Steve Biko Quotes
(18 December 1946 to 12 September 1977)
Stephen Bantu Biko was a non-violent anti-apartheid activist, who was murdered by the apartheid police force.
Steve Biko |
"Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being." |
Steve Biko |
"The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves." |
Steve Biko |
"Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude." |
Steve Biko |
"We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man's mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds." |
Steve Biko |
"Black man, you are on your own." coined by Steve Biko for the South African Student's Organisation, SASO. |
Steve Biko |
"You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway." |
Steve Biko |
"Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude." |
Steve Biko |
"Even today, we are still accused of racism. This is a mistake. We know that all interracial groups in South Africa are relationships in which whites are superior, blacks inferior. So as a prelude whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior." quoted in the Boston Globe |
Steve Biko |
"The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity." evidence given at the SASO/BPC trial |
Steve Biko |
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." |
Steve Biko |
"It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth." |
Steve Biko |
"Apartheid—both petty and grand—is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority” |
Steve Biko |
"You and I are now in confrontation, but I see no Violence." |
Steve Biko |
"The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country. Not so long ago this used to be freely said in parliament, even about the educational system of the black people. It is still said even today, although in a much more sophisticated language. To a large extent the evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has advanced.” |
Steve Biko |
"The system concedes nothing without demand, for it formulates its very method of operation on the basis that the ignorant will learn to know, the child will grow into an adult and therefore demands will begin to be made. It gears itself to resist demands in whatever way it sees fit." |
Steve Biko |
"In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest
possible gift—a more human face." |
Steve Biko |
"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die." |
Steve Biko |
"Tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security and prestige it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and accept that it alone is entitled to privilege." |
Links
Nelson Mandela speech on the 20th anniversary of Biko's death |
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