A family from the anti -apartheid champion of South Africa is confident in prosecutions

The son of the prominent activist in the anti -cluster band, Steve Pico, told the BBC that the new investigation was confident in his death 48 years ago would lead to the prosecution of officials.

He is seen as a martyr in the struggle against the rule of the white fly. The founder of the Black Awareness Movement died from a brain blow between the ages of approximately 30 months after the arrest of a checkpoint.

The police said at the time that he had caught his head on a wall, but after the end of the apartheid in 1994, former officers admitted to assaulting him – although no one was prosecuted.

Nkosinathi Biko, who was six years old when his father died, said that the country could not move forward without treating its violent past.

“It is very clear in our minds about what happened and how they killed Steve Pico.”

Pico, who was under “a ban”, was claimed that his movements and other activities at the time of his arrest in 1977 were tortured by five policemen while they were detention.

His son said: “What is required of this process is simply following the facts, and we have no doubt that a democratic court, in a democratic state.

On Friday, the judge heard that two persons linked to the case are alive, both of whom are now in the eighties.

Pico’s death caused anger in South Africa and was the subject of Hollywood in 1987 Cry Freedom, starring Denzel Washington.

He was a medical student at Natal University when he founded the black consciousness movement, aiming to enable and mobilize the black population in urban areas.

He was determined to fight the psychological inferiority that many black Africa felt after years of the rule of the white fly, while the anti -bars activists such as Nelson Mandela were silent and imprisoned by the regime.

The new investigation comes five months after President Cyril Ramavusa announced Judicial investigation into the allegations of political intervention in prosecuting the crimes of the apartheid era.

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), which was established in 1996, revealed the brutality dating back to the apartheid such as killing and torture, but few of these cases have taken trial.

The Pico case was heard in TRC, where the relevant policemen admitted that they had made wrong statements 20 years ago, but they were not prosecuted.

“The accountability of our violent and brutal past is something that escapes from the community of South Africa,” said Nkosinathi Biko.

“You cannot suffer from the shock we faced, and the blood flow in the streets that a state publishes against a people, then appears with less than a handful of judicial prosecutions that succeeded in that.”

He said that the families who felt out due to the lack of judicial prosecutions by TRC continued to pressure the government for justice.

“You cannot give the root to democracy without dealing with some historical issues decisively,” he said.

The case was postponed until November 12.