South Africa: Biko Inquest Investigator Tells of Missing Records, Incomplete Dockets

What the report says

An investigator working on the reopened inquest into the death of anti-apartheid icon Steve Biko described encountering missing records and incomplete police dockets while trying to reconstruct the case. The evidence comes from testimony by Sergeant Fundiswa Dingiswayo of South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, who appeared in the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court in Gqeberha on 27 August 2026. According to the report, she was assigned the matter in August 2021 and found that some files were missing pages or appeared to trail off before key details were captured.

The article says Dingiswayo turned to the National Archives in an effort to fill gaps in the record. Although that search produced little that was immediately useful, she was able to recover some relevant material and secure an affidavit from a witness who had treated Biko in prison. That evidence was obtained shortly before the long-delayed inquest resumed.

Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, died in police custody in September 1977, and his death remains one of South Africa’s most significant apartheid-era cases. The latest proceedings matter because they revisit long-standing questions about how he died and what the official record still contains, or fails to contain, decades later.