2 Doctors Guilty of Misconduct in S. African Death

A medical panel today found two white government doctors guilty of misconduct in the 1977 death of black leader Steve Biko, who became a martyr in the struggle against white-minority rule.

The panel ruled that the two physicians failed to provide adequate care shortly before Biko died in police custody.

One doctor was reprimanded and the other was barred from practicing medicine for three months, but that penalty was suspended. Both could have been barred from practice.

An inquiry at the time of Biko’s death found that he probably died of brain injuries received in a scuffle with police. The death drew a worldwide outcry.

His family claimed that Biko, 30, died of head injuries inflicted when police beat him during an interrogation.

Police, who arrested Biko under the nation’s broad anti-terrorism Security Act, said he accidentally hit his head on a wall while officers were subduing him after he became violent during questioning.

The South African Medical and Dental Council ruled in Pretoria that District Surgeon Benjamin Tucker was guilty of “disgraceful” professional conduct in failing to examine the injured Biko properly and allowing police to move him 750 miles by road from Port Elizabeth to a prison hospital in Pretoria.

The five-doctor panel said Tucker wrote a statement the day before Biko died that he could find no change in Biko’s central nervous system, although Tucker had not examined Biko to see if that was so.

It said Dr. Ivor Lang failed to notice a wound on Biko’s forehead and issued a false or misleading certificate declaring that he could find nothing wrong with Biko.

Tucker and Lang were in charge of Biko’s medical treatment for the five days before he died on Sept. 12, 1977.

Biko’s widow, Nontsikelelo, said she was “happy the truth has at last come out.” But she added, “I expected the sentences to be heavier.”