rested and taken into custody; this was not a first for Biko so nothing was really thought of it. His friends and family believes that the government would do no more than routine questioning, meaning violence was not considered an option since the fear of a public uprising would be too great. By a cruel stoke of fate they were wrong. On September 12, 1977Biko became the forty-first black person to die in police custody. [Woods, 159]Unfortunately forty people died prior to Biko under a similar set of circumstances incurred while in South African jails. Some of the explanations given to the previous people detained were coldly unconvincing, like “slipped in the shower, fell seven floors during interrogation, fell against a chair during a scuffle, and most commonly, suicide by hanging.” [Woods,7] The government determined Biko’s cause of death to be a “hunger strike”, which was known to be false by his family and friends because Biko had said that if he were to die in police custody and the said it was suicide to know that it was untrue. [Woods, 166]After his death people around the world rallied together to voice their disapprovement of the governments terrible injustice. On a global scale the practices of the South African government were condemned and people everywhere rallied to support the black movement. His popularity grew after his death because he was no longer seen as a leader, but rather a martyr. So why is South Africa still under white control? My answer to that is that talk is cheap and publicity even cheaper. The support and headlines were all that was given. Nothing permanent or structured was offered to the blacks. Today, a little less than thirty years later, I had trouble finding books on Steve Biko. To the western world he was a fad....
