"MEMORY OF A FREEDOM FIGHTER"/ "NIGERIAN WRITER "BEN OKRI" REMINDS US SOUTH AFRICAN "STEVE BIKO" BY his OWN WORDS": "Freedom is a small part of the story!

Le 20 septembre 2012 par IVOIREBUSINESS - In (September 1977), ("STEPHEN BANTU BIKO"), an anti-apartheid agitator, writer and co-founder of the black consciousness movement, died in police

custody from a brain hemorrhage caused by severe blows to the head. A death "SIR sydney Kentride" counsel to the Biko family bleakly described as miserable and lonely On a cold prison floor. He was thirty years old!
The annual "Steve Biko" Memorial Lecture, now in its thirteenth year and in the past delivered by luminaries such as: "Nelson Mandela", "Chinua Achebé"(nigerian writer and author of "things fall apart"),"N'gûgi Wa Thiongo" and "Alice WALKER" commemorates the enduring legacy of his short life and the relevance of his ideas on freedom, equality and justice. To mark the occasion, this year the organisers invited (1991) Booker Prize winning Nigerian writer "Ben Okrito" pays tribute to the slain visionary of the anti-apartheid struggle!
The brillance of "STEVE BIKO" much like his intellectual forerunner ("Franz FANON") (Black skin, white Masks), was in situating the struggle against racial subjugation in the real of consciousness. The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed, he argued; articulating the link between tyranny and its corrupting influence of selfhood. The path to freedom he purmised, would begin with a renewed self-vision on the part of the oppressed.
In a sense, "Steve Biko" transcends politics and has in him something to the terrible integrity of the true artist, "Okri" said. One who with hammer-blows will relentlessly pursue his vision of exalted truth regardless of its consequences.
In that sense, "Steve Biko" is more than just the unfinished conscience of his land: He is also that finger pointing at the only acceptable future: A life and a society in which citizens can be proud of what they are. "Biko's spirit is permanently, fantastically set against the humiliation of man and woman.
Anyway, the memory of that freedom fighter still lingers deep in our memory till today, but what occured unfortunately recently in SOUTH AFRICA (deaths squad in the south african mines), when angry and frustrated miners were claming their rights to justice seem to tell us that apartheid still has another sad face as far the social classes are concerned, even if "ANC" is in power!

(Yves T BOUAZO)(the title and the conclusion are from the staff-"sources":"Africa okay player")