Death of anti-apartheid activist in 1977 after police beat him into a coma sparked outrage across the world
South African prosecutors will reopen an inquest into the death of the prominent anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, nearly 50 years after he died in police custody.
Biko, the founder of South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement, died in a prison cell in 1977 aged just 30, after being beaten into a coma by police who had arrested him nearly a month earlier.
The death sparked outrage across the world and he became an international symbol of the struggle against the race-based apartheid system that denied South Africa’s black majority political and economic rights.
“The main goal of reopening the inquest is to lay before the court evidence that will enable the court to make a finding … as to whether the death was brought about by any act, or omission, which prima facie involves or amounts to an offence on the part of any person,” the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said on Wednesday.
