Why Biko, a university drop-out, matters

It is September and the blossoming of the spring will always remind us of a flower that was killed before it could radiate beauty. You might hear about Steve Bantubonke Biko and it will make you wonder why he was killed. What a terrible waste of a young life. He was only 30 years old.

Anyway, the man is NOT dead because a prophetic spirit cannot be killed. Well, why should the living still care about a young man who did little in his life except engage in ideas, translate them into practical self-help programmes and be an example of the urgent need for black people to be self-determining?

You see, some men — despite their age or circumstance — have the power to shape the way people think about culture, identity, history and the meaning of life.

From the little I know of this Biko, he was a dreamer, a prophet, a writer, an intellectual, a philosopher, a thinker, a strategist. Now, we have to ask ourselves, how a man can be so many highly esteemed when he was a university drop-out.

In case, you did not know, yes, he was a university drop-out.

He quit his medical studies at the University of Natal because he got disillusioned with an education that prepares the young to be part of the middle class.

He desired to be the agent of change he wanted to see among his own people, in his own community. When he left the racist university he chose to live and work among the poor in Ginsberg, in the blood-soaked Eastern Cape.

But there is no doubt that the death of Biko on September 12 1977 had a huge impact on race relations, politics, psychology and history in this part of the country.

Perhaps the only death that could be compared to his would be that of former president Nelson Mandela’s one day. Of course, no one dares compare the two. The one was a young prophet, the other a dreamer.

Also, the one was a self-educated philosopher and thinker, the other a product of Wits law school. Well, it is not for me to explain why a 30-year-old youth should matter 32 years after his death.

Some people will tell you that it has been an enormously long period of time. But thanks God and the ancestors, his death has been cleared and is less of a controversial matter, now.

There are many other unsung heroes and heroines who have disappeared, died and buried in mysterious circumstances because they were not Biko.

We must not forget them, too, when we acknowledge, celebrate and recognise Biko’s pivotal contribution to get us where we are. In fact the death of Biko is one of the first cases of recorded apartheid brutality. This was a man who was monstrously murdered by banging his skull against iron rails and the wall simply because he dared stand up for his rights and fight back when he was slapped around.

Of course, the brainwashing education that graduates receive at university does not teach them to stand up for anything. Instead, if you are educated you learn the OK Rule: obey and conform!

You see, we should always remember that sometimes when men are drunk on power and want to hold onto it indefinitely, they will not hesitate to kill and murder those who stand up to them and question what they do.

Biko was a condemned person because of his university drop-out thoughts, ideas and convictions. At the time, which is a short 32 years ago, South Africa was a heinous state. There were police men, sergeants, commissioners, cabinet ministers and other senior members of government who did not hesitate to snuff a life out like it was a cigarette.

Yet this was a young man who was neither an educated lawyer, qualified doctor nor a learned professor. He was, as we say, a university drop-out who was, essentially, an ordinary township man.

It was precisely for being that, an ordinary township man who liked his intellectual engagement, debate, hanging out and sometimes enjoying a drink or two that he was brutally murdered.

I do not remember if anyone has been found guilty of manslaughter. But the outcome of his death and the manner of it is something that continues to present this new society with a political problem: how do we live in peace with murderers walking among us?

Well, Biko is for many people a township intellectual and political hero who had “no fears”.

His death should always remind us: no man should be killed because of his thoughts, ideas and convictions.

Above all, he was a university drop-out who refused to be indoctrinated and conditioned by the educational system.