Steve Biko (2)

When I asked my dad about Steve Biko the first thing he said was "Gosh, I remember hearing about him on the news almost every night." He remembered vague things and overall remembered what kind of person Biko was and how he affected the world, but not necessarily specific details. My dad recalled that Biko was a young African American leader of the Apartheid movement, and he was part of an uprising, and was a true leader. Something that also stood out to my dad was the Peter Gabriel song, Biko, which really spoke and resonated with him. "When I try to sleep at night, I can only dream in red, the outside world is black and white, with only one colour dead, Oh Biko, Yihla Moja." These are Gabriel's lyrics and Yihla Moja is Afrikaans meaning, "the man is dead." The line that stood out to me most was "You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire." Meaning you can kill one African, one black man (Biko) but the rest of the community will still be there, and will never die. "They are like a strong storm" my dad stated, and they are a force that cannot ever be killed. Their spirits are stronger than fire, and when one black man died (or white man), it is a communal mourning and affects everyone. Especially in this time of the Apartheid when everyone was even more unified than ever because they were protested and fighting side by side. In the Apartheid prevalently, you can blow out a candle and not a fire because Biko was one important and inspiring man, and if anything happened to him there was that "storm" to support him and remember him. I found it interesting that even though my dad did not particularly remember specific details about Biko, he remember the overall message Biko was trying to convey and how he was a role model during the Apartheid movement.

P.S. I asked my mom if she knew who Steve Biko was and she said "No not really besides the Biko song by Peter Gabriele and the fact that he stood up for black people in the 80's"... uh oh!