'A distortion of life and legacy of Steve Biko'
1987 1987-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 14 →
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with Steve is inaccurate and romanticized.
In one scene, Steve's widow invites Woods to Steve's funeral. In our culture, he wouldn't have needed an invitation if he were that intimate.
In another scene, the director has Steve tell Woods over the phone about his upcoming trip to the students' conference. Steve was on a secret mission of unifying the main liberation forces. Steve could not have possibly told Woods about his mission.
One colossal mistake in the movie is that it shows Steve being detained on his way to Capetown. In fact, he was on his way back to King William's Town from his mission of unification. The Boers had to kill him because he was on the verge of achieving the unification of the liberation forces.
S.A.: Have any reviewers pointed out these inaccuracies?
Cooper: Yes. In fact, had to acknowledge many of the inaccuracies. But he explains them away, saying that people wouldn't have believed the horror of the situation under apartheid.
But it's not the artist's job to reduce the starkness of the horror, to "chocolate coat." Yet this is what Attenborough has done. For example, in the scene of Soweto 1976, he shows the police giving a few minutes' warning for the crowd to disperse before shooting. In fact, there was no such warning.
In another scene, he shows Wendy Woods in the court gallery in the trial of SASO-BPC [the South African Students Organization-Black People's Convention]. I was on trial in that court. Steve was one of our main witnesses. But Wendy Woods was never in the courtroom. This was put there to bolster the theme of the movie-that of a liberal befriending a Black activist. In my view, this is just shameful paternalism.