South African court indefinitely postpones reopened inquest into Steve Biko’s death
The High Court in Gqeberha, South Africa, has indefinitely postponed the reopened inquest into the circumstances of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko’s death. Judge Gianni Eksteen granted the Biko family’s urgent application to postpone the proceedings, Daily Maverick reports.
Steve Biko’s sons welcomed the decision but said they received it without joy. His eldest son, Nkosinathi Biko, said the family was concerned about the prolonged process but did not want the proceedings to be merely a formality. Earlier, on August 26, Judge Isaac Madondo rejected the family’s request to postpone the hearings.
The family requested time to prepare
The family’s representative, Ngqikio Sakhela, explained that additional time was needed to review a large body of historical materials and prepare their position. These include documents from the first inquest in 1977, written in Afrikaans. During the reopened proceedings, gaps were also identified in the old investigation, including the absence of some documents and the deaths of witnesses who could have provided information about Biko’s time in police custody.
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Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, died on September 12, 1977, aged 30, while in the custody of apartheid police in Pretoria. He was detained on August 18 that year in Makhanda together with Peter Jones. The first inquest in November 1977 accepted the police version that the fatal head injury resulted from an altercation with officers at the security police headquarters in what was then Port Elizabeth.
Testimony of former officers
Forensic expert Shakira Holland said during the reopened proceedings that the severe injuries recorded during the original post-mortem examination were apparently inflicted at different times, rather than as a result of a single incident. Two former security police officers, Daniel Petrus Siebert and Jacobus Johannes Oosthuizen Beneke, gave testimony that raised new questions about the circumstances of Biko’s detention and interrogations.
Siebert admitted that on September 6, 1977, several officers struggled with Biko during an interrogation in Gqeberha. At the same time, he said he could not say whether that incident caused the head injury from which Biko died, nor could he assert that it was the only incident in which violence was used. The family plans to apply to have Siebert recalled to testify and insists that his previous testimony remain in the case file.
