Stephen Bantu Biko died 48 years ago on 12 September 1977. Charlie Kirk died a few days ago on 10 September 2025.
They both died at the age of 31. Both, for very opposite reasons, were regarded by some as a messiah figure. Yet, they could not be further apart.
Biko lived and wrote from a place of being oppressed. The apartheid system would eventually kill him. Kirk spoke and debated from a place of empire, enfolded in the comfort of white American prosperity. His killer was allegedly a gun-loving conservative in the tribe of Charlie.
Biko spoke on behalf of the poor and downtrodden. Kirk spoke to protect the interests of wealthy elites.
Biko’s Jesus was a revolutionary figure, out to dismantle systems that denied life to the weak and disenfranchised. Kirk’s Jesus was a Western, middle-class figure who wanted to uphold the status quo.
Biko was committed to radical non-violence, and such is the Black Consciousness philosophy. Kirk was committed to protect the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, and advocated violence in many forms.
Biko was radically anti-racist. Kirk spewed unapologetic racism in obvious and transparent ways, yet denied it was racist.
Biko showed how colonial legacies enslaved the minds of an oppressed people and how conscientisation was needed to set people free from mental slavery. Kirk blamed black and other people of colour for their own disenfranchisement, regardless of colonial and contemporary histories.
Biko pointed to systems of oppression. Kirk sought to criminalise the poor.
Biko was murdered by the machinery of white supremacy, sanctioned by white religion. Kirk is celebrated by white supremacy, and upheld by white religion.
Biko’s Jesus was a humble, non-violent revolutionary. Kirk’s Jesus was a triumphant, violent custodian of Empire.
Biko’s Jesus was bigger than life, above suffering and death. Kirk’s Jesus could fit in a small box of his own making.
Biko’s Jesus was black. Kirk’s Jesus was white.
A voice for the voiceless
Biko was a voice for the voiceless. Kirk talked down to voiceless people.
Biko died with meagre earthly belongings in a cell. Kirk died a multimillionaire. And Jesus died outside the city with lepers and criminals.
It is with shock that I have read the words of white Afrikaans Christians and even black Christians in South Africa on social media over the past few days, celebrating Charlie Kirk as a Christian missionary who died for his faith.
It is a terrible death to die and should never be celebrated by friend or foe. Murder is murder.
But Charlie Kirk died the way he lived: dealing non-empathetic, violent supremacy aligned to his understanding of God’s calling on his life. He was cheered on, and is mourned, by mostly white, so-called evangelical and gun-loving people from across the world who want to retain white privilege at all cost while mobilising the God of their making to protect them against the “other”.
Even Benjamin Netanyahu praised Kirk for his pro-Israel distortions of Biblical faith.
Kirk gave words and validation to those who stay committed to a Jesus who is racist, white and supremacist, which is why they became his praise singers in life and mourners in death. A Jesus who feels threatened by the other, whether migrant, sexually different or poor.
I am saddened by white Afrikaans people who turn to the God of Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump for salvation, instead of finding their Jesus — humanity and liberation — in the soil of Africa, among their fellow (South) Africans.
The Jesus of Charlie Kirk is not the Jesus I encounter in the gospels. The Jesus of the gospels turned over tables because of the oppressiveness of the temple, and because of how religious, political and economic elites colluded to oppress the poor and the stranger. The Jesus who turned over the tables would have turned over the gospel according to Charlie Kirk.
Quest for true humanity
The Jesus who turned over tables would find resonance in the quest for true humanity, which was the ultimate vision of Steve Biko — true humanity characterised by empathy, humanness, dignity and justice. True humanity that defeats the supremacy of one race, class or gender over another. True humanity that, surprisingly, finds Jesus precisely in the face and pain and voice of the ones who differ most from us (Matthew 25).
They called Jesus names for who he spent his time with — a drunkard and a glutton, they said. Yet the messiah called the Pharisee, the migrant woman, the sexually perverse and the crooked tax collector all to the same place to taste freedom, dignity, release, justice, humanity and life.
It is dangerous to turn any human into a messiah-like figure, as we all have feet of clay. But those who embody messiah-like traits most would resemble the Jesus of the gospels — the one who called all people, regardless of colour, creed, or status to the same place.
The Jesus I think I know probably cried for the senseless killings of Stephen Bantu Biko and Charlie Kirk; both made in the image of God.
But whereas the one lived and died in a quest for deep and true empathetic and just humanity, the other one lived and died in a quest to uphold a separationist, supremacist faith — void of empathy.
In the context of a loveless faith, Jesus too resorted to name calling, but only did so when the humanity, freedom and dignity of others were at stake: and then he did not mince his words when he called out the Pharisees, snakes and blind guides who led people astray.
Jesus today probably cries for the growing inhumanity of the world, celebrated by a white supremacist faith contrary to the crucified God who identifies with the suffering ones among us, full of empathy and love.
Jesus cries over Khartoum and Gaza and Washington DC; over Pretoria and Mangaung; and Vrede and Klawer. From one end of the Earth to the other, our inhumanity separates, violates and scars the image of God in the other, and the Earth which is our only home.
Who is my Jesus? Who will save us? The liberator-Jesus of Steve Biko, or the supremacist-Jesus of Charlie Kirk?
I know which Jesus I prefer. DM