Woods, Donald

▪ 2002

      South African journalist and antiapartheid campaigner (b. Dec. 15, 1933, Elliotdale, S.Af.—d. Aug. 19, 2001, Sutton, Surrey, Eng.), captured the attention of the world in 1977 with an exposé on the death while in police custody of his friend Steve Biko, a prominent young black activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement. Woods, who trained as a lawyer, was a veteran editor (from 1965) of the liberal white Daily Dispatch newspaper in East London, S.Af., and was arrested repeatedly by the government for his antiapartheid activities. When he published details regarding Biko's death at the hands of the South African police, Woods was banned and the newspaper was shut down. He escaped to Lesotho and then to the U.K., where he wrote and campaigned for international sanctions against the racist South African government. Woods's book Biko (1978) and his personal experiences as described in his autobiography, Asking for Trouble (1981), inspired the 1987 film Cry Freedom. In 1978 he was the first private citizen invited to address the UN Security Council. Woods was made CBE in 2000, shortly before his last book, Rainbow Nation Revisited, was published.

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