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Remembering the words of Steve Biko

FOR many years the silence and tranquillity of the cemetery of Ginsberg township where the remains of Steve Bantu Biko rest had been under torment from the crack of gunfire at a shooting range situated on the other side of the cemetery.

Every time we went to that cemetery to bury our loved ones or to visit their graves or to do a site service for the notables such as Steve Biko, the guns would fire, sending their sounds to the steep hill on the left-hand side of the cemetery, rebounding to the silence of the home of the dead.

As mourners, we would turn our heads around, jelly kneed, thinking that those who stood on the steep high ground on the cemetery's right wearing dark glasses and flashing cameras and intruding binoculars, had lost control.

That shooting range has been removed from the cemetery. And, there are no longer armed police accompanying our funerals when we have burials at the Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance.

Yet there are a few things that concern me about that cemetery. Despite being designated as a monument that was unveiled by former president Nelson Mandela, it still does not enjoy the upkeep that befits its status.

Secondly, the residents of King William's Town have nowhere else to bury their loved ones and so this historical monument is being filled up with graves in almost every space. One has to walk on top of other graves to reach the Steve Biko site.

Outside, in the small park that has four concrete benches around four concrete tables with a small patch of dried grass and a strip of dying flowers, are pieces of all sorts of things that I always see whenever I go there. Pieces of paper here and there, a torn packet of some snacks, a used condom, a dirty disposable nappy, an empty KFC packet with a dried chicken rib-cage and grounded thigh-bones - all of these scattered around while the bins stand empty.

I have friends who passed away silently in that cemetery, leaving me with the eyes of their fatherless children.

There are remains of notable people who lie there with untold stories, with unpublished books that are buried in their bosoms, books that I long to read, with songs that were composed but were never sung, songs that I wish to hear, with paintings in their hearts that should have been left behind for me to appreciate.

Kaya Biko is buried in that cemetery. Steve Biko is buried in that cemetery. My mother is buried in that cemetery.

This year's 35th anniversary of Steve Biko's death will highlight one of the important virtues of the man, the fact that he was a man of literature.

Yes, Steve Biko wrote brilliant pieces for the Saso newsletter, writings that spoke to the core of his people, writings that were lifted away from the contrived occupations of studentship.

There could never be a better tribute than to publish those writings in a book, a book that retained the caption of his column, I Write What I Like.

Ben Okri is a good choice for a speaker at the Biko Lecture at the University of Cape Town tonight.

Okri is a renowned poet, novelist and short-story writer who hails from the literary evergreen region of West Africa. Even today many, particularly in South Africa, read and re-read the poignant messages of the works of West African novelists, among them Chinua Achebe in his Things Fall Apartand Ayi Kwei Armah in his The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born, written and published in the 1950s and 1960s.

Also important during this 35th anniversary will be the much-awaited speech of the legendary professor Ben Khoapa who met in Steve Biko a mind partner and, in his own words, "indoda enesibindi" - a brave man - a man who never feared to experiment.

Between Khoapa and Biko, South Africa boasts of richness on many fronts.

During their time they changed the course and direction of community development and political engagement.

Before them, it was the Christian missionaries, who worked with black people in such areas as education, health, agriculture and other related social upliftment projects.

But when the two giants met, Khoapa being older than Biko by nine years, we saw black students walking out of their campuses and spending their vacations working for their communities, we saw black professionals leaving their comfort zones to volunteer their skills to the people from whose ranks they came.

As products of committed teachers themselves, Biko and Khoapa were resolved in their commitments. Biko's words tell it all: "We have in us the will to live through these trying times."

Khoapa will be speaking at the University of South Africa (Unisa) in Pretoria this afternoon. At the same event the Unisa Foundation in collaboration with Unisa Press will announce the re-publication of the Black Review that Biko and Khoapa started.

Black Review is a compilation of annual reports that was launched in 1972 as an alternative form of media that provided important material for the broad black political leadership, to assess the country's state of affairs with special regard to furthering the ideals of freedom.

Black Review was in the capable hands of committed activists with editors such as Mafika Gwala, Thoko Mpumlwana, Asha Moodley and a team of equally committed activist researchers such as Welile Nhlapo, Tebogo Mafole and the late Ben Langa.

Black Review took its readers into the debates of the white parliament, particularly whenever there was an issue about black people.

From the pages of Black Review we saw and learnt, in a contextualised manner, all the bioscopes in the tribal politics of the Bantustans.

For all the literary energy that came forth in the 1970s, in the form of novels, poetry, drama, music and the arts, Steve Biko and Black Consciousness were a direct impact on the quality of the content and the form of those works.

The vision that was shared by the political activists of the time, across the political space, had been spurred by the sense of art and literariness in the man himself and in the idea of Black Consciousness.

Granted, we never had a right to vote during the 1970s of Biko and Khoapa, but our right to think and our right to speak out found complement in the body politic of the time.

Whenever we commemorate Steve Biko Day, every September the 12th, let us pause and allow our minds to listen to the teachings of Biko, teachings that are contained in his words and in his actions.

  • Andile M-Afrika, is an MA student of literature at Rhodes University and author of The Eyes that Lit Our Lives: A Tribute To Steve Biko

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