During Biko's life, the government alleged that he hated whites, various anti-apartheid activists accused him of sexism, and African racial nationalists criticised his united front with Coloureds and Indians.

[8] After resigning from the police force, Mzingaye worked as a clerk in the King William's Town Native Affairs Office,[9] while studying for a law degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa.

[21] Within three months of Steve's arrival, Khaya was accused of having connections to Poqo, the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), an African nationalist group which the government had banned.

[31] There, he joined what his biographer Xolela Mangcu called "a peculiarly sophisticated and cosmopolitan group of students" from across South Africa;[32] many of them later held prominent roles in the post-apartheid era.

[41] In July 1967, a NUSAS conference was held at Rhodes University in Grahamstown; after the students arrived, they found that dormitory accommodation had been arranged for the white and Indian delegates but not the black Africans, who were told that they could sleep in a local church.

[42] Biko later related that this event forced him to rethink his belief in the multi-racial approach to political activism:[43] I realized that for a long time I had been holding onto this whole dogma of nonracism almost like a religion ...

[47] Though Biko played a substantial role in SASO's creation, he sought a low public profile during its early stages, believing that this would strengthen its second level of leadership, such as his ally Barney Pityana.

They actively promoted the establishment of independent, black-owned institutions, and favored radical reforms within school curricula that nurtured a positive black identity for young people.

[75] Despite this policy, in May 1972 it issued the Alice Declaration, in which it called for students to boycott lectures in response to the expulsion of SASO member Abram Onkgopotse Tiro from the University of the North after he made a speech criticising its administration.

[89] Biko's banning order in 1973 prevented him from working officially for the BCPs from which he had previously earned a small stipend, but he helped to set up a new BPC branch in Ginsberg, which held its first meeting in the church of a sympathetic white clergyman, David Russell.

[90] Establishing a more permanent headquarters in Leopold Street, the branch served as a base from which to form new BCPs; these included self-help schemes such as classes in literacy, dressmaking and health education.

[92] Near King William's Town, a BCP Zanempilo Clinic was established to serve as a healthcare centre catering for rural black people who would not otherwise have access to hospital facilities.

[97] Biko endorsed the unification of South Africa's black liberationist groups – among them the BCM, PAC, and African National Congress (ANC) – in order to concentrate their anti-apartheid efforts.

This prevented him from leaving the King William's Town magisterial district, prohibited him from speaking either in public or to more than one person at a time, barred his membership of political organisations, and forbade the media from quoting him.

[131] On 6 September,[132] he was transferred from Walmer to room 619 of the security police headquarters in the Sanlam Building in central Port Elizabeth, where he was interrogated for 22 hours, handcuffed and in shackles, and chained to a grille.

[149] The vast majority were black, but a few hundred whites also attended, including Biko's friends, such as Russell and Woods, and prominent progressive figures like Helen Suzman, Alex Boraine, and Zach de Beer.

[164] An observer from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law stated that the affidavit's statements were "sometimes redundant, sometimes inconsistent, frequently ambiguous"; David Napley described the police investigation of the incident as "perfunctory in the extreme".

[174] Five police officers (Harold Snyman, Gideon Nieuwoudt, Ruben Marx, Daantjie Siebert, and Johan Beneke) appeared before the commission and requested amnesty in return for information about the events surrounding Biko's death.

The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be mis-used and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the land of his birth.

[191] In his view, the Bantustan system was "the greatest single fraud ever invented by white politicians", stating that it was designed to divide the Bantu-speaking African population along tribal lines.

[192] He believed that those fighting apartheid in South Africa should link with anti-colonial struggles elsewhere in the world and with activists in the global African diaspora combating racial prejudice and discrimination.

[196] He noted that views on violence differed widely within the BCM – which contained both pacifists and believers in violent revolution – although the group had agreed to operate peacefully, and unlike the PAC and ANC, had no armed wing.

[180] He was suspicious of the Soviet Union's motives in supporting African liberation movements, relating that "Russia is as imperialistic as America", although he acknowledged that "in the eyes of the Third World they have a cleaner slate".

[198] Biko hoped that a future socialist South Africa could become a completely non-racial society, with people of all ethnic backgrounds living peacefully together in a "joint culture" that combined the best of all communities.

[228] The sexism was evident in many ways, according to Mamphela Ramphele, a BCM activist and doctor at the Zanempilo Clinic, including that women tended to be given responsibility for the cleaning and catering at functions.

[240] Although Biko's ideas have not received the same attention as Frantz Fanon's,[241] in 2001 Ahluwalia and Zegeye wrote that the men shared "a highly similar pedigree in their interests in the philosophical psychology of consciousness, their desire for a decolonising of the mind, the liberation of Africa and in the politics of nationalism and socialism for the 'wretched of the earth'".

[242] Though internationally Steve Biko became a symbol of apartheid abuse in the years following his death, for the [Black Consciousness]-minded (wherever they live) he has always been remembered for the life he led and the ethos he inspired among millions.

Woods held the view that Biko had filled the vacuum within the country's African nationalist movement that arose in the late 1960s following the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the banning of Sobukwe.

[243] This brought about a shift in focus from the BCM's community organising to wider mass mobilisation, including attempts to follow Tambo's call to make South Africa "ungovernable", which involved increasing violence and clashes between rival anti-apartheid groups.

It was erected outside the front door of city hall in East London on the Eastern cape, opposite a statue commemorating British soldiers killed in the Second Boer War.