The main character of the book is Steve Biko:

Biko’s biography:

Name: Steve Biko

Birth Date: December 18, 1946
Death Date: September 12, 1977
King Williamstown, Cape Province, South
Place of Birth:
Africa
Place of Death: Port Elizabeth, South Africa
Nationality: South African
Gender: Male
political activist, writer, anti-apartheid
Occupations:
activist

Steve Biko (1946-1977), a political activist and writer, is regarded as the

father of the Black Consciousness movement in the Union of South
Africa.
Stephen Bantu Biko (a. k. a. Bantu Stephen Biko) was born in King
Williamstown, Cape Province, South Africa, on December 18, 1946. He
was the second son (third child) of Mzimgayi Biko. Raised and educated
in a Christian home, Biko eventually became a student at Wentworth, a
White medical school in Durban. There in 1968 he formed SASO (South
African Students' Organization), an activist group seeking equal rights
for South African black people. Expelled from Wentworth in 1972 (the
stated cause being poor academic performance), Biko devoted his time
to activist activities. His concept of black consciousness continued to
develop as he next went to work for BCP (Black Community
Programmes). By 1973 his political activities had caused him to be
banned from Durban and restricted to his hometown. Back in King
Williamstown, undaunted, he set up a new branch of BCP--only to have
it banned there as well.
Still, Biko continued to work for black consciousness. This led to
repeated detentions and caused him to be placed in security over and
over again. Yet he was never charged. In 1977 he became honorary
president of the Black People's Convention he had founded in 1972. His
appointment was to be for a period of five years, but nine months later
he died of brain damage after being beaten by police officers while in
detention.
Biko's short 30-year life was consumed with the development of an
acute awareness of the evils of apartheid, the social system under which
non-Whites lived in South Africa. Apartheid is based on the idea of
institutionalized separate development for blacks and whites. Aelred
Stubbs, ed.).
In 1970 he married Ntsiki Mashalaba, then a nursing student in Durban.
When the couple had been restricted to King Williamstown, Ntsiki
commuted to work at an Anglican mission 35 miles away in order to earn
money to keep the family together. Biko's father died when he was four
years old. His mother courageously supported her son's activities,
welcomed him home during the years of restriction, helped protect him
from the inquiring eyes of government security forces, and provided a
Christian (Anglican) home environment for his children.
Biko's death echoed around the world--an irony, given the repeated
attempts made to silence him while he lived. As a leader of South
African blacks, Biko is likened in importance to others such as Nelson
Mandela and Robert Sobukwe who preceded him. Like Biko, their
influence was during the post-1948 years--that is, after the African
National Congress began to gain support throughout the nation in the
interest of black liberation. Mandela and Sobukwe, too, were repeatedly
banned and imprisoned. In fact, it was while they were in detention in
the 1960s that Biko formed SASO to fill the "vacuum in South African
politics" that they had left.

Biko's "Black Consciousness" was a call to black young people to

dissociate white control and black fear in South Africa and to adopt an
attitude of psychological self-reliance in the struggle for liberation from
white rule. The proponents of Black Consciousness urged blacks to
withdraw from multiracial organizations. The resulting formation of the
all-black SASO alienated some white liberal students--particularly those
who belonged to NUSA (National Union of South African Students).
These students' idealism was given a jolt by SASO's assertion of an
independent black struggle.
The concept of Black Consciousness has been preserved in Biko's
writings and in transcripts taken in the BPC-SASO trial at which Biko was
called to testify, allowing him to break a three-year imposed silence. This
trial was the only opportunity Biko had to speak out after 1973 when his
travel, public speaking, and writing for publication had been banned. The
trial also turned out to be the last time Biko was heard from before his
death in Port Elizabeth on September 12, 1977.
The South African government disclaimed any responsibility in Biko's
death, and official pronouncements about its circumstances revolve
around talk of a hunger strike while others cite evidence of beatings.
Twenty years later, in 1997, five former police officers acknowledged
responsibility for his death of a brain hemorrhage. The officers made
their confession to South Africa's Truth Commission, which has the
power to grant amnesty to individuals willing to reveal their role in the
violence against anti-apartheid activists.
The effect of Biko's death, seen by many as symbolic of black South
Africa suffering under apartheid and the most widely publicized
dramatization of the apartheid system in operation, added impetus to
Black Consciousness--the very movement that repeated bannings and
restrictions by government officials sought to quell. The idea of Black
Consciousness is thought by many to have uplifted and inspired South
African black people and to have given direction to their lives.
To Biko, black psychological self-reliance was the path to social equality.
His vision of the future for South African blacks was one "looking forward
to a nonracial, just and egalitarian society in which color, creed, and race
shall form no point of reference." Many hoped Biko's dream would
become reality when apartheid was disbanded and in 1994, ANC leader
Nelson Mandela was elected president of the country.

Black consciousness: http://www.nathanielturner.com/bikospeaksonafrica.htm

http://africanhistory.about.com/od/bikosteve/p/qts_biko.htm

Steve Biko said:

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the op-pressed.” Such
words, spoken by Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko in 1971, inspired a generation to
resist the insidious hatred at the heart of apart-heid‟s system of racial hierarchy and segregation.
Biko and other leaders urged black South Africans to stand up for themselves and to reject the
tenets of white supremacy. “Black man, you are on your own,” became a popular slogan for the
student organization behind the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and led many to
compare the BCM to the American Civil Rights Movement.