Without his intervention we would literally never have achieved our democracy. But now that we did Biko’s name has often been used to to buttress all kinds of essentialist, nativist discourses – to attack and besmirch opponents and shut down debates. The Platform for Public Deliberation has asked Achille Mbembe, one of the world’s leading thinkers on the postcolonial condition in Africa, to deliver a public lecture on Black Intellectual Traditions and Democratic Thought, from Fanon To Biko.