9/12: Was there American Involvment in Steven Biko's murder?

By: Chris Stevenson
Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion, pointblank appears in Black newspapers across the country and www.voiceoffreedom.com

 Twenty-Seven years after his murder, Steven Bantu Biko remains an international icon. What is more conspicuous to me even more than the anniversary of his death, is that almost a year ago (10/8/03) there was a wire service report that stated that the five policemen who killed him won't be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence. What hurts this case is the lack of witnesses (and truthful testimony), all five of the officers said Biko tried to attack one of the interrogators while in custody. They claimed to have "accidentally" slammed his head against a wall after they tackled him. The five: Col. Harold Sayman (who since died of cancer), Gideon Niewoudt, Ruben Marx, Daantjie Siebert, and Johan Beneke were also later suspected of poisoning Biko. They claimed they were under orders to rough him up.

Biko was said to have remained chained to a metal gate in a standing position for two days while the police wanted to see if they could continue the investigation. Biko was then taken to a police van naked and bleeding while being driven over 700 miles to a prison in Pretoria, where he died of brain injuries on September 12 1977.

The year old denial of the South African police officers runs contrary to a 1/97 confession of murdering Biko, among a host of other crimes against anti-apartheid loyalists. The sheer savagery of his treatment rivals that of Abu-Ghraib today, and may smack of CIA involvement. "For years the United States government backed the apartheid regime in South Africa, designating opposition groups such as Nelson Mandela's African National Congress as terrorists organizations." He was arrested on 8/77 by the South African police force, detained for three weeks without trial. At the time of his arrest Biko was charged under Section 6 of South Africa's Terrorism Act.

 It was obvious to many that Biko had been beaten during that long ride, he was unconscious once they reached Pretoria. A Supreme Court Judge said his medical treatment was "lacking any element of compassion care or humanity." The official South African line was that he died of a self-imposed hunger strike. Though Biko's activism wasn't considered a major threat to apartheid, during a time when Mandela and other South African nationalists were in prison, he stood out. The African nationalist Black consciousness movement mimicked the '70's Black Power movements in the US.

South African police and CIA previously collaborated back when an asset named Millard Shirley-ordinarily a "dirty tricks" expert-helped the White regime neutralize anti-apartheid activists, and most notably tipped South African police to the whereabouts of Mandela in '62. We know the CIA was complicit. Specific evidence thus far is circumstantial, and one must remember that though White South Africans don't need Americans' help to brutalize Blacks, new revelations are coming from that case all the time.