Steve Biko Memorial Lectures
The Steve Biko Memorial Lecture is hosted by UCT in partnership with the Steve Biko Foundation.
The annual lecture is held to commemorate the life and death of Biko and to celebrate his courage and leadership as a political activist. The lecture also celebrates him as an intellectual whose courage was in the battlefield of ideas, through his writing, and whose greatest contribution was the intellectual contribution he made to the struggle and to the ideas of black consciousness. Biko also urged the people who work and study in universities, and in particular university students who have the opportunity as part of student movements, to be the vanguards of change. He said that it is the particular role of universities to produce public intellectuals and to intervene in the political arena.
These values of courage, intellect and using the space for political agendas are virtues that UCT aims to embody through its value system, its students and staff.
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Professor Ben Okri - 12 September 2012 Biko and the Tough Alchemy of Africa Sound: full speech (20.4 mb); extract (11.9 mb) |
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Sir Sydney Kentridge - 12 September 2011 Evil under the sun: The death of Steve Biko Sound: full speech (17.1 mb); extract (1.7 mb) |
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Professor Alice Walker - 9 September 2010
Sound: full speech (15 mb); extract (1.17 mb) |
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Tito Mboweni - 10 September 2009
Sound: full speech (35 mb); extract (2.7 mb) |
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Trevor Manuel - 11 September 2008
Sound: full speech (32 mb); extract (1 mb) |
| President Thabo Mbeki - 12 September 2007 | |
| Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu - 26 September 2006 |
