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Human Rights Defender |
Carolyn Cerexhe
For the last few years, Donald Woods has been involved with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, in South Africa, which trains journalists from all over Africa, in different media. He recently spent a couple of years in South Africa, working with the Institute, and now publicises and provides assistance from his home in London. He has also responded to requests to speak on human rights issues, and issues of reconciliation, in different parts of the world, including Northern Ireland.
Born in the Transkei, South Africa, in 1933, Donald Woods has British and Irish forbears, the earliest of whom came to South Africa in 1820. He attended a Roman Catholic school, and studied law for a while at the University of Cape Town. However, he began to question his conservative background that had taught him to believe in white superiority. He became interested in political change, and dropped out of his studies, contesting a seat for the anti-apartheid Federal party. Unable to sway the white voters, he then turned to journalism, initially as a cadet reporter for the progressive Daily Dispatch, and later heading overseas, where he worked for newspapers in London, Cardiff and Toronto. He rejoined the Daily Dispatch in 1960 and worked his way up until he became a very young Editor-in-Chief in 1965. He married Wendy Bruce in 1962. (Woods acknowledges that she was always ahead of him in political awareness, and even today Wendy collects books in London, to send to schools in South Africa). Throughout the 12 years that he was Editor-in-Chief, his editorial policy enabled daily condemnation of apartheid, by himself and the journalists working with him (more than half of whom were black). He was prosecuted, unsuccessfully, seven times under publication laws. After his arrest in 1977, he was subject to the famous banning laws and a form of house confinement, for editorials accusing the South African Government of responsibility for the death of the young black leader, Steve Biko. The film Cry Freedom portrays his escape with Wendy and their five children, with the hidden manuscript of Woods' newly written book about Biko.
He spent the next 12 years campaigning heavily against apartheid, outside South Africa, and calling for the implementation of economic sanctions. Donald Woods was the first private citizen ever invited to address the United Nations Security Council. During these years he has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, lecturer and TV presenter, and has written six books. He has also received numerous awards, honorary doctorates and other recognitions of his work.
Carolyn Cerexhe is an Editor of the Indigenous Law Bulletin at the University of NSW.