The sacrifice to end South African apartheid - for what?

Thirty years ago on September 12, 1977, Steve Biko, the charismatic leader of Black resistance to apartheid, succumbed to injuries inflicted by the South African Police while being held in detention.

Biko was detained on August 18 under the Terrorism Act, which allowed the police to hold a person for an indefinite period without access to a lawyer or notification to family and friends.

Biko was held and beaten in police custody in Port Elizabeth. When it was apparent that he would die, panic overcame his torturers and he was transported, in the back of a Land Rover, 1,200km to Pretoria Central Prison, where he succumbed to his wounds.

Biko founded and was the first President of the South African Students Organisation (SASO) in 1968 and was elected the first President of the Black Peoples Convention (BPC) in 1972, an organisation he also helped to found. The BPC brought together over 70 different black consciousness organisations which became known as the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM). Biko also helped establish the Black Community Program (BCP) for which he worked.

Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977. He was the 45th person to die in detention while being held under the Terrorism Act. He was 30 at the time of his death.

I met Steve Biko at the urging of Desmond Tutu (then Bishop of Lesotho) and Donald Woods who was then editor of the East London, Daily Dispatch. This occurred some months after my arrival in South Africa, which was on July 2, 1976, to take up an appointment as Second Secretary at the Australian Embassy in Pretoria.

In the time between my arrival and that meeting I moved rapidly across an emotional spectrum from being offended, to a loathing of apartheid as an organised and cruel system of oppression designed to entrench white privilege.

I was the first diplomat in South Africa to meet with Biko. My initial meeting with him was in King Williams Town on January 13, 1977. He struck me as a natural leader, a person who would be elevated within what ever company he kept.

We had a discussion which lasted four hours. I sent a long record of conversation back to Canberra. These are a few excerpts:

I met Biko, who is tall, good looking, and quietly spoken … at his suggestion we drove out of town to a quiet and secluded area of the surrounding veldt. He said the BCP office was bugged. During his recent detention, the Security Police had referred to conversations which had taken place there. Biko mentioned that one of the “the group” working at the BCP office, Mapetla Mohapi, had been taken into custody in August 1975 and was found dead in his cell a few days later … from the post mortem it appeared that Mohapi had been killed by the Security Police …

On the drive to the secluded area we discussed the current political and economic situation in Australia. He was well informed and questioned me closely on the events which had led to Mr Whitlam’s dismissal. I asked why he had such an interest in Australia, and he replied that, together with the Scandinavian countries, Britain and America, Australia was a country to which he looked to see how things were being done on a broad range of issues in particular how the process of democracy was evolving to cope with the demands of technology … Biko led the discussion throughout and commenced by giving a brief thumb-nail sketch of what he felt would be the likely course of events in southern Africa.

Nine months later Biko was dead. However over that period we had quite a bit to do with each other. I was able to secure embassy funding for the BCP library in King Williams Town. It was an important political gesture. The Australian Embassy, and thereby the Australian Government, was the first to give a donation to the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa.

In his book Biko Donald said: “… Steve (Biko) told me he had taken a liking to Bruce and had been completely candid with him. I might add that the feeling was mutual, and that Bruce became a firm friend of us both.”

This contact and funding was done against a background of hostility by the Australian Ambassador towards Black South Africans and indifference on the part of other political officers at the embassy with the exception of my predecessor, Di Johnstone.

Steve Biko’s funeral was held in King Williams Town on September 25. The Biko family and Donald and Wendy Woods insisted that I should be with them during the service.

It was held at a local sports stadium with over 20,000 mourners and hundreds of armed police. Black anger was palpable. Representatives from all the major embassies attended. Their new focus on Black affairs dates from the funeral. The world was outraged all the more so when the Minister for Police, James Kruger, told a ruling National Party meeting that Biko’s death left him cold.

On October 19 the South African Government banned 18 organisations: 17 were Black Consciousness organisations and the last was the Christian Institute, which because of its humanitarian activities on behalf of Blacks was regarded by the SA Government as a communist organisation.

In October Donald Woods received an invitation to attend a conference of the Africa - America Institute in the USA. During discussion about this trip Donald agreed that it would be a good idea to fly to the USA via Australia where he could outline what was happening in South Africa. Through my contacts and with the help of Di, speaking engagements were arranged in Australia.

I met Donald as he passed through Johannesburg on his way to Australia. I took him to the Australian Trade Office to get a visa and then took him back to the airport. As soon as I left him he was picked up by the police and driven back to East London, a journey of some 1,000km.

Donald was banned: he could only meet with one person at a time which meant that he could no longer work as a newspaper editor.

Two weeks later I drove to East London to see how he was fairing and to float the idea of my helping him and his family leave South Africa. Donald said that he had already thought about this and had discussed the pros and cons with Wendy. Donald said he was writing a book on Biko and issues surrounding publication would determine if and when he would leave.

An inquest into the death of Steve Biko was set for the November 14, 1977 in Pretoria. Because of his banning order Donald could not attend but Wendy could and she stayed at my house in Pretoria for the two-week inquest. It gave her the opportunity to further discuss plans to leave the country.

As we expected the inquest found that Biko’s injuries were the result of a scuffle and that, “the death cannot be attributed to any act or omission amounting to a criminal offence on the part of any person”.

In the event I helped Donald leave South Africa at the end of 1977. This was set out in Donald’s later book Asking For Trouble. As I was still employed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Donald gave me the pseudonym of Robin Walker. A film was also made of these events by Richard Attenborough called Cry Freedom in which I was portrayed by John Hargreaves as a journalist for the same reason listed above.

For the next two years that I was in South Africa the police state went into lockdown and Black opposition politics became even more difficult and fraught with danger.

I managed to secure passes to visit political detainees at Modderbee Prison (male) and The Fort (female). I was the only diplomat in South Africa visiting political prisoners: after a few visits a Swedish diplomat joined me.

Despite the best endeavours of the Apartheid Regime the focus and pressure from the rest of the world increased after the 1977 bannings and death of Biko.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), the World University Service (WUS) and a range of other anti-apartheid organisations increased their activities. In time sporting sanctions were imposed followed some years later by financial sanctions.

Through Dr Beyers Naude, a wonderful Afrikaner minister of religion, I was conscripted to take money, donated by the WCC and channeled through Beyers, to the dependants of political prisoners living in the Eastern Cape. Beyers was the head of the Christian Institute and together with the organisation he was banned on October 19, but this had very little influence on his activities.

I was in demand because I had diplomatic immunity and could move around the country without hindrance. I took information (letters), money and people around the country or across the border. I was of use to a number of people who were in difficulty.

Many, many people around the world and inside South Africa of different religions, cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds worked very hard, took risks and sometimes sustained a great deal of harm to bring about an end to apartheid.

In the light of this it is becoming increasingly difficult to find excuses for the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, as he prevaricates over intervention in Zimbabwe and implementing the universally accepted treatment of AIDS.

Mbeki left South Africa to study in the UK in 1962 at the age of 20. He stayed overseas for the next 30 years fulfilling a number of different roles for the ANC including as representative in a number of African countries. In 1977, at the time of Biko’s death, he was the ANC representative in Nigeria; an appointment which, among other things, required him to spend time on the diplomatic circuit.

The ANC was funded by benefactors overseas including the Soviet Union. Later when change appeared inevitable it was funded by multi-nationals including the Shell Company, mindful of the need to secure their future in South Africa.

Both Mbeki and the Black resistance movement in South Africa were recipients of assistance from a wide variety of sources. Without this assistance the ending of apartheid would have been longer and bloodier.

Having been the recipient of generous assistance it is difficult to understand why Mbeki, when in a position to alleviate the suffering of neighbouring people, does nothing. I would have thought his expressed desire to be the pre-eminent leader in Africa would demand it.

Against this crisis, all other words and pronouncements, such as the importance of African unity, amount to pompous posturing. When considered in conjunction with the cruel denial of the cause of AIDS and senseless methods of treatment, enshrined in South African health policy, Mbeki has no right to call himself a compassionate man, far less a leader.

To sack the Deputy Minister of Health, Ms Nozizwe Mandla-Routledge for doing her job and caring for the needs of the South African people, while at the same time protecting the corrupt Minister for Health Dr Tshabalala-Msimang and endorsing her quackery, provides a measure of Mbeki that indicates a weak and vacillating man prone more to bullying than bravery.

Steve Biko would be horrified to see his sacrifice and that of all those who died or were injured in the struggle against apartheid reduced to such a cruel legacy.