Steve Biko Memorial Lectures

The Steve Biko Memorial Lecture was hosted by UCT in partnership with the Steve Biko Foundation.

The annual lectures were held to commemorate the life and death of Biko and to celebrate his courage and leadership as a political activist. The lectures also celebrated 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.