Donald Woods; Journalist and Apartheid Foe

Donald Woods, the South African newspaper editor and apartheid opponent whose activism was chronicled in the movie “Cry Freedom,” died Sunday after a long battle with cancer. He was 67.

Woods, the editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London, South Africa, from 1965 to 1977, died at the Royal Marsden hospital in Sutton, just south of London. His eldest daughter, Jane, said inoperable cancer had been found in his liver three weeks ago. A bout of cancer two years ago led to the removal of a lung and kidney.

The editor made headlines in the mid-1970s when he drew the world’s attention to the case of slain Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko.

Biko, 30, was arrested by security police in September 1977 and beaten unconscious before being driven naked and in chains about 700 miles to the prison where he died.

After his disclosures, Woods was “banned” by the National Party government--meaning he could not write or speak publicly or associate with more than one person outside his family at a time.

He escaped to London in 1978 by disguising himself as a priest and slipping past police guarding his home. In exile, Woods continued to promote South African democracy in lectures (including several at Southern California campuses) and articles. He wrote a biography of Biko, titled simply “Biko,” and later an autobiography wryly titled “Asking For Trouble.”

The books formed the basis for the 1987 British film “Cry Freedom,” directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Denzel Washington as Biko and Kevin Kline as Woods. Film historian Leonard Maltin described the motion picture in his “2001 Movie & Video Guide” as a “sweeping and compassionate film.”

A somewhat mixed Times review of the film when it was released called it “clunky [and] awkward” but praised it as “canny, persuasive filmmaking” and as “a film that illuminates the racist conditions of apartheid.” The reviewer added that Attenborough “is so unabashedly passionate to have us see its [apartheid’s] lacerating inequities up close that, for many, his movie will transcend quibbles about form.”

Woods, a fifth-generation South African, was born Dec. 15, 1933, in a remote part of the Transkei, and grew up bilingual in English and Xhosa, the local tongue. Brought up to regard blacks as inferior, he started his long journey from conservatism to radicalism while studying law at the University of Cape Town.

After hearing parliamentary debates in the 1950s, he gradually became conscious of what he later called “the great obscene lie” of apartheid.

Tiring of the law, he turned to journalism and worked as a junior reporter in England and Canada for two years, also seeing U.S. racial segregation on a visit to Little Rock, Ark.

After he met Biko in 1973, Woods tried unsuccessfully to persuade South African government officials to negotiate with Biko’s movement, as other black organizations such as the ANC were already banned.

In 1978, Woods became the first private citizen invited to address the U.N. Security Council. That same year he toured the United States to promote the anti-apartheid movement, met with then-President Jimmy Carter and gave speeches at Harvard University as a Nieman fellow. He was a consultant on South Africa to the European Union and the Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies.

He returned to South Africa in 1990 after 12 years in exile, but continued to live in Britain. He later made several visits to his homeland--the last in May for the wedding of Biko’s son, Nkosinathi.

The police officers involved in Biko’s death were denied amnesty in 1999 by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which probed apartheid-era crimes after the transition to black majority rule in 1994.

Woods was honored last year by Queen Elizabeth II for his human rights work. Up until his death, he had been working on a project to erect a statue of Nelson Mandela in London’s Trafalgar Square, a popular spot for anti-apartheid protests because it neighbored the South African High Commission. Attenborough is expected to carry on that project.

Woods is survived by his wife of 39 years, Wendy; three sons; two daughters; and two granddaughters.

A funeral service is to be held in London, followed by private cremation. The family will escort Woods’ ashes back to his home in East London, South Africa, for burial.