Shannon L. Hill's Biko's Ghost makes an important contribution to the study of South African history and visual culture. This richly illustrated interdisciplinary text explores how Black Consciousness (BC) ideology and its iconic ‘father', Bantu Stephen Biko, have shaped racial discourse within South Africa and abroad for four decades. Hill examines how this influence is captured in visual art by tracing imagery from the 1970s, following the emergence of BC ideology and the formation of the South African Student Organization (SASO), to the present as South Africa grapples with the legacy of inequality in the new dispensation. Despite this profound influence, Hill argues that as a result of the rise of non-racialism in politics and the dominance of the African National Congress (ANC) in the liberation narrative, Biko and the ideology he championed have not received their due acknowledgement.

Hill's study is presented through seven chapters that reveal trends in the representation of BC and Biko: the emergence of an aesthetics of BC in the 1970s; the use of iconography in portraiture to embody BC ideals after Biko's death and the resulting state inquest in 1977; the varying ways Biko's death was represented by blacks and whites in the 1970s and 1980s; the use of BC iconography during the heightened period of resistance in the 1980s; the attempt to silence the influence of BC in visual culture by the apartheid regime and various liberation organisations in the 1980s; Biko's saintly representation during the transition to the democracy in the 1990s; and the legacy of BC in the new millennium as artists negotiate their identity in the ‘rainbow nation'. These chapters are preceded by an Introduction, which provides an overview of BC and Biko as well as describes the scope of the study, and followed by an Epilogue, which reflects on the legacy of BC and Biko in visual culture today.

Hill makes several significant claims. First, SASO was a pioneer in that it recognised the potential of culture to challenge concepts of racial and ethnic difference central to apartheid. BC graphics, like the iconic image of clenched fists breaking through chains, emphasised black agency and became a signifier of BC. This image was emblazoned on t-shirts, making BC organs ‘perhaps the first in South Africa to produce protest graphics as wearable art’ (p. 11). The visual culture associated with BC was also about experimentation and challenging the dominant notions of Africa that proliferated amongst white patrons in the art world. It is in this context that artists like Gavin Jantjes created his series A South African Colouring Book (1974–75).

Second, it is assumed that BC became ineffective and outdated after state suppression and as other organisations embraced non-racialism. Hill challenges this, arguing that BC was not so much about race as it was about voice (p. 118). She shows how its ideology lived on by exploring protest graphics associated with the Medu Art Ensemble, as well as four resistance organisations that variously ridiculed or embraced BC – the ANC, the Azanian People's Organization, the United Democratic Front and the Mass Democratic Movement. As South Africa became increasingly ungovernable in the 1980s, BC ideology was silenced on several fronts. The state attempted to limit cultural expression of BC through censorship policies. Consequently, several artists circumvented this by representing Biko and his ideals without explicit mention or through metaphor, including artists like Tony Nkotsi and Thami Mnyele. There was also a silencing of BC ideals amongst liberal allies and resistance organisations. Richard Attenborough's film Cry Freedom (1986) is sympathetic with Biko's cause, but its use of a white narrator silences black voices (p. 160). And, notably, the mischaracterisation of BC as ‘racial’ by the ANC becomes ‘a kind of censorship’ that diminishes the historical contributions of BC (p. 149).

Third, BC is about the struggle to be heard and the restoration of dignity, principles associated with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission during the transition to democracy. Biko came to represent ‘ubuntu’ an African philosophy of humanism in which ‘race has no part', and a ‘martyr of hope’ who ‘died for unity’ (p. 192). In this context, his legacy is claimed by various political organisations and he is represented as a saintly figure in works by Jillian Edelstein, Jane Alexander, David Kolane, and even in ANC election posters.

Finally, despite the rhetoric of South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation’, change has been slow and BC remains marginalised. This is seen in museums, like the South African National Art Gallery, that remain Eurocentric in orientation, and in monuments, like the one commissioned by Donald Woods to honour Biko in East London, but failed to include the community in the process. Nevertheless, Hill reminds us that BC has persisted. This is seen in the emergence of the Black Arts Collective in 1998 as a response to the exclusion faced by artists that worked outside of the mainstream, and in the appearance of graffiti art as a way of reclaiming space for BC ideals. Though Hill's book was published prior to the nationwide student movements that surfaced in 2015, perhaps most powerfully, BC iconography and language lives on in their demands.