By Semafor Africa
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
South Africa will reopen an inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko — almost 50 years after he died in police custody.
Biko, who founded South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement when he was a medical student, died in a prison cell at the age of 30 after being beaten into a coma. He became “an international symbol of the struggle against the race-based apartheid system,” wrote The Guardian.
No one was prosecuted for Biko’s death after a 1977 inquest accepted the police account that he sustained injuries after hitting his head against a wall.
But 20 years later, during Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, former police officers involved in the case admitted assaulting the activist.
The inquest is the latest in a series of moves in South Africa to reexamine apartheid-era deaths and hold those responsible accountable.
