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Today marks 34 years since the death of Stephen Bantu Biko who was brutally murdered by the apartheid police whilst in incarceration.

Steve Biko made an immense contribution to the liberation struggle in this country and inspired many youths and students into action in challenging the apartheid regime at a time when it sought to crash any opposition to it.

Biko was a bright shining star with a passion for humanity and the liberation of black people from the shackles of racial oppression and white minority rule in South Africa.
The freedom that we acquired in 1994 is engraved in the blood of brave martyrs like Steve Biko, Solomon Mahlangu, Ruth First, Chris Hani, Vuyisile Mini, Andrew Zondo and many countless heroes and heroines.

Biko’s ideas were motivated by a reality of an unequal society, where blacks were given second class citizenship and whose only function was to satisfy the cheap labour and profit needs of apartheid industry.

Today we mark the 34th anniversary of Biko’s death at a time when South Africa is the most unequal society in the world.

In terms of education, white learners score twice higher than the average African learner in Mathematics and Science. More than 70% of the matriculation (Grade 12) passes in South Africa are accounted for by just 11% of the former white, coloured and Asian schools. The children of the black working class in this country are still subjected to mud/dilapidated schools and schools with no furniture and basic infrastructure such as libraries, laboratories and even toilets.

The health profile of the country is also racialised with whites more likely to live 23 years longer than blacks.

This is also evident in income inequalities where 56% of Whites earn no less than R6 000 per month whereas 81% of Africans earn no more than R6 000 per month. Almost all the top 20 paid directors in JSE listed companies are white males.

The highest levels of poverty and deprivation are still concentrated amongst the black population, particularly those living in former Bantustans.

The main lesson is that even though there are sprinkles of a black capitalist class that has emerged in the post apartheid period, the sordid reality of poverty, unemployment and income inequality is still experienced and shaped by racialised and gendered inequalities inherited from apartheid and intensified by neoliberal capitalism.

Our experience under democracy also teaches us that our non-racialism would be hollow if it failed to liberate the hundreds of black youths reeling under the humiliation of being locked out of the doors of education, being unemployed or super-exploited in insecure casual jobs under labour brokers.

We call on South Africans to use Biko’s legacy as an inspiration to challenge exploitation and the triple crisis of unemployment, poverty and income inequalities.

COSATU believes that the poverty and daily humiliation that faces the working class, particularly the black working class in South Africa, will never be completely resolved unless we create a society based on equality and people’s needs before the greed that drives profit-making and accumulate.