South Africa’s new inquest into Steve Biko’s death comes decades late, but with it, hope

As a child under South Africa’s apartheid system, Winky Mngqibisa had always felt shy and inferior, painfully reminded of her status by racial laws that kept the black majority excluded from power.It was Steve Biko, a young anti-apartheid leader, who inspired her to be proud of herself. When he was tortured and killed in police custody in 1977, she mourned at his funeral − then joined his cause. “You must liberate your mind before you can liberate others,” she says, recalling his words.Open this photo in gallery:Winky Mngqibisa joined South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle as a teen, when she idolized the slain activist Steve Biko.Today, three decades after the end of white-minority rule, Ms. Mngqibisa is still seeking justice for her hero. When a new inquest into his death finally began in late August, she sat with her comrades in the back of the courtroom, sometimes leaping to her feet to join them in the soaring harmonies of liberation songs of the anti-apartheid struggle.But as the inquest hears testimony about missing files and dead witnesses, she has a growing fear: The full truth about the brutal killing may never be known.“There are so many lies,” the 66-year-old retired nurse and union activist said. “It shows how they were trying to cover it up.” Ms. Mngqibisa mourned at Mr. Biko's funeral in 1977, an event attended by thousands in what was then called King William’s Town, and now Qonce. He had been tortured in Gqeberha, then Port Elizabeth, farther down the South African coast. AFP via Getty Images The Biko case is one of an estimated 300 to 400 alleged crimes by apartheid security forces that were mysteriously neglected for decades by the African National Congress after it come to power in 1994. The files were allowed to gather dust on backroom shelves despite pleas by the families of the victims.South Africa’s famed Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which became the model for public inquiries in Canada and elsewhere, had reviewed hundreds of apartheid cases in the late 1990s and recommended criminal investigations in the Biko case and many others. But a new state inquiry, currently under way in Johannesburg, has discovered evidence of secret deals by officials decades ago to keep the cases buried.“I feel personally betrayed − and I feel that I betrayed victims,” said Wendy Orr, a former TRC commissioner. “I feel that I was lied to. I was used as an instrument to deliver a process about which the government did not have good intent.”Open this photo in gallery:The Truth and Reconciliation Commission – chaired by Desmond Tutu, right – handed its final report to the Mandela government in 1998. It recommended a criminal probe into the Biko case, among others.Peter Andrews/ReutersThe TRC promised the victims of apartheid crimes that their cases would be pursued and prosecuted. Evidence at the Johannesburg inquiry, however, suggests the lengthy delays were an unofficial immunity deal between former apartheid officials and the ANC to avoid scrutiny of crimes on both sides. The revelations have been “devastating” and have left Dr. Orr feeling “incredibly angry,” she told The Globe and Mail.After sustained pressure from families and civil society groups, the South African government has revived many of the apartheid cases, assigning prosecutors to work on them. Dozens of investigations have been launched, inquests have begun, and some have even led to criminal charges. But they are severely hindered by the passage of time, fading memories and the disappearance of evidence and witnesses.“It’s progress, but it’s far too little and it’s taken far too long,” Dr. Orr said. “I feel a profound sense of disappointment and disillusionment.”Open this photo in gallery:Daantjie Siebert and Harold Snyman, leaving the first Biko inquest in 1977, were part of the team that tortured the activist. Mr. Snyman died in 1998, but Mr. Siebert and another officer are alive.The Associated PressThe first inquest into Mr. Biko’s death, in 1977, was a blatant cover-up by apartheid authorities, finding no wrongdoing. When South African prosecutors announced the reopening of the case last year, they vowed to find his killers. Two of the policemen who interrogated Mr. Biko are still alive and could face charges if the inquest recommends it.“We are very determined that there is justice at the end of the day,” said Luxolo Tyali, a spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority. “We want to find out who can be criminally charged.”South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the death of Mr. Biko was “a terrible, devastating blow” to the entire country. The inquest is “an important process to all of us, because the truth must set all of us free,” he told state broadcaster SABC.Open this photo in gallery:Sergeant Fundiswa Dingiswayo testified in August about the gaps in police records of the Biko case.It will not be easy. The inquest’s first witness, investigating officer Fundiswa Dingiswayo, testified that the official police docket in the Biko case was riddled with missing pages and incomplete records. The doctors who examined Mr. Biko were either dead or could not be traced, she said.The presiding judge, Isaac Madondo, has rejected the Biko family’s request for a postponement to allow further investigation. He insisted that the inquest must push ahead quickly because of the advanced age of the surviving police officers.Mr. Biko’s son, Nkosinathi Biko, disagrees with the judge’s fear that the former policemen could die. “Let’s allow that to be God’s work,” he told The Globe. “We’d rather that the court take its time to cure the deficiencies in the evidence.” Nkosinathi Biko has been pressing for more time to investigate the death of his father. Judge Isaac Madondo argues that the surviving police officers might not have long to live to face justice. Bantu Stephen Biko was raised in the impoverished township of Ginsberg, in the Eastern Cape region. As a student activist in the 1960s, he helped found the Black Consciousness Movement, focusing on psychological empowerment for the black majority. In 1973, when the apartheid regime decided he was a threat, it imposed a banning order on him, prohibiting him from travelling or speaking in public.Four years later, at the age of 30, Mr. Biko was stopped and arrested at a police roadblock for breaking the banning order. He was taken to the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, and transferred to a notorious torture site: the sixth floor of the Sanlam Building, a bland-looking insurance-company tower. Over a period of days, he was shackled and severely beaten by police in Room 619, leaving him with massive brain damage.Several days later, police put him in the back of a vehicle, semi-naked and manacled, and drove him nearly 1,200 kilometres to a prison hospital in Pretoria, where he died a day later. He was the 46th political detainee to die during interrogation by the apartheid security forces over a 14-year period.The world was shocked by his death. He was mourned in a song by pop star Peter Gabriel and in a popular Hollywood movie, Cry Freedom. About 20,000 people attended his funeral in King William’s Town, now known as Qonce, and he soon became a South African icon.At the reopened inquest, his supporters wore brightly coloured shirts emblazoned with Mr. Biko’s image. Outside the courthouse, they held placards protesting the 49-year delay in the quest for justice. Inside, they sang songs and chanted his name: “Long live the spirit of Steve Biko, long live.”Most of the supporters are members of AZAPO, a political party that regards itself as the heir to Mr. Biko’s cause. This is a big year for them. In addition to the revived inquest, they are preparing for the 80th anniversary of his birth in December and the 50th anniversary of his death next year.After so many decades, however, the Biko aura is fading. AZAPO is an increasingly marginal group in South African politics, failing to win any parliamentary seats in recent elections. The ANC, which has ruled South Africa almost single-handedly for the past 32 years, feuded bitterly with AZAPO in the 1980s, and the Biko legacy became a victim of their conflict.Open this photo in gallery:Many demonstrators at the Biko inquiry belong to the AZAPO political party.At the cemetery where Mr. Biko is buried in Qonce, a sign reads: “Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance.” But a recent visit found his grave devoid of visitors or flowers. The site was vandalized by thieves in 2024 who stole the bronze fists that marked his tomb. While the fists were eventually replaced by a marble replica, the metal gate at the cemetery’s entrance is still gone. It was looted to be sold as scrap metal.Kwanele Mavi, a local delivery man, often goes to a picnic site near the cemetery to enjoy its peace and quiet. But he says he has never visited the grave itself and doesn’t know much about Mr. Biko’s life, except that he was “a good guy.”He is skeptical about the inquest. “It’s good for the family to have closure, but I don’t think it will change anything,” he said. “It takes forever for people to be prosecuted.”As for the replica of the fists on Mr. Biko’s grave, he said: “It’s not going to be there for long. They’ll steal it again.”The former Sanlam Building in Gqeberha, where Mr. Biko and other prisoners were tortured, has been converted into a social housing project. The former Room 619, now numbered 609, is an ordinary apartment unit. There are plans to develop a documentation centre on the ground floor, but there are no plaques or signs on the sixth floor to recall its bloody history as an interrogation headquarters. Tenants who spoke to The Globe were unaware that two political prisoners died here.“This space is still very chilling to me,” said Janet Cherry, a former student activist who was detained twice at the Sanlam Building in the 1980s and later became a TRC researcher and university professor.Visiting the building last month, she gazed at a stairwell where anti-apartheid activist George Botha fell to his death in 1976, allegedly at the hands of the police who were interrogating him. “It’s absolutely terrifying to look down there.”She said she felt offended that the sixth floor was occupied by regular tenants. “At the very least, this should be a space of memory, where people can come and sit quietly and learn about what happened.” Open this photo in gallery:The Sanlam Building is now an apartment tower. No one occupies the room where Mr. Biko was tortured, but there are tenants in other units on the same floor.Open this photo in gallery:Professor Janet Cherry was also detained on the sixth floor of Sanlam, which she wants to be set aside for memorial purposes.South Africa’s TRC inquiry, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, gained worldwide fame for its bold attempt to heal the wounds of apartheid by encouraging perpetrators to confess their crimes and seek amnesty. Many did so. But the process was undermined by a lack of time, the disappearance of key police files and a lack of co-operation from some members of the new ANC government.“In my view, there was no political interest or will in investigating and prosecuting crimes of the past,” said Piers Pigou, a former member of the TRC’s investigations team, in a submission to the state inquiry in Johannesburg. “Most people inside the ANC who could have brought information to the TRC did not do so.”Police files on about 314,000 South Africans were reportedly burned or shredded by apartheid officials. Because of deadlines on its work, only about 2,000 of the 21,000 submissions to the TRC’s committee on human-rights violations were examined.The recent reopening of some apartheid cases is “certainly a significant improvement from the glacial progress we have seen over the last 20 years,” Mr. Pigou told The Globe.But the government’s support for these inquests – after many years of apathy – has been “cynical and self-interested,” he said. Even the TRC itself became an “exercise in forgetting” – an attempt by the ANC government to manage and contain the issue, Mr. Pigou said.Open this photo in gallery:President Cyril Ramaphosa gave the annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture in 2018, early in his first term. Recently, he said a new Biko inquest is 'an important process to all of us.'Phill Makagoe/AFP via Getty ImagesThe latest inquests are “really running out of time,” according to Jessie Waldman, senior legal co-ordinator of the TRC program at the Foundation for Human Rights, which is helping more than 25 families to reopen apartheid-era cases.“It’s moving, but it’s not moving fast enough, considering how many cases are waiting for justice, how long the families have waited and how little time we have left,” she told The Globe. “So many witnesses, family members and perpetrators are becoming of an age where they’re dying or becoming very sick.”Yet the families of many victims are still battling to reverse the cover-ups by apartheid authorities. “They are yearning for the truth,” Ms. Waldman said.“Replacing those findings with a true and accurate recording of what happened is incredibly significant for the families. We still very much feel it is worthwhile to proceed with these cases to get what justice is possible.”Open this photo in gallery:For some Biko supporters at the high court, charging the surviving officers is less important than pressing them to apologize for their actions in 1977.At the Biko inquest, on the back benches in the courtroom, his supporters say they are not seeking vengeance against the former policemen. They don’t expect anyone to go to prison. They simply want them to acknowledge what they did.“We want to hear them say it was wrong, to apologize,” said Nelvis Qekema, the national president of AZAPO. “There must be someone who takes responsibility.”But there was no sign of an apology from the two surviving policemen, 80-year-old Daniel Petrus Siebert and 76-year-old Jacobus Johannes Oosthuysen Beneke, when they testified at the inquest this week. Both continued to deny any blame for Mr. Biko’s death, insisting he was injured in a brief fight in the interrogation room – despite testimony from a forensic pathologist who said his extensive injuries were inflicted over a period of hours or days.Nearly half a century after she attended Mr. Biko’s funeral, Ms. Mngqibisa sat patiently at the back. “We want to understand what happened,” she said. “Even if those perpetrators are found guilty, they are too old − they could die at any time. But there will be some final truth.”