THURSDAY, 6.00PM:
The security policemen who beat Black Conscious Movement leader Steve Biko to death twenty years ago did so because they had heard that he had beaten up a policeman some months before, George Bizos, advocate for the Biko family, said on Thursday.
In his final summing up before the Truth Commission, Bizos called for the rejection of the amnesty application by former police officers Harold Snyman, Daanjjie Siebert, Rubin Marx and Jacobus Beneke.
Bizos argued that none of the applicants admitted to assaulting Biko or directly causing his death, saying that his bruises resulted from a “scuffle” when he attacked them. The four different versions of events were contradictory, and the actions of the police had been disproportionate to the objective they wanted to achieve.
” Befoare they can get amnesty, they must tell us who delivered the fatal blow. They covered this up at the inquest, and they are covering up now,” said Bizos.
The chief reason they apeared to have given for beating him up is that he insisted on sitting down during interrogation when they wanted him standing up. Biko’s crime had been to “insult white pride”.