There are manifold commonalities between Rick Turner and Steve Biko. Both were brilliant and uncompromising radical thinkers who insisted on thinking critically and clearly. They met and formed a dialogic relationship which always meant a profound sense of sharing ideas.

Having criticised white liberals and broken away from their political clutches, including those of the National Union of South African Students, Biko continued to work with some of them. He even still maintained a close friendship with some white liberals who felt aggrieved by the so-called ‘separatist stance’ which Biko took. The formation of Black Consciousness compelled Turner to participate in a critical engagement with Biko. Biko stood his ground, maintaining an ethico-political position and being unreserved, wayward and combative with respect to white liberal tendencies. It had to be clear that Biko had committed to a cause, and the relationship he had with white liberals was not that of appeasement, but a genuine working relationship. More pointedly, the time of blacks being dependent, or being made to be so, was over. The terms were different, and it was not business as usual.

Turner and Biko were, more importantly, revolutionary contemporaries who dedicated most of their valuable time to their calling. Both have a footprint in what is famously known as the ‘Durban Moment’, a moment where their interlocutory relationship was clearly manifest. In short, Turner and Biko were in the same struggle against apartheid.

Turner and Biko were possessed by that unyielding political commitment which has always meant that their radical demands should be actualised, and they dared to dream in the belly of a nightmare intent on shattering revolutionary dreams. They lived, by way of risking their lives, to combat apartheid. Both Turner and Biko were impassioned, determined figures who did not let anything deter them from their struggle for a life of freedom. This obviously shaped them in profound ways to be courageous, ingenious and loving. They did not compromise and refused to prostitute their souls in the service of apartheid or any other form of injustice. Biko and Turner led the life of struggle and that came at a cost (their lives were both cut short by the lethality of apartheid).