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CHENGIAH “ROGERS” RAGAVEN was an arts student at the University of Natal “Non-European” Section and became a close friend of Steve Biko.

He was elected president of the university’s first black Student Representative Council, on which Biko also served.

“As you say his name, I see Steve smiling, lanky, in a sports jacket, he was a real character.

“For a medical student he was an exception to the rule. He mixed with the arts students like myself. We were very close and for a year or two we spent all our time together. Man, in those days we used to jol all the time, any excuse for a party after the hard work!

“Steve had such a light-hearted side, he and Ben Ngubane were always cracking political jokes.

“My father ran the canteen at the students’ res in Wentworth and those guys were always hungry, so they spent a lot of time in the canteen when they weren’t studying in their rooms. My dad would make them sardine sandwiches.

“We believed ourselves to be revolutionaries on one hand and intellectuals on the other. We were students and yet we were leaders. It felt a strange kind of position in an apartheid society.

“Steve enjoyed the company of white intellectuals, and Alan Paton was our role model.

“In 1977 I was in exile in the UK. I picked up the paper at Cambridge one morning and saw what had happened to Steve. I was shocked out of my mind. I just started phoning people. I had also lost both my parents while I was in exile.”