Dr. Clark s Biko Cry Freedom ( Bos Par - 1061 Words

Ten years after the death of Stephen Bantu Biko (1946-77), South Africa’s â€Å"Daily Dispatch† journalist, Donald Woods, wrote Biko: Cry Freedom (Bos par. 1). His book was subsequently adapted for film and produced by hollywood director: Richard Attenborough (Bos par.1). The film was released on the heels of South Africa’s nation-wide declaration of a â€Å"state of emergency† in 1986 (Clark and Worger xvi). Though some claim Attenborough’s film is a biographical look at the life, trial, and death of Biko, this claim strikes me as problematic. Told mainly from Wood’s perspective, the film touches on the formation of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO) under the co-leadership of Biko. Initially, viewers learn about Biko’s work with the Black Community Programmes (BCP), as illustrated in the scene where Biko gives a well-received speech at the illegal gathering for the Black People’s Convention (BPC) (Clark and Worger xx). It is only through Woods that the audience finds out that SASO gathered support from students fed up with the apartheid rule law-abiding National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). For his dedicated advocacy work, Biko is banned in 1973 as an attempt to silence and isolate him from his community. Frantz Fanon’s chapter, â€Å"Concerning violence† in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), speaks to the disappearance of individualism under colonial rule. Fanon indicates that the â€Å"colonialist bourgeoisie† thrusts the ideology upon the â€Å"native