Exactly thirty-six years ago, on September 12, 1977, the Black Consciousness Movement philosopher lost his activist young life in Apartheid police custody. He had been captured "lawfully" the previous August. The charge against him had not been enunciated unambiguously when he died.

 

James Thomas "Jimmy" Kruger, Minister of Justice and the Police at the time of Steve Bantubonke Biko's passing, enthused at the development that Biko was no more, in his own living words: "It leaves me cold". Need I say that Kruger's expression was in their beloved Afrikaans. Practically the whole of Afrikaner population applauded that inhumane apathy.

 

The logic by which Biko deduced his conclusions concerning the conditions of respective "non-whites" should count amongst the most accurate in the history of "Ideas Agriculture". It rivals, arguably, that of the Ancients as Plato, Aristotle, and them. Yet it is was driven by the legendary source of energy--disarming anger. The cancer that is anger has disarmed good and honest men throughout recorded history of their much needed problem-solving capabilities.

 

"Black man, you're on your own!" 

 This is the one theme that really typifies the point I am driving at. It seemed to have declared supposedly way beyond the shadow of a doubt that the analysis of the human condition in pockets of "Black South Africa" in "White South Africa" had been cut and dried. Far from it. And I argue that the facts will lay bare my contention. Just two should suffice.

First, when any reader, anywhere in the world, sits down and opens the book titled I WRITE WHAT I LIKE, the images conjured teem, or should teem, with Donald Woods. He was personal friends with the theorist of the famed Black Consciousness Movement. He did his true friend Biko the ultimate act of loyalty ever, surpassing biology itself. And the world is the grateful heir.

Biko did not, as innumerable others before him, write a book. To be sure, Socrates didn't. Yet the legend that has become Biko is immortalized in the addresses that he had delivered, or was to deliver at the time of his arrest. And between Biko's utterances and the publisher's desk some where in Europe is the man of undeserved obscurity--Donald Woods. Woods acted wisely on the Apartheid stage of uncertainty and distrust. He arrogated the unclaimed right of being a conduit between two consecutive scenes; old and new, transitive and durable. So Biko, the black man, was not on his own entirely. Even he had Donald Woods. 

"A person is a person by mere coexisting in a community of other persons". The adage is as current as the HUMAN PROJECT to better the human experience. The archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has perfected a version of his own, "I am because you are, for we can only be human together". This African tag will always hold, even to the last syllable of recorded time. 

The principle means that every human being has the right to exist for as long as the community into which he is born holds the right to perpetuate itself legitimate. It proposes to give each human the opportunity to account in the mist of the community for the decision to act or not. It actually deprives any one being to shuffle off their own mortal coil, this judging by the outrage displayed by a community regarding the act. Principles cannot be broken, we are able only "to break ourselves from principles"

A parent who is no good and treats their offspring like dirt is frowned upon by their neighbours. A nation that makes of their own sub-humans receives alienation from the world community. The human feeling of sharing guards our interests, while we may feel wise enough to belittle it from time to time.        

Facts are on the table. Anybody who is not impaired in any way will be able to read and to hear about them. Can I get a witness?