Donald Woods

Donald James Woods CBE (15 December 1933 – 19 August 2001) was a South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist. As editor of the Daily Dispatch, he was known for befriending fellow activist Steve Biko, who was killed by police after being detained by the South African government. Woods continued his campaign against apartheid in London, and in 1978 became the first private citizen to address the United Nations Security Council.

Woods was born at Hobeni, Cape Province, where his family had lived for five generations. His British ancestors arrived in South Africa as members of the 1820 Settlers. Woods was born and raised in what has since become the Eastern Cape province, as were both of his parents, all four of his grandparents, all eight of his great grandparents and all sixteen of his great, great grandparents. All thirty-two of his great great great grandparents emigrated to the Cape Colony from England. His parents ran a trading post in Transkei, a tribal reserve, which the South African government would later designate a bantustan. As a boy Woods had extensive regular contact with the Xhosa people. He spoke fluent Xhosa and Afrikaans, as well as his mother tongue, English.

Woods and his brother, Harland, were sent to the Christian Brothers College in Kimberley in the predominantly Afrikaner Northern Cape for their secondary education. The school was academically rigorous, and the Irish Christian Brothers had a reputation for neutrality on questions of politics. While Woods was away at school, the National Party came to power in 1948 and began to build the apartheid structure. When he started his law course at the University of Cape Town in 1952, Woods supported government policies that separated the races, but was wary of the heavy hand of the Afrikaner National Party. During his legal studies he started to question the separatist views he grew up with, becoming politically active in the Federal Party, which rejected apartheid and drew its support from liberal English-speaking whites.

Woods spent two years as a legal apprentice, with the goal of becoming a barrister, but gravitated toward journalism. Just as he was about to embark on his career as a journalist, the 23-year-old Woods was approached by the Federal Party to run for a seat in parliament. His campaign was unsuccessful, and he went back to his job as a cub reporter for the Daily Dispatch newspaper in East London. For two years during the late 1950s, he honed his skills as a journalist by writing and sub-editing for various newspapers in England and Wales. It was while working in Wales that he developed a love and respect for the Welsh people that endured all his life. While working on the Western Mail in Cardiff, Woods became friends with colleague Glyn Williams, who later joined him on the Daily Dispatch and eventually became editor himself. Before returning to South Africa, Woods served as a correspondent for London's now defunct Daily Herald, travelling throughout the eastern and southern United States, eventually arriving in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he filed stories comparing U.S. segregation with South Africa's apartheid.

Woods went back to work at the Dispatch and married Wendy Bruce, whom he had known since they were teenagers in their hometown. They had six children: Jane, Dillon, Duncan, Gavin, Lindsay, and Mary. Their fourth son, Lindsay, born in 1970, contracted meningitis and died just before his first birthday. The family had settled into a comfortable life in East London, and in February 1965, at the age of 31, Woods rose to the position of editor-in-chief of the Daily Dispatch, which held an anti-apartheid editorial policy. As editor, Woods expanded the readership of the Dispatch to include Afrikaans-speakers as well as black readers in nearby Transkei and Ciskei. Woods integrated the editorial staff and flouted apartheid policies by seating black, white, and coloured reporters in the same work area. He favoured hiring reporters who had had experience working overseas. Woods had several scrapes with the South African Security Police regarding editorial matters and on numerous occasions ruffled the feathers of Prime Minister B. J. Vorster in frank, face-to-face exchanges regarding the content of Dispatch editorials. Woods found himself tiptoeing around, and sometimes directly challenging, the increasingly restrictive government policies enacted to control the South African press.

Under Woods, the Daily Dispatch was very critical of the South African government, but was also initially critical of the emerging Black Consciousness Movement under the leadership of Steve Biko. Mamphela Ramphele, Biko’s partner, berated Woods for writing misleading stories about the movement, challenging him to meet with Biko.

The two men became friends, leading the Security Police to monitor Woods's movements. Nevertheless, Woods continued to provide political support to Biko, both through writing editorials in his newspaper and controversially hiring black journalists to the Daily Dispatch.

On 16 June 1976, an uprising broke out in Soweto, in which predominantly 13- to 16-year-old students from Soweto participated in a march to protest against being taught in Afrikaans and against the Bantu Education system in general. The police ordered the children to disperse, and when they refused, the police opened fire, killing scores (and by some estimates, hundreds) of them, as the children pelted the police with stones. The government responded by banning the entire Black Consciousness Movement along with many other political organisations, as well as issuing banning orders against various people. Donald Woods was one of them and was effectively placed under house arrest.