Bantu Stephen Biko

Cry Freedom is not only the story of Steve Biko but he is surely the most important person in this book.

Steve Biko is black. He's married and he's got two children. He grew up in townships mostly but then had the opportunity to be educated by Swiss and German priests. He knows how to put the words together very well. All his life is dedicated to the struggle for black rights. He is a warm and gently person. Absolutely peaceful. He could talk to everybody respectfully and hated nobody. For him South Africa was for black and white, they only had to find a way to live beside each other.

At the time Woods and Biko know each other, Biko is banned because of his leadership of a movement called "The Black Consciousness"

This movement wanted black people to create their own organisations. They wanted to encourage black people to remind themselves that they can be everything they wanted to be. Also that they are good and beautiful in the way they are and that they don't start thinking that they are worse than white people.

The Black Consciousness wanted confrontation without violence. That means face-to-face conversation about ideas and forces. They wanted to achieve success for black people without help of any white man.

Daniel Woods

Daniel Woods is the editor of a newspaper called "The Daily Dispatch". He is also married and has five children. In the beginning of the story he accepted the laws that forced blacks and whites to live in separate areas. But he didn't like police brutality against black people.

He first thought that Biko was a black racist but when he knows him at King William's Town it is the beginning of a true friendship.

One night he visits a township with Steve Biko and as he sees all those black faces with despair in their eyes a New World is opened to him. He recognises what it means to be black and he begins to understand Biko's ideas of Black Consciousness.

Apartheid

The term apartheid comes from the Afrikaans word for "apart". In the twentieth century 4 Million white people governed the Black Country South Africa with its 30 million blacks.

The apartheid regime was introduced in the early nineteen's. The white African government has created more and more laws against the black population. Black people had to live in separate areas, which all together were 7,3 % of the surface of South Africa. It was prohibited to acquire country outside these areas. The blacks were mainly cheap workers, who ere used in mines and on the white farms, the so-called white cities (townships) for the black were born. The most famous is SOWETO meaning SouthWestern Township. Moreover all black people had to carry a permission to stay, the so-called "passport". If a black man or woman was caught without that passport the security police had the warrant to deport them. Therefore it even often happened that families were split in this way.

From 1995 to 2000 over 2000 people came to death through the police.

However generally the situation has improved. Since 1994 black people have the right to vote their own government, they have the right to lead their own business. Unfortunately there is still a huge number of street-children and beggars.