The acclaimed South African poet Dennis Brutus wrote a poem in honor of Steve Biko; it was written on the anniversary of the Soweto Massacre a year later on June 16, 1978. Brutus said, “This poem written in tribute to Steve Biko reflects a long interest, including my founding of the Steve Biko Memorial Committee during exile in Chicago. Descriptions of the towns (including King Williamstown) were recalled from an earlier hitchhiking trip, from Port Elizabeth to East London. Twenty years later, Biko’s own fatal interrogation, in September 1977, occurred in the same building in Port Elizabeth in which I had been interrogated years earlier.” Steve Biko is known to many as the outspoken leader of the Black Consciousness (BC) movement. As the movement’s most prominent leader, he guided the movement of student discontent into a political force unprecedented in the history of South Africa that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa. He is known to Afro descendants around the world for his famous phrase “Black is Beautiful“, which was an inspiration to the civil rights movement in the USA, and to many other movements across the globe. Biko believed in the unity of the oppressed.

Tribute to Steve Biko

Poem composed for Steve Biko Day, San Antonio, June 16, 1978

The dusty roads
from Peddie to King
the yellow river
choking with silt
draining to i’Monti
the dust-filmed bluegums
poised and dreaming
in the arid air
the parching dust
harsh in the throat
and hurtful on the eyes
the crude teutonic towns
Hamburg, Berlin, Hanover
with their ominous echoes
— all these he knew
their roads he traversed:
they fired him with resolve
and smoldering anger
their racial hate seethed round him
like the surge of shimmering heatwaves
and laid a thousand lashes
on his taut flesh:
here he planned, dreamed,
waged his struggle
and hardened his will
to confront the butchers
to challenge their terror
—even if they robbed him of his life.
Dennis Brutus 16/6/78