Stephen Bantu Biko (18 December 1946 - 12 September 1977) was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. At the time of his death clandestine negotiations were in progress sounding Biko out as deputy leader of the Maoist-oriented Pan Africanist Congress. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement. While living, his writings and activism attempted to empower black people, and he was famous for his slogan "black is beautiful", which he described as meaning: "man, you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being". The ANC was very hostile to Biko and to Black Consciousness through the 70s to the mid 90s but has now included Biko in the pantheon of struggle heroes, going so far to use his image for campaign posters in South Africa's first non-racial elections, in 1994.See, for instance, Rian Malan's book My Traitor's Heart

Apartheid (meaning separateness in Afrikaans, cognate to English apart and Category: Wiktionary - :-hood|-hood) was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1990. Apartheid had its roots in the history of colonisation and settlement of southern Africa, with the development of practices and policies of separation along racial lines and domination by European settlers and their descendents. Following the general election of 1948,, the National Party set in place its programme of Apartheid, with the formalisation and expansion of existing policies and practices into a system of institutionalised racism and white domination. Apartheid was dismantled in a series of negotiations from 1990 to 1993, culminating in elections in 1994, the first in South Africa with universal suffrage. The legacies of apartheid still shape South African politics and society.

Apartheid legislation classified inhabitants and visitors into racial groups (black, white, coloured, and Indian or Asian). South African blacks were stripped of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based and nominally self-governing bantustans (tribal homelands), four of which became nominally independent states. The homelands occupied relatively small and economically unproductive areas of the country. The government based the homelands on the territory of Black Reserves founded during the British Empire period, akin to the US I...