Steve Biko

2. Early years, 1946–1965

18 2 Early years, 1946–1965 Bantu Stephen Biko was born on 18 December 1946 in Tarkastad, in the Eastern Cape, the third child of Mzingaye and Alice Nokuzola ‘Mamcethe’ Biko. His birth, in his grandmother’s home, included the traditional smearing and burying of the umbilical cord into the floor of the room where he was born.Mzingaye chose to name him Bantu Stephen Biko.‘Bantu’literally means ‘people’. Later Biko called himself ‘son of man’. Although this was done often with tongue in cheek, Malusi Mpumlwana interprets Biko as understanding his name to mean that he was a person for other people or, more precisely, umntu ngumtu ngabanye abantu, ‘a person is a person by means of other people’. The name Stephen was prophetic of the manner of his death.It connects with that of his biblical namesake, Stephen, who was stoned to death. Stephen accused the Jews of being false to their vocation, of being stubborn, like their forebears, in refusing to acknowledge that 19 truth. Mpumlwana adds: ‘Jesus was actually the path of the Truth, which is very much in line with what the whole vocation of Israel was about. Even as he died he challenged them in the face of their anger.’ Stephen Biko challenged people to recognise their humanity and acknowledge it. This included the authorities and those who persecuted him. But they could not see him as a human being nor recognise who he was. They, too, were bound to kill him. Biko grew up in a Christian family. His parents met and married in Whittlesea when Mzingaye was sent to work with Mamcethe’s father, both of them policemen. The Bikos were later transferred to Queenstown, then to Port Elizabeth,to Fort Cox and finally KingWilliam’s Town, where they lived in a house in the black location of Ginsberg. In 1950, when Mzingaye was studying for a law degree by correspondence through the University of South Africa (Unisa), he fell ill.After being admitted to St Matthew’s Hospital in Keiskammahoek, he died. Biko (who was called Bantu by his family) was 4 years old. The first-born, his sister Bukelwa, had been delegated by her father to look after him, while Khaya, an elder brother, was to look after his younger sister, Nobandile. Though the children kept asking where their father was, Mamcethe could not at first bring herself to tell them he had died. Because he was often away, she said he had gone to Cape Town for work and 20 an aeroplane would bring him back. While playing with a group of other children they saw an aeroplane and shouted: ‘Aeroplane, come back with our father!’ But the other children said: ‘No, your father died!’ As a widow with four young children, Mamcethe earned a meagre income for the next 23 years as a domestic worker. She remembers her first employer, the superintendent of Ginsberg, as a helpful and ‘good man’, who welcomed her children to play with his, included them at Christmas time and was generally generous. After he left, she had to take a job as a cook in the much tougher environment of Grey Hospital in King William’s Town, the ‘whites-only’ town across the railway line from Ginsberg location. Ginsberg was a closely knit community of about eight hundred families, every four families sharing communal taps and toilets. In spite of her slender means, Mamcethe’s house, though simple, was by no meansdestitute,andwithherquietandsingulardignity she always welcomed her friends and neighbours. ‘Everybody knew the next person,’ Biko’s younger sister Nobandile remembers. ‘It was common, then, if you didn’t have food, you’d go to your neighbours and they’d give you samp, beans, mealie meal, sugar in dishes, and when you had [eaten] you’d just return the dishes.’ Biko and Nobandile grew up side by side in the small township, where the languages of English, 21 Nobandile Biko. Khaya Biko. Alice Nokuzola ‘Mamcethe’ Biko. Bukelwa Biko. 22 Afrikaans and Xhosa intermingled. At the age of 6 or 7 he took Nobandile, aged 4, to the creche each day on his way to Charles Morgan Primary School and collected her on his way home. From a young age Biko made people laugh, not only by tomfoolery and clowning but by the way he engaged in conversation. If...