TRAUMA REVISITED: Biko’s injuries point to repeated, brutal assaults over days, inquest hears

Forensic evidence presented at the reopened inquest suggests Steve Biko suffered multiple injuries over several days, contradicting the apartheid police’s account of a single ‘scuffle’. The hearing also heard fresh evidence about what happened to Biko in custody before his death.

Apartheid police claimed Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko sustained his injuries during a “scuffle” with officers. But specialist forensic evidence presented on Tuesday during the reopening of the inquest into Biko’s death painted a starkly different picture, indicating that the anti-apartheid activist suffered repeated and extensive assault over an extended period.

Specialist forensic pathologist Dr Shakeera Holland said there was “no evidence” to indicate that the extensive injuries documented during Biko’s original autopsy were inflicted during a single incident.

Instead, the injuries had been inflicted at different times, with some sustained hours and others several days before Biko’s death on 12 September 1977. He was just 30 years old.

Holland, who heads the Forensic Medicine and Pathology Division at the University of the Witwatersrand and has conducted more than 5,000 autopsies, was assigned to review the original autopsy conducted by Dr Johann Loubser on 13 September 1977.

She meticulously took the inquest through Loubser’s findings, detailing the extent of the horrific injuries Biko sustained from his head to, quite literally, his feet.

The autopsy recorded multiple old and fresh open wounds, necrosis in parts of the brain, damage to the lungs, signs of kidney failure, abrasion to the skin, head injuries, a swollen brain and several small haemorrhages. Burns – which would have been painful to self-inflict – were also recorded.

Holland said some of the injuries were consistent with blunt-force trauma caused by an object such as a pipe.

On Monday, 31 August 2026, anti-apartheid activist Monde Mditshwa testified that apartheid police used a green hosepipe to assault detainees, which he said was nicknamed the “Green Mamba”.

Holland also identified “tramline scars” on parts of Biko’s body – patterned injuries resembling parallel railway tracks. She said these injuries were consistent with an assault involving a rod-shaped object. Under further questioning, Holland conceded that the injuries could also have been caused by being beaten with a hosepipe.

Holland concluded that Biko had suffered ongoing and repeated trauma to his head, which ultimately caused his death.

According to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997, five former senior apartheid police officers – Major Harold Snyman, Captain Daniel Petrus Siebert, Captain Jacobus Johannes Oosthuysen Benecke, Warrant Officer Rubin Marx and Sergeant Gideon Johannes Nieuwoudt – applied for amnesty in relation to Biko’s death.

Their version was that Biko had attacked one of the officers with a chair after sitting down without permission.

They claimed that, during a “scuffle” to restrain him, Biko struck his head against a wall.