SASO founder and Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko dies in detention.

12 September 1977

SASO founder and Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko dies in detention.

Bantu Steven Biko, leader of the South African Students' Organisation (SASO) and pioneer of the Black Consciousness philosophy, died in police custody at the age of thirty. Biko was arrested in the outskirts of Grahamstown on 18 August 1977. During his detention in a Port Elizabeth police cell he had been chained to a grill at night and left to lie in urine-soaked blankets. He had been stripped naked and kept in leg-irons for 48 hours in his cell.