Donald Woods

Donald James Woods (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. Early life Woods was born at Hobeni, Cape Province, where his family had lived for five generations. His ancestors arrived in South Africa with 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 and Ireland. 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.