‘Cry Freedom’: A Crusade Against South Africa’s Apartheid

Steven Biko (Denzel Washington, L) and Donald Woods (Kevin Kline), in "Cry, Freedom." Universal Pictures

PG | 2h 37min | Drama | 1987

Producer-director Richard Attenborough’s biopic is about two South African men, one black, one white, who together resisted the 1970s apartheid.

Editor of The Daily Dispatch, Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) seeks out black campaigner against apartheid Steve Biko (Denzel Washington). Does Biko hate whites, as state propaganda and Woods’s editorials have suggested? Woods figures he knows the truth. Alongside Biko, he learns that it’s more nuanced than he imagines.

State restrictions curbs his movements and access to his people, who live in overcrowded slums, Biko helps build a community (clinic, school, church) to revive their sense of humanity amid enforced subhuman conditions. Outside the neighborhood, life is suffocating. They can’t work or reside without permits and can use only public transport. Spouses who don’t get permits together can’t live together. Many women get to see their children only for a few hours on Sundays.

A New South Africa

Biko does have white friends and fans. He’s building “a South Africa for equals, black or white.” He reassures fearful white authorities, “We’re just as weak and human as you are.” But he won’t tolerate condescension. Equally, he acknowledges inhumanity among his consistently deprived people, “So desperate … they’ll beat a kid bloody if he had five rand.”

Steven Biko (Denzel Washington), in "Cry Freedom." Universal Pictures

Biko’s friendship with Woods matures into allyship, amplified through Woods’s gutsy journalism that renders both men enemies of the state. When 30-year-old Biko is arrested, tortured (offscreen) and dies in custody, Woods doubles down, enduring imprisonment and severe restrictions on his movements. At great further risk to his wife Wendy (Penelope Wilton) and their children, he writes a book on Biko. Then, cornered by state oppression, he tries to smuggle his manuscript, himself, and his family out of the country so the world can learn of Biko’s legacy and support it.

Flashbacks depict Biko’s wit and wisdom, navigating an oppressive police, legal, and judicial system, and the price he and his people pay for peaceful civil disobedience. The charismatic Washington’s disappearance from the screen about the halfway mark robs the film of much of its draw, but Attenborough wants to also foreground how crucial brave, enlightened whites were, to Biko’s impact.

The film argues, convincingly, that Biko wouldn’t have had half the impact he did if it weren’t for the heroism and sacrifice of several whites who helped get Biko’s story out. If oppression had something to do with whiteness, not inhumanity in some humans, whites within and outside South Africa wouldn’t have come to loathe and fight apartheid as they did.

Woods humorously hypothesizes with Biko. What if blacks were in command instead? Would they surrender their power and control? Biko doesn’t answer, but Attenborough and Woods (on whose book the film is based) are asking audiences, if such surrender did occur, would it be out of decency or have to be under duress? If the inhumanity of some, not their race, class, caste, or religion, leads them to subdue others, doesn’t it take humanity (not color and the like) to overcome or surrender such subjugation?

Shared Humanity

Biko explains the ignominy of a minority unjustly, cruelly lording it over the majority. For perspective, consider this: South Africa’s whites, comprising 8 percent of their population, are a slightly smaller minority than America’s blacks, comprising 14 percent of the U.S. population.

Steven Biko (Denzel Washington, L) and Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) work together to end South Africa's apartheid, in "Cry, Freedom." Universal Pictures

Woods now sees. The point isn’t about who’s lording over whom. The point is that fear-driven divisiveness destroys everyone. Biko wasn’t building a discriminatory or exclusionist enclave. He was preserving his people’s sense of control over their choices: food, water, housing, health, sanitation, education, jobs, marriage, parenting, and faith. He was trying to help them unlearn the inferiority taught to them.

Cruelly imposed divisiveness teaches inferiority, whether it’s minority whites imposing it on majority blacks in South Africa or majority Hindu fundamentalists imposing it on minority Muslims in South Asia. South Africa’s 20th-century racist regime that whites controlled may have pioneered weaponizing bulldozers against civilians, but it is South Asia’s 21st-century fascist regime, with not a white in sight, that perfected it.

World war horrors saw totalitarian states weaponizing tanks and trucks against citizens. But they were still wartime symbols of state terror. Here, the bulldozer is unique: a peacetime symbol of state terror. Attenborough’s first scene provides vital context, depicting a state police bulldozer razing a black slum in Cape Town; a raid allegedly in the interest of public health that is actually a sign of totalitarianism.

The opening credits montage moments before the raid switches between still black-and-white and moving color images. The whirr-click of a camera chimes with each freeze-frame, mimicking the supposedly truthful journalistic point of view. Attenborough’s saying that even well-intentioned journalism can sometimes flatten reality, and erase depth and complexity into a two-dimensional reading. Truth-telling demands more: It’s context.  

Theatrical poster for "cry, Freedom." Universal Pictures

You can watch “Cry Freedom” on Apple TV, Vudu, and Amazon Video.

‘Cry Freedom’ Director: Richard Attenborough Starring: Kevin Kline, Denzel Washington MPAA Rating: PG Running Time: 2 hours, 37 minutes Release Date: Nov. 6, 1987 Rated: 4 stars out of 5

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