"Cry Freedom", a film review

Cry Freedom, a film review

With Cry Freedom (1988), Richard Attenborough provides one of the most powerful and moving messages about Apartheid in South Africa. On the surface the films tells a story about an unthinkable friendship between a black activist leader and a white liberal editor. The underlying message, though, are the structural practices of oppression and censorship under the South African regime. It painfully reveals the injustice and inequality the black population was faced with in their every day life.

The film starts off in a black township, showing the miserable living conditions a big part of the population is living in. Suddenly, the peace of the scene is disturbed by police tanks that drive through the township and policemen that destroy whatever comes on their way. Houses are burnt down to the ground, women are sexually abused and men are beaten. With this introduction, Attenborough, strongly and with very little words, outlines the context and takes the audience to Apartheid South Africa of 1976. At the end of the scene, a poster of a black man is pinned to the wall of a destroyed building. The man on the poster is Steve Biko and with this representation his person is immediately linked to resistance against the unjust regime.
This scene is followed by a shot of black woman listening to the radio which reports about the razzia in the township. In contrast to what just has been shown, this news channel states that the people, living in the township, have presented themselves voluntarily to the police. In addition, it justifies the razzia by calling the township an illegal settlement and saying that it poses a threat to public health. Attenborough has shown in a subtle way how the media can twist the truth and as such frame certain information about actual events in society. The media was one way through which the white elite could secure its powerful and dominant position as it had the power to (re)produce (false) knowledge about happenings but also about individuals like Biko.

The other main character, Donald Woods, is introduced with a scene in his office, where he works as an editor for a newspaper. At first sight this shot may look innocent, but as all his colleagues are white and by keeping the former scene in mind, it can be seen illustrative for who controls the media and news reporting in South Africa.
That the two men eventually meet each other and become close friends is a concurrence of circumstance. Because of his banning order, which forbids him to write or publish anything, Steve Biko cannot respond to the critic articles Donald Woods has published about him. Here we see how censorship in South Africa was imposed by law. Individuals with a banning order were not allowed to write anything for private or publishing purposes. In addition, they were forbidden to enter any publishing or printing premises in order to avoid them for spreading their message. Opponents to the regime were thus easily silenced. In addition, there was a law that legalized imprisonment without trial. As such, the police and security agencies were given sufficient tools to act forcefully and arbitrary against anyone who criticized the regime.

Biko thinks of Woods as a true liberal, though more moderate than the average white South African. As such, he is invited to Biko’s place and to see South Africa through his eyes. Biko introduces him to a part of South Africa, which a white South African man is almost never aware of. Slowly but steadily, a change can be observed in Woods attitude towards Biko’s rhetoric and resistance among the black population in general. He is confronted with the darker side of a regime he has been living in his entire life and even believed in. As Woods gets more and more determined to actively fight against the regime, he is also increasingly confronted with serious incidents of violence enacted by the South African police. Initially, the violence is only directed towards Biko and his immediate surroundings, resulting in the destruction of their community church. Hereafter, we also witness how Woods and his family becomes a target of violence themselves: Their house gets shot at and T-shirts with Biko’s print containing itching powder are delivered, causing serious skin burns to his youngest daughter.
Through these scenes, the film shows the audience how violence is used by the South African police to oppress any opponents and deter them from engaging in any activities that criticize the regime. It becomes painfully clear how willing the regime’s supporters, mostly in the form of the police, are to guarantee the survival of the state. This time they are not even making a distinction between black and white opponents with regards to the use of violence and deterrence.

Despite his banning order, Biko found ways to evade the police. But when he is on his way to Cape Town to attend a student’s protest, he got arrested. In prison, they beat him up so badly that he is left with severe brain damage. The prison doctor recommends a specialist for his injuries. The policemen, however, want to take him to the police hospital in Pretoria, 1100km away, to prevent him from escaping. Steve Biko dies in custody one month after he got arrested. The formal notification stated that he died as a result of a hunger strike.
Among all other ways to censor someone, death can be seen as a last resort. It is not just preventing someone from spreading ideas; it is an attempt to burry ideas in the hope that they will never live again. Although Biko was not fighting for anything else than equal rights for everyone, he has been silenced by a regime that was too frightened that his ideas would bring damage to the regime. In the former South Africa, freedom of speech was not protected and as such Biko could easily be imprisoned without any form of trial and was in addition subjected to the arbitrariness of the regime. Also the formal notification of his death reveals again how the regime is concealing his true nature and depicts a false picture of what truly happens.

After Biko’s death, Woods is more than ever determined to spread Biko’s message. When Woods himself is also censored by the regime through a banning order, he decides to flee South Africa. Together with his manuscript and his family, he escapes to Lesotho and via Botswana eventually flee to the UK, where he published his book about Biko.

In retrospect, Cry Freedom covers different ways of censoring. It ranges from a more creative way of censoring, as seen in the distorted media coverage of the razzia in the township and Biko’s death, to a very violent way of censoring, as seen in the murdering of Steve Biko. It provides the audience with interesting insights of what the Apartheid regime was like and how their paranoia about possible threats to the regime made them even kill opponents.