Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 44 No. 9. May 4 1981
Drama House
Drama House.
Steve Biko was a student at Natal University studying medicine. But he was also a black leader who believed that through the work and ideas of the "Black Consciousness" movement there was a peaceful way to true integration in South Africa. His ideas and abilities were apparently too dangerous for the white South African Government to allow him to go on living - for he died, accidentally so it seemed, in the custody of the Security Police. A healthy young man was reduced in a few days to being semi-conscious with massive brain damage, urinating in his own bed, and was eventually allowed to die.
But Steve Biko was too important a person for his death to be overlooked and forgotten. Consequently there was an official inquest. The play The Biko Inquest is a straight portrayal of the actual inquest using the official transcript, though of course in a very much abridged form. Its aim is to portray the truth about Biko's death, and more importantly, to portray the nature and extent of the oppression Black South Africa suffers under.