Steve Biko

Steve Biko was a South African anti-apartheid activist and the leading thinker of the Black Consciousness Movement. While a medical student in Durban he helped found the South African Students' Organisation, an organisation for Black students. Banned by the government, he continued to write and organise until he died in police custody in Pretoria in 1977. I Write What I Like, published the year after his death, collects his writings, including columns he wrote under the pen name Frank Talk.

Key ideas

• 'The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.'
• Black Consciousness means Black people rejecting the inferiority imposed on them and defining themselves.
• Liberation must be led by Black people themselves, not by white liberals acting on their behalf.
• 'Black' names a shared political condition of oppression, including people classified as coloured and Indian.
• A free South Africa should draw on African communal values and reject imposed Western norms.

Major works

• I Write What I Like (1978)
• Black Souls in White Skins? (1970)

In the Book corner

• I Write What I Like 1978 · Beginner
  A posthumous collection of writings by the South African leader of the Black Consciousness movement, edited by his friend Father Aelred Stubbs…

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