BIKO INQUEST: Apartheid police captain recalls ‘wrestling’ Biko during interrogation

Daniel Petrus Siebert told the reopened inquest into Steve Biko’s death that several apartheid Security Branch officers wrestled with the activist during an interrogation, while one officer struck him with a cut garden hosepipe.

Siebert said Biko hit his head against a wall during the struggle at Security Branch headquarters in Gqeberha, then known as Port Elizabeth, on 6 September 1977. Biko fell to the floor and appeared dizzy and confused, according to an affidavit read to the Gqeberha High Court by Siebert’s legal representative, Advocate Marius Van Zyl SC.

But almost 49 years later, Siebert said he could not establish whether that incident caused the head injury that led to Biko’s death five days later. He also could not say whether Biko had been assaulted on any other occasion. Biko, a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, died in police custody on 12 September 1977 at the age of 30.

Siebert said his memory had become “extremely vague” and that he had no independent recollection of testimony he gave to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997. He nevertheless stood by evidence he gave at the original 1977 inquest.

Siebert joined the South African Police in 1962 and served in the Security Branch from 1967 to 1981. As a captain in Section B, which dealt with “Coloured matters”, he joined the team investigating and interrogating Biko and Peter Jones after their arrests in August 1977 near Makhanda, formerly Grahamstown. The investigation involved pamphlets that Siebert said encouraged mass mobilisation and sought to overthrow the government. Jones was questioned first, followed by Biko. Former Security Branch captain Craig Williamson is also expected to give evidence.

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extremely vague