After investigating Biko’s death and obtaining photographs that contradicted the official account, journalist Donald Woods became a target of the South African security apparatus. The authorities placed him under increasingly severe restrictions and eventually banned him, making it impossible for him to leave the country legally. The pressure on his family was deliberately intimate and menacing: security forces harassed them, fired bullets into their home, vandalized property, and sent them T-shirts bearing Biko’s image that had been treated with itching powder. Woods ultimately decided that remaining in South Africa would prevent him from publishing the evidence and might endanger his life. In an escape worthy of a political thriller, he crossed into the Kingdom of Lesotho disguised as a priest. His wife Wendy and their children later joined him, and with assistance from Australian journalist Bruce Haigh, the British High Commission in Maseru, and the Lesotho government, the family was flown out using United Nations passports. Their route took them over South African territory via Botswana before they reached London, where they were granted political asylum. Woods’s books, including Biko and Asking for Trouble, later supplied the source material for Richard Attenborough’s film and helped keep international attention focused on the apartheid government’s responsibility for Biko’s death.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Donald Woods’s Escape from Apartheid South Africa in a Priest’s Disguise
Donald Woods / 1970s
After investigating Biko’s death and obtaining photographs that contradicted the official account, journalist Donald Woods became a target of the South African security apparatus. The authorities placed him under increasingly severe restrictions and eventually banned him, making it impossible for him to leave the country legally. The pressure on his family was deliberately intimate and menacing: security forces harassed them, fired bullets into their home, vandalized property, and sent them T-shirts bearing Biko’s image that had been treated with itching powder. Woods ultimately decided that remaining in South Africa would prevent him from publishing the evidence and might endanger his life. In an escape worthy of a political thriller, he crossed into the Kingdom of Lesotho disguised as a priest. His wife Wendy and their children later joined him, and with assistance from Australian journalist Bruce Haigh, the British High Commission in Maseru, and the Lesotho government, the family was flown out using United Nations passports. Their route took them over South African territory via Botswana before they reached London, where they were granted political asylum. Woods’s books, including Biko and Asking for Trouble, later supplied the source material for Richard Attenborough’s film and helped keep international attention focused on the apartheid government’s responsibility for Biko’s death.
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