It is 49 years after Steve Biko was murdered on a mat in Room 977.
The strange thing about history is that sometimes it stages conversations that never happened. Two voices echo through the same country, breathe the same air, claim the same liberation and yet never sit at the same table to account. Still the imagination insists on arranging the chairs.
This week I found myself imagining the impossible. Not Biko and his murderers. Biko and the the former President.
Thabo Mbeki. The man of African Renaissance. The philosopher President. The man who gave us speeches about Africa’s time having come, about overcoming the psychological defeat of slavery and colonialism.
And Bantu Stephen Biko. The man who first taught us how to overcome that defeat. The man whose philosophy Mbeki echoed so well. But gave it a different label.
Pause for a moment and let that settle. One gave us the language of Black Consciousness. The other gave us the language of African Renaissance. One died for it at 30. The other lived to become President of the liberated country that Biko’s death made possible.
Now tell me honestly. If those two met, what would they say?
I imagine a small room. Not a shebeen this time. A plain room somewhere. Perhaps in Pretoria, where the files gather dust. No flags. No portraits. Two chairs. A table with two glasses of water. Maybe a bottle of Blue Label, too. A dossier that has never been opened.
Mbeki arrives first. As always, impeccable. Suited. Pipe in hand, thoughtful. The scholar.
Moments later, the door opens and in walks Biko. No suit. A denim and a dashiki. Calm. Observant. His eyes carry that famous patience that could disarm a room, but also a wound that never healed.
They shake hands. Exchange hugs. Not hurriedly. The handshake of two Eastern Cape legends who know each other’s villages.
To set the agenda, Mbeki would probably speak first. We did it. We are free.
Biko would smile that slow, thoughtful smile.
Are we, Thabo?
Silence.
And that is where the real conversation begins. The conversation this country has avoided for 30 years.
Biko would lean forward and open the dossier. Inside are names. Not just his own. Ahmed Timol, thrown from the 10th floor of John Vorster Square. Neil Aggett, hanged in the same building. The Cradock Four, hacked and burnt. The Pebco Three. Nokuthula Simelane. Matthews Mabelane, who fell from the same window. Muntu Myeza. Mapetla Mohapi ….
And behind them, families. Ntsiki Biko and the Biko children. Mama Timol. Families who went to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, who forgave, who expected the second part of the promise: that those who did not apply for amnesty, who did not tell the truth, would be prosecuted.
Thabo, Biko would say quietly, why did you and Jacob Zuma stall the hearing?
Mbeki, the master orator, would have his answer ready. He has always had an answer. Comrade Steve, he would say, you must understand context. We had to manage a fragile transition. We had to reconcile a nation on the brink of civil war. We had to prevent a counter-revolution by the security establishment. Prosecutions would have destabilised our new democracy. The TRC was about national healing, not Nuremberg.
Biko would listen. He always listened before he cut.
So you traded justice for stability?
We traded revenge for nation-building, Mbeki would correct him.
But who built the nation, Thabo? Biko would ask. Who paid for that stability?
And here is the haunting question that has stalked Mbeki’s legacy, the question no African Renaissance speech can answer: Why would a leader who espoused African Renaissance, who spoke so eloquently about restoring African dignity and pride, fail to clear matters on the brutal murder of the very political heroes who made it possible for him to be President of a liberated South Africa?
The State to date has not aided the Biko, Timol, Aggett families to investigate the circumstances around their deaths. The State they lead. The State Biko died trying to create.
Instead, under Mbeki’s watch, a secret instruction was given. We now know from the recent Pretoria High Court inquest and the testimony of former NPA head Vusi Pikoli and former Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla, that there was political interference. That the cases referred by the TRC for prosecution – over 300 cases – were deliberately suppressed. That the families were left to do private prosecutions with their own meagre savings and pensions.
Mbeki denies it. He says he wanted reconciliation. But the families experienced it as betrayal.
In my imagined room, Biko would not shout. He never shouted.
Thabo, he would say, you wrote that Africa must think for herself. That we must throw off the weight of self-hate. That was my language. Black Consciousness. You took it and gave it a new suit and called it African Renaissance. I was honoured.
But tell me – where is Black Consciousness in South Africa today? Or this much vaunted Renaissance?
Mbeki would shift in his chair. Because he knows. He would take a sip of whisky.
It has been obliterated from the South African landscape.
Look around, Biko would say. Except for a select few of politically connected individuals, Black people have no economic power, no self-love and no spirit of self-determination. What we have is economic co-option called BEE and handouts.
We replaced white domination with Black tenderpreneurship. We replaced the Pass Laws with SASSA queues. We told our people to be shareholders in white companies through BEE, instead of being owners of their own thought.
We taught them to beg for inclusion into an economy that killed them, rather than build an economy from their own Black being.
That is not African Renaissance. That is African re-enslavement with a Black manager.
Mbeki, the intellectual, would try to defend. He would speak of GEAR, of fiscal discipline, of how he grew the economy, of keeping the markets happy, of building a Black patriotic middle class as a buffer.
Biko would answer with one sentence he once wrote: Black man, you are on your own.
Do you remember what I meant by that, Thabo? I did not mean Black man, go and ask the IMF for a loan. I did not mean Black man, go and sit on the board of Anglo American. I meant Black man, find your own soul first. The economy will follow the mind. If the mind is still colonised, the economy will still be colonised, even if the President is Black.
That is why, 49 years after they beat me to death, my children are still fighting in court to get the policemen who killed me prosecuted by a Black government.
Do you hear the tragedy in that sentence, Thabo? A Black government protecting white policemen from prosecution for killing Black children.
In the imaginary room, evening light begins to soften the windows. The water in the glasses is still.
Mbeki looks down at the dossier. For the first time, the philosopher has no paragraph.
Perhaps he whispers: I thought I was protecting the dream.
And Biko, who was never cruel, would reply: You cannot protect a dream by burying the dreamers.
The conversation would end there. No resolution. Because after 33 years if demicracy, history has not resolved it.
On 12 September 2026, we will lay wreaths again at Ginsberg. We will vusit the cell in Pretoria. We will sing. Politicians will quote Biko again, especially those who erased him.
But the question Biko would have asked Mbeki remains for us who are alive:
If we have failed to prosecute the men who killed Biko, how can we claim to have honoured Biko?
If Black Consciousness is dead, what exactly did we renaissance?
And are we living lives that would make the man who died at 30 proud to hear our answers?
