Seeing images of Biko's lifeless body on the TL so let me just do a cleanse. I'll start with this image supplied by historian and librarian Mwelela Cele from his family archive for New Frame. This was taken in 1969 at a birthday party. 
The image above was taken in Durban.
"Meet my lady. She is the embodiment of Blackness- Black is Beautiful" how Steve introduced Ntsiki Mashalaba (later Biko, after they married in 1970). Tsi! Meanwhile ubhuti was creepin'.
Steve Biko as a medical student in 1966 a year before the Nusas walkout of 1967 that gave birth to the Black Consciousness Movement and SASO (no link to SASCO). He's seen with Brigette Savage, Roger's Ravagan and Ben Ngubane
📸: National Archives
📸: National Archives
Rogers*
Steve Biko in Durban in July 1971. This was during a SASO meeting.
📸: John Reader.
📸: John Reader.
Steve Biko during the years of banishment to the King William's Town district. He is at Zanempilo Clinic (one of the Black Community Programs) with Dr Mamphela Ramphele and Mxolisi Mvovo. This is in 1975.
We get to the sad part. This was one of the last photographs of him. This was in 1977.
We're actually very lucky to have these images. The apartheid Special Branch would destroy all every thing when raiding the homes of activists. Letters, photographs. They were erasing memory. So to have these today is really a gift.
And sometimes pictures were used as evidence so activists were reluctant to even take photographs. So don't be surprised when you struggle to find images of certain figures because on the other end of the spectrum, not taking pictures was an act of survival under a brutal system.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
