Freedom Day & Steve Biko's gravesite

The weekend of April 27-30 is a long weekend in South Africa.  April 27th is a public holiday called Freedom Day.  On April 27, 1994, the first democratic election was held where all people of South Africa could vote.  (Previous to 1994, fewer than 10% of South Africans - only those who were white - could vote in elections.)

For the long weekend, Jim and I went north along the Wild Coast.  I felt it was very fitting to be in Nelson Mandela’s hometown of Qunu on April 27th, because Nelson Mandela voted for the first time on that date in 1994.  He was seventy-six years old!

The more I read and hear about Nelson Mandela, the more I admire him.  One story we heard as we toured Parliament was that after his presidency was over, he was entitled to sit in the section reserved for dignitaries.  But, whenever he came, he always chose to sit in the section for the general public.  “I am a citizen first,” he would say.

Stephen Biko:
Rest in Peace

On the way to Qunu, we visited the grave of Stephen Biko in King William’s Town.  His grave was much humbler than I expected.  The turnoff to the cemetery was marked with a tiny sign that we missed entirely the first time, even though we were looking for it.  His charcoal-colored tombstone sits midway through the graveyard, among the large patch of paupers’ graves. 

Each pebble signifies
a remembrance someone has spoken.

For those of you who have not yet heard of Steve Biko, he was a leader of what was called the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa (“Black is beautiful”) – and more radically, he extolled blacks to “take destiny into their own hands.”  He sometimes spoke out against even white liberals (traditional allies) as he saw them as patronizing.  But nothing he said or did warranted what came next.  He was picked up at a roadblock in 1977 for being outside his restricted area, taken to a police station in Port Elizabeth, and somewhere here or between here and Pretoria, died of a brain hemorrhage caused by a beating.  His brutal interrogation and death while in police custody triggered international outrage.  The movie Cry Freedom was about his short life of thirty-three years. 

I understand that a Xhosa tradition is to bring a pebble to a gravesite, and tell a remembrance of that person before laying the pebble on the grave.  Steve Biko has many pebbles strewn on his grave.