English oral : tribute to Steve Biko, Willie Bester, 1992

E N G L I S H   O R A L

This work of art entitled « Tribute to Steve Biko » is a collage realized by Willie Bester in 1992.

It’s one of his most famous works.

Bester was born in Montagu, South Africa, in 1956. He showed artistic interest and began painting at the age of 7. Unfortunately, his family was uprooted and forcibly moved when he was 10 years due to the Group Areas Act of the apartheid government. Bester joined the South African Defense Force and spent some time in a military camp for unemployed, black youth.

At the age of 30, Bester was able to once again pursue his interest in the arts. He began to use his talents to exercise his conscience and make a political statement against apartheid. His artistic work was influenced by famous painters like Picasso and Braque but also by different art movements such as the Synthetic Cubism, the early Pop assemblages and so on, …

His famous works called « Tribute to Steve Biko » is a collage created from found objects gathered from townships. The discarded materials are rich in symbolic meanings, and Bester creates an original iconography from the most varied and unlikely sources.

He uses different objects such as machine parts, old sacking, sticks, various tin cans, sheep bones, and wire netting. These objects are chosen not only for the way they convey the texture of the townships but also for their symbolic significance. In this work of art, the colors used refers to the colors of the South-African flag, which are red, blue, green, yellow, back and white.

The focus of this work is the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who since his death in police custody in September 1977, has been a martyr of the apartheid movement. His death shortly after the Soweto uprisings served as a rallying point both internationally and locally for the anti-apartheid movement. Throughout « Tribute to Steve Biko », Bester placed images relating to his death.

On 18 August 1977, Biko was arrested at a police roadblock, that why we see the sign « Stop". He was interrogated and tortured by officers of security police for 22 hours. After this terrible event, he fell into a coma.

On September 1977, police loaded him in the back of a Land Rover and began the 1100 km drive to Pretoria to take him to a prison with hospital facilities. He was almost dead when he arrived at Pretoria Prison. The police claimed his death was the result of an extended hunger strike, but an autopsy revealed multiple bruises and abrasions. It was only the result of his previous bruises.

Donald Woods, a journalist and close friend of Biko’s, exposed the truth behind his death.

This work of art conveys an intense emotion that makes us think about our choices and our human condition. It makes us aware of the pain that one man inflicts on another.

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