an apartheid inquest found the former SACP leader died after jumping off the 10th story of Johannesburg’s infamous John Vorster police station. His family fought for years for the NPA to reopen the inquest. After resistance, or perhaps incompetence, the NPA finally reopened the inquest, which was held recently in Pretoria.

Witnesses were called to the stand. The gruesome details of apartheid police’s detainment and torture techniques were once again revealed. Different versions of how Timol died were interrogated. Pathology reports, after the auctioneer who owns them allowed access, were scrutinised. The court is still to deliver its findings, but Timol’s family was finally allowed a chance to find out more about what happened and who might have been responsible.

Such inquests are legally established to make four findings: who died, when they died, how they died, and if anyone is responsible and should be recommended for investigation and possible charges.

Biko’s death received far greater attention than Timol’s. But neither the media reports, the 1977 inquest, or the TRC process can be seen as sufficiently comprehensive. Five people asked for amnesty for Biko’s death, but do we know all the facts? Were there others involved who did not come forward? How many people were involved in the attempted cover up? Can new evidence be unearthed that could justify criminal charges against those involved?

Whether the inquest into Biko’s killing is reopened or not will likely depend on whether his family wants to pursue it. There are pitfalls. Timol’s family had to doggedly pursue the NPA to get the process started. Then they had to sit through painful testimonies.

But Biko’s legacy is only becoming more and more important in South Africa. His voice has an increasingly prominent influence on modern politics, particularly amongst student activists calling for rapid and far-reaching change. The country deserves to know more about how he was killed. It deserves to see those involved cross-examined in a courtroom. DM

• Greg Nicolson
• South Africa

IN MEMORIAM STEVE BIKO 12 SEPTEMBER 1977

Steve Biko died on 12 September 1977 - 39 years ago.

He died because he was murdered by the South African apartheid government and its police who used vicious and brutal assaults on prisoners to get what they wanted from them, and if they didn't, they battered them to death as they did with Steve Biko.

One had hoped that with a change of regime at the end of apartheid in 1994 that things would change and improve, but of course they haven't and the black South African government of Jacob Zuma is guilty of the murder of 38 miners at Marikana who were striking for more pay from a mining company which mine platinum and which responded to a miners' strike by getting the police to shoot at them and thus murder them.

In South Africa it seems as if there is no limit to the poison that issues forth there on a daily basis.

SOUTH AFRICA - A POISON PILL FOR JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE.

This article comes from the print version of the Johannesburg Sunday Times of 27 November 2011. It is an interesting fact that most of the articles from that day's newspaper are able to be found online, but not this one!! One wonders why!!

A POISON PILL FOR JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE

Sugar-coating a new attempt to bully the courts fools no one

Sunday Times – South Africa 27 November 2011

BY MAMPHELA RAMPHELE, Executive Chair of the Letsema Circle and a board member of the Open Society Foundation

The cabinet decision on the judiciary this week seemed like a sweet offering, even a conciliatory gesture after the rancour of the secrecy bill fight. Cabinet spokesman Jimmy Manyi spoke of the independence of the judiciary, of enhancing the integrity of the Judicial Service Commission, of a mechanism that would promote the constitutionally enjoined obligation of cooperative government.

But all this was sugar coating, because at its heart there was poison for our democracy.

The core of the decision is that the role of the judiciary is to be assessed by an institute appointed by the government and that even the decisions of the Constitutional Court are to be subject to such assessment. This assessment, at the instigation of the executive, invites the assumption that the role of the courts, and the Constitutional Court in particular, as ultimate arbiters of our constitution is to be usurped.

There can be no escaping the impression that the cabinet’s cross-hairs are firmly pointed at the judiciary’s independence.

I know only too painfully well what it means when the judicial arm of government is cowed, is subjugated before the executive. Thirty-four years ago this month, the inquest into Steve Biko’s death was held. Despite the extensive and overwhelming evidence that Biko had been abused and murdered by the Security Branch, Pretoria’s Chief Magistrate delivered a verdict that exonerated each and every one of them. Counsel for the family, Sidney Kentridge, argued that such a verdict would give license to abuse helpless people with impunity. And it did. Scores died in detention in the years that followed.

A journalist wrote at the time: “There’s no word of sorrow or anger by the authorities, not even a suggestion detainees in future won’t suffer the same treatment. They just don’t care. And that is what South Africa voted for.”

And of course, that is what the small white electorate voted for.

Had the judiciary not been under the thumb of the executive, there is no guarantee that the chief magistrate would have reached a different verdict. But if the magistrate had had the assurance that finding the state culpable, that assessing fairly and independently would have earned him no recrimination from the executive, there is a much greater likelihood he would have delivered a just verdict.

Thankfully, we live now in different times. And yet the importance of strong, independent courts able to check government folly when it occurs remains. In the Treatment Action Campaign case, the Constitutional Court famously held that the government’s then policy of distributing Nevirapine, medication reducing the transmission of HIV from mother-to-child, to pregnant mothers living with HIV at only two clinics per province was in breach of the constitution’s right of access to healthcare – and unreasonable, given that the manufacturers of Nevirapine had offered it free of charge for two years and that the World Health Organisation had concluded that Nevirapine was an appropriate intervention to prevent mother-to-child transmission.

Who knows how many lives have been saved as a result of that decision. A cowed court, a court unduly fearful of executive repercussion could not have made such judgment. That the Constitutional Court did, that policy was altered, is a reflection of the health of our democracy, a tribute not only to our courts, but to our executive and legislative branches as well.

From our past, to our near past, the Constitutional Court is almost certain to be the next staging ground in the fight over the secrecy bill. Recent pronouncements by the executive highlight the fear that policies decided by a government elected by the popular vote will be countermanded through the courts. And our President is not wrong when he says: “Political battles must be fought on political platforms.” But majorities in parliament in South Africa and elsewhere – are not determinative of the constitutionality of laws made. Where there is concern for the legality or constitutionality of a law, courts must make the appropriate determination.

In many respects, the Constitutional Court is the bellwether of our democracy. It was the most significant new institution created at the time of our constitution’s enactment.

Interference with the court, implicit in the suggestion that its judgments and record are to be assessed, sets us back on the path to our constitutionally envisaged future.

And the sleight of hand – the cabinet’s talk of the need to “affirm the independence of the judiciary” through an assessment that cannot but create the impression that the independence of even our very highest court is at risk – undermines our intelligence.

As if we, who have been fighting for democracy all our lives, would not know.