Today in History: Apartheid police admit to killing Stephen Biko
News of the political killing, denied by the white minority government, led to international protests and a UN-imposed arms embargo.
On this day in 1997, four apartheid-era police officers, appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, admit to the 1977 killing of Stephen Biko, a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement.
In 1969, Biko, a medical student, founded the South African Students’ Organisation for South Africa’s black students to combat the racist apartheid policies and to promote black identity. In 1972, he helped organise the Black People’s Convention and in the next year was banned from politics by the government.
Four years later, in September 1977, he was arrested for subversion. While in police custody in Port Elizabeth, Biko was brutally beaten and then driven 1 200km to Pretoria, where he was thrown into a cell. On 12 September 1977, he died naked and shackled on the filthy floor of a cell in a prison hospital.
In 1995, after the peaceful transfer to majority rule in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to examine decades of apartheid policy and to address the widespread call for justice for those who abused their authority under the system. However, as a condition of the transfer of power, the outgoing white minority government requested that the commission be obligated to grant amnesty to people making full confessions of politically-motivated crimes during apartheid.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu was appointed to head the commission, which was soon criticised by many South Africans for its apparent willingness to grant pardons. In early 1997, five former police officers, including Gideon Nieuwoudt, appeared before the commission and admitted to killing Stephen Biko two decades earlier.
The commission agreed to hear their request for political amnesty but in 1999 refused to grant amnesty because the men failed to establish a political motive for the brutal killing. In October 2003, it was announced that the five policemen would not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had elapsed and there was insufficient evidence to secure a prosecution.
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