Images from this collection have been exhibited in a number of exhibitions most notably in Iziko South African National Gallery as part of the Home Truths: Domestic Interiors from South African Collections exhibition curated by Emeritus Professor Michael Godby.
“Alas poor District Six! They are planning your downfall. They wish to make an end to the live throbbing area. They are making Darling Street a dagger pointed straight at your heart. What will I find if, in another life, I re-visit the old district?”
The Torch, newspaper 1940
The history of District Six is well known. Nestled at the foot of Devil’s Peak, it was home to a multi-ethnic community that can be traced back to 1830 when soldiers’ families and freed slaves first settled in the area. And as a result of its proximity to the harbour, the area developed an international reputation for liveliness and vibrancy.
However, the area’s turbulent history began as early as 1901. The African populace in District Six was forcefully relocated after an outbreak of bubonic plague, to a farm named Uitvlugt, later known as Ndabeni, one of South Africa’s first townships. Despite the area remaining mixed in race, with both coloured and white inhabitants, it became, effectively, the home of Cape Town’s coloured people. It was this community and its physical homes that were systematically destroyed by the apartheid government. This destruction and relocation of the area’s population was so comprehensive that it was described by Richard Rive, a popular writer from the area, as ‘South Africa’s Hiroshima’. Today, almost 50 years since the demolition commenced, much of this land still lies barren.
District Six was a community defined by contradictions. It was a non-racial community surrounded by legally entrenched whiteness. It was a multicultural community but was largely defined by ethnic solidarity. It was a safe and vibrant community but was also blighted by gang violence and crime. There was little in District Six that did not cover both sides of the spectrum and everything in between.
Since the demise of the apartheid regime in 1990, there have been constant questions focusing on how best to memorialise this community and its history and the most effective way to reintroduce the land into common experience. These questions have focused on the visually empty stretches of land bordered by Nelson Mandela Boulevard and De Waal Drive on two sides and Walmer Estate and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology on the other two sides. There were efforts made to declare the land a national heritage site but through a lack of political will, this was never completed. This was combined with continual uncertainties regarding the construction of structures on the land and how it could be returned to the surviving members of the former community.
In 2006 a memorial park was established in the area. This park focused on the area surrounding the steep, cobbled remains of Horstley Street, the site of the first forced removals in 1901 and the last of the removals in 1982. But today, this land appears as bleak as the neglected land that surrounds it.
Perhaps it is fitting, that the land meant to be a park commemorating this history is just as full of contradictions and ambiguities as the original community was. It is land that is referred to as dead and desolate but it is also land that the resident harvest for wild fennel, and at times is so covered by wild flowers, it could rival the Namaqualand in spring. It is also a space that a man can be stabbed for a R50 cell phone but where he can tell me, while holding a dirty rag to the bleeding wound, that he moved here from Blikkiesdorp because he didn’t feel as safe there as he does here. Above all this, it is land emptied of its identity and continually viewed as empty but is actually inhabited by a settled community. Perhaps it is these contradictions, the empty land left to the circadian rhythms of nature and those that society have marginalised, that provide the greatest monument to one of the darkest events in South Africa’s darkest history.
It is a land of ghosts. Indeed, it could be described as the epitome of the traumatic landscape. Those that once lived on it have found little to no closure and those that presently live on it do so with little hope that their lot will be improved. Hidden amongst the boulders and the long grass are the repressed memories of the past, crumbling bits of plaster, brick and concrete, and pieces of structures that may be ruins of a destroyed building or may be portions of a building left unfinished. The former community’s famed street life is reduced to crumbling cobblestones and pathways winding through the long grass. These pieces lie hidden beneath the surface and only after great exploration and interrogation do they hint at their past stories.
As repressed as these memories are, the present is equally so. The most intricate of structures are created amongst the long grass and alien vegetation that fill this land. And these vary from the modest, such as a foam mattress and thin blanket hidden under tinder and dry vegetation, to the memorable such as a small hole dug into a hill that opens up into a three-bedroom home. All of these provide shelter for society’s most invisible members, the homeless.
This view again illustrates the contradictions of the area. That this community is viewed as homeless is not debatable except to some of the community members themselves. Bennedict Khoza, the man responsible for creating the subterranean refuge, claims, ‘It’s warm down here and it’s safe. They tried to move me to a place in Delft but I had to come back here. It’s my home,’ he says and after having lived in the area for over ten years it does become hard to argue this point.
Some members of this community even go so far as to live off the very land that has effectively been discarded by those that control it. These people can be seen collecting wild fennel, which is used to make soup, and other plants for use as flavourings and their medicinal properties. It is not surprising then that the area’s inhabitants are beginning to think of the land as theirs. ‘This is our land now’, said Loxton, a tall, intimidating man with short spiky dreadlocks, ‘my friend and I have been living here for 7 years now. The police, they know us. We always live here and they don’t bother us. If they take this land away from us now we will be very angry.’
If this land has proven anything, it is that those who make a claim for the land do so at their own peril. For many years the focus regarding the past inhabitants of this land has been on the community that was forcefully removed by the apartheid government in the second half of the twentieth century. Attempts have been made to provide restitution to this community, involving the creation of houses to which the surviving community could return.
Recently, however, this focus was redirected. An activist group claiming to have descended from the original Khoi inhabitants of the area, who were forced off the land by South Africa’s first settlers, invaded these buildings also demanding restitution. Added to the building occupations, some of their supporters built an intricate hut, similar to those built by their ancestors, on a promontory overlooking the city. While their claim does not immediately reconcile with today’s political agendas, it emphasises the need for a new debate on the ability to reconcile past land dispossession.
If anything can be learnt from these clashes, it is that this land has been caught at a major crossroads between the past, the present and the future. A fraught history contested by groups of equally vulnerable members is caught in a stalemate between powerful groups who often find it impossible to compromise. What lies at stake is the possibility of future reintegration of this land into contemporary experience, at the very core of which, is the land’s ability to once again form memories and communities.
To say this process is burdened and precarious is an understatement. At times it seems as if the stubborn adherence by those in power to a narrowly focused narrative of nation building has forced an active decision to turn their backs on this history. The strange occurrence of buildings facing away from this open parkland hints that either greater plans for the land had fallen through or, that like many people, the buildings themselves have turned their backs on this historic, but greatly embarrassing, land.
The environment itself echoes this concealing of the past and the present. In the winter months the land, which is seated on the slopes of Table Mountain, is greeted by mists so thick that the mountain disappears entirely. These mists emphasise the isolation and disorientation surrounding this land that has been so severed from its past. And in the blistering hot, dry summer months, fires run through the area. These fires erase, and sometimes conceal, under layers of ash and soot, evidence of the past while forcing the current inhabitants to abandon their homes and move to safer areas of the land.
The ambiguities and controversies that surround this land make the attempts at memorials contentious. One can’t help but think that given the many unresolved conflicts between the former inhabitants, those in power and even the current inhabitants, the land’s current state, desolate, untended and forgotten, is a fitting memorial to the area’s history. The land is the epitome of an emptiness that could not be hidden. It sits, a giant elephant on the peninsula, largely ignored by Capetonians but noticed by all newcomers to Cape Town prompting the question, ‘What is that land?’ In the sense that James Young wrote that it is impossible to redeem catastrophe through art and memorials, the creation of a manicured memorial park would be pure window dressing. As has been argued by Ciraj Rasool, it is becoming clear that the future of land restitution is not purely about housing but also about symbolic politics and understanding District Six as a landscape of memory. Such an understanding places this contested landscape in the position to help us realise that memory should not be anchored in a nostalgic past. Instead, it is a tool to enlighten the present day and help us plot our futures.
It is these themes that this collection of images hopes to confront. At the centre of this confrontation are two theories that dominate recent landscape photography theory. The first of these is Simon Schama’s assertion that ‘The landscape is a work of the mind built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.' This theory is informed by landscape theory dating back to end of the 20th century, which is in turn influenced by the view that the passage of history is a continual and coherent narrative. This theory runs through the great desire of the former residents to reoccupy the land that was once theirs. It is epitomized by the expressed desire by some action groups to recreate the area and community exactly as it once was and can be glimpsed in the images in this collection when they explore the historic, the rubble, the ruins, the physical remnants of what is such a traumatic aspect of South Africa’s history.
Opposing this theory is the hypothesis put forward by Ulrich Baer, an interpretation of Freudian trauma theory; it argues that extreme trauma can cause a distortion of memory and time. In contrast to the previous theory of history as a continuous narrative, this theory posits that events of extreme trauma can effectively sever the bonds between memory and the landscape. In some ways this is emphasized by the argument that while social identities are influenced by place, environments do not produce them. Social identities are created by people and by communities and the vicious, calculated destruction of District Six arguably severed the social identity from the physical home of that community leaving the land an ahistorical wasteland plagued by repressed memories. Some of the former community have stated that the destruction of District Six had such an impact on them that prior to it they must have lived in another world, one physically and morally different to the racially differentiated world they were forced into. This itself is echoed by those trying to reincorporate the land into contemporary society when the Rural Development and Land Affairs Minister, Gugile Nkwinti, states, ‘However, things can never be the same.’ The images of the land shrouded in the heavy morning mists engage with this theory by allowing one to question whether or not the now unidentifiable land hold any claim to its past.
There is a final idea that these images hope to engage with. It is the idea put forward by Ciraj Rassool, that we need to engage with the symbolic as much as the physical if we are to recreate the link between this land and memory once again. It is here that art becomes integral in the possible regeneration of this land for if the memory of the landscape can be disconnected through extreme trauma it is through a tradition of reimagining and mythologizing that it can be rebuilt once more.
Bibliography
1. Baer, U. (2005) Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma. Massachusets: MIT Press.
2. Barnett, N. (1994). The Planned Destruction of District Six in 1940. In E. van Heyningen (Ed.), Studies in the History of Cape Town (pp. 162-184).
3. Bickford-Smith, V. (1990). The Origins and Early History of District Six to 1910. In Jeppie, S. and Soudien, C. (Ed.) The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present (pp. 35-44)
4. Bright, S. (1985) Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men. Exposure, 23:1.
5. Goldblatt, D. (1998). South Africa: The Structure of Things Then. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
6. Jackson, J.B. (1984) Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.
7. Linfield, S. (2010) The Cruel Radiance. London: The University of Chicago Press.
8. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994) Landscape and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
9. Pinnock, D. (1984). The Argie Boys to Skolly Gangsters… In C. Saunders and H. Phillips (Ed.) Studies in the History of Cape Town (pp. 131-175)
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12. Salvesen, B. (2010) New Topographics. Gottingen: Steidl
13. Schama, S. (1996) Landscape and Memory. London: Vintage.
14. Sontag, S. (2004) Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Picador.
15. Soudien, C. (2001) Holding onto the Past… In Rassool, C. and Prosalendis, S. (Ed.) Recalling the community in Cape Town (pg 97-106)
Gentrification is a conflict that is felt throughout the world. From Cape Town to New York the development of low income urban areas causes clashes between the often impoverished communities who live within them and the developers who are seen as invaders trying to force them out.
In Cape Town, the centre of these tensions between urban integration and the disparate financial realities lies focuses on the neighbourhood of Woodstock. In the 1800s Woodstock developed a strongly mixed-race and working-class character as a cosmopolitan home to the Cape Colony’s Malay and Coloured communities, some of the first white industrialists as well as African immigrants from across the rest of the quickly-growing colony in the 19th century. Amazingly, Woodstock fell outside the implementation of apartheid’s Group Areas Act and was allowed to remain largely untouched throughout this shameful period of South Africa’s history.
Ironically, it is South Africa’s celebrated transition to democracy that has caused the greatest damage to the area’s historical integration. Since 1994 residential prices of urban areas have risen continuously and this has, inevitably, been accompanied by higher rents and development which has restructured the dynamics of neighbourhood inclusion and participation.
As a photographer I try to allow my projects to become more than a representational account of my subject matter. In this instance I decided to shoot the project using home made pinhole lenses in the hope that the idiosyncratic images they produced, full of shadows, transient figures and the extrusive passage of time, would become a visual metaphor for the urban evolution as well as the experience of losing your ability to be included and participate within your neighbourhood.
In researching the history of Woodstock and urban gentrification I became fascinated by the double edged term, ‘community upliftment’. So often used as a term to describe the positive development of a community I find it hard to look past the phrases secondary meaningof physically moving and displacing a community. It is within this ambiguous area that I see these images existing.
This work is a permanent exhibition in the Red Location Museum in Port Elizabeth. The museum has won national and international awards for both its content and its architectural structure. It has been adapted and shortened to make it suitable for the internet. The text accompanying the images is taken from interviews with the subjects and were also used to create a comprehensive oral history of the Apartheid struggle in Port Elizabeth and its surrounds.
Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage are two areas that are regularly overlooked in terms of the struggle in South Africa. Yet both these areas contributed disproportionately to the battle for democracy. Civic organisations were created here, progressive trade unions were put into motion amongst Uitenhage’s automobile manufacturing companies and the core of student activism in the country was acknowledged as being right here in PE and Uitenhage. Events happened here that reverberated throughout the country. Not surprisingly these events were masterminded by larger than life struggle identities like Henry Fazzie, Ernest Malgas and Edgar Ngcoyi who were all born and learnt the tricks of survival and protest in the surrounding townships.
This exhibition is not about these people though; it is about the people that you wouldn’t have heard of, the people who never got a seat in parliament or a powerful business position. This exhibition allows these ‘forgotten faces’ to tell you what happened during the horrors of apartheid, it allows you to explore first hand the actions that people needed to take to allow democracy to take hold in our land and most importantly it allows you to look at the faces of these people and to remember them and everything that they have done.
Active as an Amabutho in Soweto-on-Sea
‘We as Amabutho managed to get the police out of the township. We became the local police; we saw ourselves as the people’s security inside the township. We can’t say we were just like the police because the police were very bad but I can look at us like the security for the people. We looked after the township and our people. In the township the people were very glad for us. They knew we were looking after them, they were very proud of the Amabutho. We were working for our people. When people caused trouble we would be watching. If there were tsotsi’s making trouble we would stop that. We always knew who the trouble makers were, people would tell us who they were or we would just find out for ourselves.’
‘The amabutho are not operating now, when Mandela was released and the ANC came into power in 1994 we had to recognise the police. I think that we still need the Amabutho; if it was operating we would have no real crime. We know the cause of the crime in the townships. We know who does it. We could stop it. We could make a big difference now. We would protect people. The people know us here. When people like you come into the township you are safe if you are with us. Nobody would do anything to you. You are safe with us.’
‘When we were struggling people needed us but now that we are free we suffer. Today we are free but nobody came to the amabutho and said thank you. We have a saying, “When you go to war you don’t forget me but when you go to eat you do forget me.” That’s what has happened.’
‘The eastern cape…. We have it hard down here. We were so important but today if you don’t live in Cape Town or Gauteng you don’t have anything. People don’t look at the Eastern Cape. Maybe one day you will see us carrying weapons again. We are not free, they speak of freedom but that is not for everybody it is for individuals…’
Active in the youth movement in the Northern Areas
‘In 1990 we organised a rent campaign. The families in the Northern Areas had to pay rent for the land they were living on. They couldn’t own it. Ja, we were protesting the rent but we were also protesting the evictions. It happened to many people when you come back from school or work and you find your furniture on the street outside your house. We were saying this renting had to stop. The people here had given us a mandate and it was Comrade Randall, Kobus Pienaar and I who had to do the application for the march to the chief magistrate here in North End at the law courts. So we met him and then we moved to meet with the security police, the riot police and the traffic department so we could work out the rules for the march on Monday morning.’
‘We were addressing the public at the Greenville Sport Fields. There were more than three thousand people there, people from Kleinskool, Ext 21, Ext 28, even workers from Eveready and Firestone. There was a strike on that day. Then as we finished we sang Nkosi Sikelele. Then the police came, we approached them with the permission notice but they were not interested. They said, ‘No, this is an illegal meeting.’ So I showed them that I had permission. Then I heard shots and they fired tear gas into the crowd. This was a problem because there were three entries into the field and the police had blocked two of the entries. The crowd really got mad then.’
‘The police arrested me immediately. It was like they were looking for me. They took me to Struandale police station. That’s where the riot police were. They locked me up for 3 or 4 days. I can’t remember exactly what they charged me with but there was a charge that said ‘State versus Godfrey Ackley’ ha ha ha… They still said it was an illegal march even though I kept showing them the permission notice.’
‘But in terms of jobs and things… no… there is nothing for me now. No jobs, nothing, no recognition. I remember people in the Northern Areas, people like Derek Swart, gave us a thanksgiving party with food for our parents to thank them for giving us to the struggle. They gave me a key, its somewhere in this cupboard. It’s a replica of Nelson Mandela’s key from Robben Island. Well, they gave it to my parents to thank them… The problem is that we have political freedom but we don’t have economic freedom. The economy is still in the hands of the few. It’s a process. People need to be patient, they need to know it’s a struggle; it’s another struggle to get economic freedom.’
‘At the moment I do some voluntary work for a housing group. I sit there, we’re busy with these RDP houses, if I was greedy I could fill in a form and get one of those RDP houses for myself. But I’m looking after the people. We fought for this and I can’t take it away from them. We promised them this. Ja, we look out for these people but there is nobody to look out for us.’
Active in the youth movement until he was recruited into the underground
‘In 1983 there was to be the Tricameral Parliament. It was opposed by every democratic person in South Africa. So something had to be done. While the NP was organising themselves, they were rallying, ‘Accept this! Accept this!’ They would hold their own meetings and we would disrupt those meetings. They would hold those meetings in the schools, in the classrooms and we would go in and turn the tables around, put off the lights and disorganise every person that was there and then move out. In one minute we were out and everybody was disorganised, the chairs were broken, the tables are broken. The meetings weren’t popular but there were elderly people who would attend those meetings, remember it was an extension of apartheid. Those councillors had money so they would slaughter some cows and people would go there and chow the meat and would find out what was this all about. So we would disrupt those meetings. They needed to understand that we were against that.’
‘It was around that time that I was recruited by the likes of comrade Vuyo Kwinana to work underground for UmKhonto we Sizwe. I then had to take one step backwards so I was not in the limelight, so I was not in the public domain. I used to assist in taking people out of the country. We would drive them out to Lesotho. Lesotho was a good area because we had to be there in the mornings when the Lesotho people would be using the river to wash their washing. Then we would send people over there. Of course there would be someone on the other side to collect them.’
‘After 1994 I worked for the Railways and Harbour workers union I worked there as an organizer and then as the regional secretary. Then the union formed what was known as SARHWU Investment holdings. I worked with Sandile Zungu there but they wanted me to move to Joburg. I couldn’t man, I love my PE. Then I resigned and I started with this small family business. We still sustain it somehow. The business is Dyasi Funeral Services in Zwide. It started in 2000 and we’re beginning to make something with it now.’
‘Is this the freedom I fought for? I would say yes but uh…. you know nowadays everybody wants to be in parliament, everybody wants to be in council and everybody will do anything for that. Fortunately I am not in that league. When we were still young and struggling, we never knew if we would live and see elections, then I would volunteer to be the organizer or the chairman and I would be accepted but not today because everybody knows there is money involved. I suppose things are changing you know and those that are in these parliaments now and these councils are not the tried and tested comrades who were there. They’re not the comrades who were there before; they don’t value the freedom we fought for. They were never there; they’re not tried and trusted. That’s why some of them… if tomorrow P.W. Botha was to rise from his grave and try to run this country they wouldn’t be able to defend this country, they wouldn’t be able to defend this democracy.’
Active through his position as Methodist bishop
‘I would also organise and lead marches. There was a march, I have forgotten what year, we were a group of whites and we met at Livingstone Hospital and walked to New Brighton. We were just whites, old nuns on crutches and stuff like that. It was anybody who wanted to come came on that march. I think about 800 – 1000 people came. We walked and as we got closer to New Brighton, young blacks came with buckets of water and little cartons and they gave us water to drink especially to the older people. Then we saw a black haze as we got nearer to New Brighton and there must have been 80 000 blacks all gathered with a big, big placard hanging across the road, ‘Welcome home to our brothers and sisters.’ We all burst into tears. That was a very moving experience.’
‘The police were a constant problem, I had my phone tapped, I had hammers and sickles painted on my house, obscene phrases painted on my car. The normal police were generally alright. You could talk to policemen and you could sense you were talking to misguided people but they were still human beings. The security police produced a kind of human animal. Who became a personification of evil of that I am sure. The thing that kept me sane was a verse from St Paul and he said, ‘Our fight is not against flesh and blood (human beings) but against the principalities and powers of evil.’ I used to say to myself that my fight isn’t against these guys but it is against the evil system that seems to have penetrated them and is living within them. I used to tell them that my fight isn’t against you but the system that has corrupted you.’
‘In 1992 I left Port Elizabeth and went to work in Durban. I was there until 1999. That was a very hard time. After we came out of Apartheid we were physically and mentally drained. Then as Bishop in Natal I had to go into the Richmond area, they were the killing fields of Kwazulu-Natal. It was terrible, we would get messages from the church leaders and then we would drive and walk miles into the mountains to houses where 12 people had been shot. Then you would wonder, why did someone walk all this way to shoot these 12 people? Richmond was a terrible…. That whole area there was such blood spilt; it was such a terrible shame.’
‘I think I would define my life as trying to do what God is calling me to do. That sounds overly righteous but what I think God is calling me to do I try to do. My life hasn’t changed in that sense. When my life finished with Kwazulu-Natal I felt called to do these other things with my black colleague. Then I felt really called to start the Institute for Spirituality. So my life hasn’t changed in that I am fortunate to be doing what I think I should be doing.’
Active in the black Consciousness movement until he was forced into exile
‘In March 1979 I left the country. I was taken across to Lesotho. At that point I could not operate in South Africa because I was banned and house arrested, I could not move. I could not leave Port Elizabeth and had to report to a police station every Monday. So one Monday I reported at month end just as people had received their salary so I knew people could help me leave. Then I went to Lesotho. In Lesotho I joined the ANC. I stayed there till 1980 when I was taken to Mozambique. Then from Mozambique I was taken to Angola for training. I was in Angola until 1987. In 1980 and some of 1981 I was militarily and politically trained in Angola and then I was deployed in Angola. At that point I was responsible for political training inside the camp.’
‘My worst memory was staying in the camps for so long. I think I would have done something much better had I not stayed in the camps. It was really frustrating. If I was given a choice I think I would have done something better. If there was better leadership at that time I think the people in the camps would have been better trained and would be able to govern and manage the country. Most of us were from MK and there is nothing that we couldn’t do once we had enough time to train them. I don’t think we were ready. There was a camp next to ours for those people from SWAPO. In that camp they were trained all over in all the different skills. They were training them and I think they were ready to govern the country. They knew they had to train the people in order to be able to govern. They were more ready than we are. That would be my worst memory, that we didn’t train our people in time.’
‘In 1994 I became a councillor for a year here in PE. Then I left and went to the army but I didn’t feel that was for me. Then in 1996 I went back to council and I was a councillor until March 2006. I was a councillor for my area, Ward 22 which is in Kwazakhele. I enjoyed it; I’m more into politics than any other thing. After council I got some land in Lorraine and have spent this time building my house. I want to stay in politics, there is nothing else I want to do except that. My wife said why don’t I get a job, I said no I can’t work I don’t think I’m compatible. Luckily, this year I got reinstated as a councillor. I am now a political representative; I don’t have a ward anymore. It’s a big relief; I always knew I wanted to stay in politics.’
‘People have a lot of expectations, from the government and they do not understand what it does. So we had to explain what it does and what the council does. We were involved with housing and infrastructure and all those things. I had to be in council in order to service those people. It wasn’t run as well as one would expect. I think more could still be done. I don’t think we were properly trained. Moreover when we just took over and we were the new government and people were new into the politics of the government. They were using the officials from the old Transkei and the old government with all the different understandings and the different cultures and all that. It was quite difficult. I don’t think we’ve overcome that up till now. It is getting better now, people are coming to understand. The only problem is greed. People are not doing it for themselves, they are doing it for money.’
One of the early political prisoners on Robben Island
‘On the 24th of June 1964, I was arrested at 01:00AM. The Special Branch was very strong at that time. I was arrested under the Communism Act because I was a member of the ANC. They held me for 90 days before I was sentenced on the 15th of October. Then I was taken to Graaf Reinet to be charged. For those 90 days I was held in North End Prison. I started to get sick there because it was so stuffy. There were about 40 of us in the cell. We would sleep like this (indicating right on top of each other). I got sick there. It was very bad when I left there. It was better when I was in the fresh air. Then on the 14th of October we were taken down to Graaf Reinet. At Graaf Reinett I got a five year sentence on Robben Island.’
‘On Robben Island we had no privileges. We could have no books, we couldn’t learn. We used to mix the cement and hide the bags it came in. We’d make the bags nice and bring them to the cells and use them like books. The warders would then come during the day and take all those papers and burn those things. They did not want us to study. They said that it is not legal and they won’t let us. Then we went on hunger strike to solve these problems. We went for nearly 9 days without food I think, we didn’t eat. We couldn’t walk then. It was so hard. We managed to win that one. They began to give us a chance to order books. That was almost a year before I left there. Those students that came in there after, like Faku, who came in the 70’s… it was like a school then. They had that privilege then. Yes… We started that.’
‘In 1995 I was elected into council. I wanted to refuse to go into council because I wasn’t educated enough – there are lots of terms and technical details involved. At the school I was at you would work two weeks or even one week depending on what job your father had on the farm. If you had to plough the land then you would have to plough the land. So maybe two weeks a month you weren’t at school. Luckily I learnt on the job and there were people who would help me along with the job.’
‘I had to leave council in 2000. I didn’t want to take the severance package when I finished being a councillor. There were lots of people that needed me there. My son supported me after that, he did a BComm at the University of Fort Hare. Then he also started working for local government, the municipality. He continued with his education also and started doing law. In December 2004 he was shot dead. Even today I’m not right when I talk about that. Then I started to struggle because he was really helping me. So I needed to get work, and I tried…. I tried…. but I struggle you know. So I started a development cleaning service and I began to tender to the municipality. I started this in 2005 but it’s not easy.’
‘I never left the struggle and I will never leave the struggle. There is still a lot to do. The veterans of the ANC need to say something now. We have experience and can help the country. We need to remember the constitution of the ANC and go back to that for guidance. If we are disciplined members of the organisation we won’t run to the media with our problems, we will deal with it quietly and according to the rules of the organisation.’
Active as a member of the Underground in South Africa
‘I then went through a crash course in military training course. This was in Swaziland and Mozambique. In 1978 I was in Mozambique. I stayed in Maputo; I was part of the underground then. Then I came back to South Africa through Swaziland. The training was not an extensive training course, it was just basic training in the handling of firearms. I was just trained in a house, in a dining room, using the tables. It was about dismantling and assembling the fire arms and how to keep it and so on. The role I was being prepared for was to be a contact person inside the country. Sometimes I would have to keep those arms and then wait for the MK soldiers. I was trained all by myself because it was sensitive. When I would go back inside the country I was not supposed to be noticed even by those that were in exile. Nobody could know about me. Then whilst I was in Johannesburg, I received a message that was redeploying me to the mines. I was arrested on the mines in 1980 and spent 7 years on Robben Island.’
‘I was released in 1988. Then after maybe 3 months I was told to revise the project on adult basic education. That’s where I met Janet Cherry. I had to undergo training in Cape Town. The project was doing adult basic education training, worker education and also some political education. The name of the project was ECALP (Eastern Cape Adult Learning Project). It began to receive funding and it grew, it spread to Cradock, to Grahamstown and other smaller towns in the Eastern Cape. It became a formidable structure. That was the beginning of the 90’s.’
‘In 1991 the Soviet Union offered training to the communist party through the ANC. The training was about social and political services. It offered 14 positions, seven were selected from inside the country and seven were taken from the exiles… from outside the country. That was how they divided the 14 that were selected. I was selected from the 7 inside the country. We had to go to Moscow for 6 months. It was a very intensive course. It normally takes 3 years; you can rate it as a diploma in SA. So I did that and passed and then came back.’
‘I then worked in various other structures that were strengthening our political forums. In 1994 I worked for what was then called Local Government Election Forum (LOGEF) that was the structure responsible for local government elections and municipalities. I worked there as a provincial coordinator for training in 1994.’
‘In 1996 I decided to play a low profile in politics because after the elections of 1994 we had the problem of everybody wanting to serve in parliament or similar positions and the situation became quite ugly. I was elected to serve on the provincial legislature as MPL but somehow the names got lost on the way to Bisho and other names got in there. In 1996 I worked for the Western District Council in the training division until I got invited by the Minister for Public Works then, to serve in his office because his PA was leaving for another job in Pretoria. I resigned after serving there for one year. By 2000 things were becoming bad, I could feel the situation of being unemployed.’
‘Then I came back and started work at ECDC on the first of February 2001. I worked there till I resigned in 2006. At that point I could not cope with relocation to Umtata. I was employed as head officer in East London. Then they wanted to move to a project in Umtata and I couldn’t do it. I was just going further and further away from my family. They were all still in PE.’
Active in Uitenhage through the Interfaith Advice Office
‘Most of the work that I did during the struggle was through the advice office. In 1985, many people were being detained. The advice office was formed because of that. In the advice office I worked with the detainees, I made sure the detainees had visits and when people were arrested I would check where they were and I’d get them legal representatives. I’d also make sure that the prisons worked with the Red Cross and the South African Council of Churches (SACC) in Port Elizabeth. When the office first opened it was on the grounds behind the Catholic Church in Uitenhage. In 1987, it moved to these offices on Constitution Street, and was named after Molly Blackburn because of her great contribution to this country. I remember once she forced her way into Church Street police station and found a man named Norman Kona who was being assaulted by the police. She came in and found him with an electric cable on his leg.’
‘One of the worst jobs we had to do at the advice office was helping people find where there children were. People would come in the morning and say they didn’t know where their children were. Then we had to check all the prisons and hospitals to see if we could find them. Sometimes we could not find them and at four you had to tell them to go home without knowing where their children were.’
‘Since the end of the struggle we have been teaching people about the laws and how the government works. We need to make people aware of things like going to Home Affairs to get their ID books so that they can exercise their rights. The cases we had increased after the elections. Lots of farm workers were being evicted and told to go to Mandela. I think a lot of white people took out their frustrations on their workers and all those things. That was happening since 1994. People need to understand government. The freedom charter says, ‘The people shall govern’ and the ANC was very good putting in the People Participation Act, but the people don’t have the capacity or knowledge to participate. In the constitution it says, ‘A municipality must strive in its administrative capacity to achieve its objective to promote democracy and governance in local communities and ensure community participation.’ I don’t think local government is doing that.’
‘I think my life has changed since 1994. I am looking now at changing peoples’ lives rather than worrying about if I will make it through tomorrow. I don’t have to worry if I will go home tonight because I couldn’t go when the Ama Africa were looking for me. At four o’clock I needed to start thinking where I will sleep because I could stay at a friend’s house, but if I did I couldn’t go back there. That was the worst time in my life, not knowing where I was going to sleep or where I could go.’
Active in community development throughout Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth
‘I dealt with squatter issues a lot. They would set up little settlements and in two weeks you would have like 50 to a hundred families. So we would try and keep these people together. We would beg the churches for places to stay and the taxi people to help move these groups of people. I mean they would be moved about 10 times in 2 weeks. ‘
‘The taxi people were actually quite good for them it was almost like a publicity stunt. There was rivalry between the two groups, Umcedo and SABTA. SABTA was the established group and Umcedo were the new guys who said they were here to help the people. So for them it was an opportunity to demonstrate this. I mean we only really needed to use 3 or 4 taxis every couple of days. If they didn’t feel that they had to do a victory lap round Njoli square it wouldn’t have taken them very long at all.’
‘The pay off was that eventually the Ibhayi municipality decided to give the people a legal place to stay and those became Silvertowns. What they did was find land, then they arrived with the four walls already done, they would just come and nail them together and then you have a roof and a door and then they would have a little bit of land around them. At least, small as they were, they were legally entitled to be there.’
‘I worked at Kagiso until the end of 1996 when they had to close the offices because the European Union was now funding the government not NGO’s. So they had to close offices because they didn’t have money. I carried on working for them on a part time basis until about 1999. Now I am a contract worker for Ikala Trust which is mostly capacity building for community organisations for small donors. They help them build a good track record, able to report, able to do book keeping, spend small amounts of money properly, teach them good habits. The work is very responsive; it’s not like accredited training. I didn’t even volunteer to become accredited because the target group I’m working with, you can’t say, this is the module I am working with and I will cover everything. Its very experience based, so when people do group work they can do group work in their own language.’
Exhibited at the Ron Belling Gallery in Port Elizabeth in 2010.
The word vignette has many different meanings depending on the connotation in which it used. In photography it is used to describe an image which darkens towards the corners, in literature and film it is used to describe a short film or text showing a small aspect of a topic in order to investigate a larger issue.
Using the word vignette as a guide I have created a series of images that focus on aspects of the Eastern Cape and through these hope to tell a greater story of the many narratives that influence life in South Africa's largest province.
Kareedouw is a small town on the Langkloof Fruit Route. It has a number of claims to fame from the Kareedouw Butchery, which claims to make the best boerewors in the country to being the final resting place of past prime minister BJ Vorster. His grave, a well tended granite slab, in the Dutch Reformed Church’s memorial garden is a short distance from this memorial to the Great Trek, a seminal event in South Africa’s history.
The Cape Hermes Hotel in Port St Johns was built in the late 1960s and in its hey day accommodated such international stars as Lee Marvin and Roger Moore. Over time custom dropped until eventually in 1994 it finally closed it doors. Today, there are plans of demolishing it and redeveloping the site.
The owner of the ‘Masjid Mosque’ in Graaf Reinett also owns the small general dealer next door. Its a new building that was converted to a mosque after some deliberation. The owner’s first idea was to turn it into a nightclub but after some soul searching it was decided that Graaf Reinet’s small Muslim population of ‘about 3 people’ needed a mosque. The majority of the visitors to the mosque, which has no Imam, are people passing through on their way from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth.
Ruben is a guards cars outside the provincial legislature in the Eastern Cape capital, Bhisho. He walks with a visibly wobbly gate and has a tendency to be incoherent yet he is undeniably friendly. After I refused his offer to wash my car he wanted to assure me I was not to be afraid of him. While we chatted I noticed a number of scars on his body, a large puncture wound in his chest and a larger scar across his crown. When I asked him about the scar on his head he said, ‘My brother hit me with an axe… but you mustn’t be worried about me. I am a good man.’
This fine example of a Victorian Conservatory was opened on September 12, 1882 by the Honourable John X Merriman, the then Commissioner of Works for the Cape Colony, at a cost of £3,800. It is named after Mr HW Pearson, the Mayor of Port Elizabeth at that time.
In 2010 the conservatory was renovated.
Informal vendors set up shop on the street outside established established shops. The street vendors hope that their smaller and cheaper parcels of food will allow them to gain some custom.
This rusted petrol sign in the Transkeian town of Butterworth speaks volumes of the town’s history. One of the oldest towns in the Eastern Cape it went through periods of relative prosperity before a mixture of Apartheid policies and the effects of men leaving as migrant labourers impoverished it greatly.
In the centre of Mthatha there is a park, which, in the afternoons, is visited by many young couples. Both Olke, the man in the photograph, and his girlfriend, are students at the nearby Walter Sisulu University and live in crowded houses with very little privacy. Once they finish their studies they hope to move to a big city like Cape Town or Johannesburg.
Mphutumi Maxolo, Lady Grey’s driving instructor, scratches out markings for a driving lesson on the town’s underdeveloped football field.
Resistance in Sterkstroom was driven by the youth after different sports and church groups came together under the banner of STEYO (Sterkstroom Youth Organisation) in 1985. Soon after this in a crackdown by the police 6 people were killed. Today the dead are remembered by this memorial.
The Donkin Street houses were built between 1860 and 1880. The row of terraced houses, each lower than the preceding one, is remarkable in that they are integrated in a single unit. The whole street was declared a national monument in 1967.
A selection of these images were chosen to be exhibited in an exhibtion entitled Skin, held at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in 2011.
In his book, ‘The Mirror at Midnight’ the American journalist, Adam Hochschild, made the following observation regarding soil erosion in South Africa’s former homelands.
‘The land is less arable (than the surrounding white land), but its density of cattle and population is many times that of the surrounding white-owned land. One result of the overgrazing is severe erosion, which sometimes has stripped the soil down to bedrock. You can see scar-like jagged ditches through which more than 300 million tons of red topsoil is annually washed away into the sea.’
He goes on to describe the soil erosion as physical scars on the land created by the policies of the apartheid government. These images of soil erosion in the former Transkei are the starting point of a project exploring not only how the former homelands are forced to deal with the legacy of apartheid but how history is able to physically affect us and our world.
Rocks are contained within chicken wire and used as an attempt to slow the erosion of the area's top soil.
As a photographer I prefer to work in series of images. It is the way I feel most capable of expressing the ideas and concepts that influence my work. That said, I also want to include images that might be part of smaller, less important series that may not deserve to be included in their entirety.
Similarly, I also wanted a space where I could include certain images from the commissions I've undertaken as a professional photographer.
Finally, this collection will also include any single images I have created that I love and would normally just languish on an external hard drive or in a negative sleeve gaining dust.
After all, if nobody ever sees an image does it actually exist?
I was commissioned by Noero Wolff Architects to photograph the newly completed precinct. Some of the images from this series were exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona.
Kareedouw is a small town on the Langkloof Fruit Route. It has a number of claims to fame from the Kareedouw Butchery, which claims to make the best boerewors in the country to being the final resting place of past prime minister BJ Vorster. His grave, a well tended granite slab, in the Dutch Reformed Church’s memorial garden is a short distance from this memorial to the Great Trek, a seminal event in South Africa’s history.
Images commissioned by Maurette Interiors
The Red Location in Port Elizabeth is one of South Africa's oldest formal townships. It was first built in the early years of the 1900s with materials sourced from the 'Boer' concentration camp in nearby Uitenhage and the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at De Aar. These materials were mostly corrugated iron, and as this rusted it turned a deep red colour creating the name for the community.
This fine example of a Victorian Conservatory was opened on September 12, 1882 by the Honourable John X Merriman, the then Commissioner of Works for the Cape Colony, at a cost of £3,800. It is named after Mr HW Pearson, the Mayor of Port Elizabeth at that time.
Commissioned by NOH Architects
Commissioned by Field Architecture, USA.
The owner of the ‘Masjid Mosque’ in Graaf Reinett also owns the small general dealer next door. Its a new building that was converted to a mosque after some deliberation. The owner’s first idea was to turn it into a nightclub but after some soul searching it was decided that Graaf Reinet’s small Muslim population of ‘about 3 people’ needed a mosque. The majority of the visitors to the mosque, which has no Imam, are people passing through on their way from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth.
I was commissioned by Noero Wolff Architects to photograph the newly completed precinct. Some of the images from this series were exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona.
This image was bought by the Red Location Art Gallery.
Dimensions 2.5M X 1.5M
I was commissioned by Noero Wolff Architects to photograph the newly completed precinct. Some of the images from this series were exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona.
Commissioned by Boomtown Strategic Brand Agency
Commissioned by Field Architecture, USA.
Shot using a Rolleiflex medium format film camera
I was commissioned by Noero Wolff Architects to photograph the newly completed precinct. Some of the images from this series were exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona.
I was commissioned by Noero Wolff Architects to photograph the newly completed precinct. Some of the images from this series were exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona.
Commissioned by NOH Architects
This image comes from a series commissioned by African Health Placements, an NGO helping place doctors in rural hospitals. They wanted a series of images illustrating the state of healthcare in the former Transkei.
While working for the Iziko South African Museum I was asked to photograph Museum Night, a cultural experience that sees multiple museums within a walkable area keeping their doors open late and offering free admission for the public.
While working for the Iziko South African Museum I was asked to photograph Museum Night, a cultural experience that sees multiple museums within a walkable area keeping their doors open late and offering free admission for the public.
This image comes from a series commissioned by African Health Placements, an NGO helping place doctors in rural hospitals. They wanted a series of images illustrating the state of healthcare in the former Transkei.
From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a series of images exploring a musician's life in London.
Gon sits on his bed in the abandoned college where he lives. He is getting ready to play a gig at a well known venue called, ‘Bar Fly’. He is not only the sole member of The Budda Cakes but also makes his own clothes.
From Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a series of images exploring a musician's life in London.
Gon on the roof of the abandoned college, where he lives, amidst the aftermath of a weekend long party.
While working for the Iziko South African Museum I was asked to photograph Museum Night, a cultural experience that sees multiple museums within a walkable area keeping their doors open late and offering free admission for the public.
– There are currently 5. 7 million South Africans infected with HIV.
– 280 000 of them are children.
– Over 1.4 million children have been orphaned by AIDS.
– 1000 South Africans die every single day because of AIDS related illnesses.
– In our district of Peddie 35% of pregnant women are HIV positive.
HIV & AIDS has been one of the most serious hurdles faced by the new South Africa. Fuelled by extreme poverty, low education and an extremely poor response by the government South Africa stood on the verge of being completely devastated by the HIV & AIDS epidemic.
In 2009 more than 5.6 million people were living with HIV / AIDS, more than any other country in the world. Despite this, the South African government persevered with policy that tried to both deny and ignore the problem.
Only in 2010, more than 12 years since their initial availability, did the South African government begin to make antiretroviral medication available to the public. This was despite medical trials from as early as 1998 proving them not only safe but also very effective in lessening the effects of the virus.
Yet within this framework of incompetence and neglect the Keiskamma Trust in Hamburg, a small rural settlement in the poverty stricken Eastern Cape, was a shining beacon of hope. Privately funded through donations and international aid it was free to work outside of the government’s ineffective policies.
As word spread through the local population more and more people started turning to the centre for treatment, some travelling large distances to avoid treatment in the government run hospitals.
This series of photographs was commissioned to create an exhibition that would accompany a large tapestry created by the local community. The tapestry was to be an interpretation of Picasso’s Guernica painting using indigenous visual imagery and Picasso’s original colour scheme, which the photographs needed to adhere to.
The aim of the photographs was to show not only the effect HIV & AIDS has had on the local population but also the effect that the treatment centre and the use of antiretrovirals has had.
To call Hamburg a small rural village is not to exaggerate. It has just fewer than 100 permanent residents and no real road sign indicating the turn off to it. It can only be reached by dirt roads that can range from smooth to almost impassable depending on how much rain there has been. Despite this people are willing to travel hundreds of kilometres and for many hours from nearby cities to be treated here.
The patients are treated with medication known as antiretrovirals. These do not cure the patients but suppress the virus in their blood, which allows their immune system to recover. Antiretrovirals is a long-term treatment as the patients will need to continue taking the medication as long as they are alive. It also needs to be strictly regimented as if one lapses in treatment it can allow the virus to build up immunity and they would become less effective. The treatment centre spends many hours teaching and explaining how and why one should use antiretrovirals.
Patients of the treatment centre gather with members of the local community to dance and pray. Although the treatment centre is largely secular most of the patients and the community are christians and they use this as a way to keep the patients spirits high.
Saturday is salon day at the treatment centre. On these days volunteers from the nearby villages come to the treatment centre and treat the patients to hair care and other pampering.
Peter, a volunteer from England, helps an incapacitated patient perform exercises to prevent his muscles atrophying. The centre relies quite heavily on foreign aid for both staff and for financial means.
Treating HIV & AIDS is not confined to the physical and medical; another integral aspect is psychological counselling for all those living with the virus from the patients themselves to their family members and partners. Here, Babalwa, an orderly at the treatment, counsels a Fezeka, whose husband has been diagnosed with HIV. Fezeka will also need to undergo testing to see if she has become infected. It is emphasised that with antiretroviral treatments it is possible to live a life just as if one was not infected.
Staff at the treatment centre.
The patients are treated with medication known as antiretrovirals. These do not cure the patients but suppress the virus in their blood, which allows their immune system to recover. Antiretrovirals is a long-term treatment as the patients will need to continue taking the medication as long as they are alive. It also needs to be strictly regimented as if one lapses in treatment it can allow the virus to build up immunity and they would become less effective. The treatment centre spends many hours teaching and explaining how and why one should use antiretrovirals.
In these images Rachel, a Canadian nurse working at the treatment centre, shows Luleka, a young mother from a neighbouring rural community, some of the skills of motherhood. The child is named after Rachel as she was responsible for her birth on the side of the road after they were unable to reach the medical centre in time. Thanks to her ongoing treatment with antiretrovirals, Luleka who is HIV positive did not pass on the virus to her child. South Africa’s HIV and AIDS epidemic has had a devastating effect on children in a number of ways. There were an estimated 330,000 under-15s living with HIV in 2009, a figure that has almost doubled since 2001.
Luleka looks on as her mother encourages baby Rachel to stand. This image was taken over a year later and thanks to Luleka’s treatment with antiretrovirals found both Luleka and Rachel healthy. Unfortunately, Luleka was finding the transition to single motherhood (the father has passed away) rather difficult and had on two occasions asked Rachel to adopt the baby.
Nurse at the Hamburg Treatment Centre.
This patient had been bedridden within the treatment centre for over 6 months due to a combination of opportunistic infections and tuberculosis. After returning home for a brief period he returned he returned where I photographed him being examined after developing a large growth on his chest, which was diagnosed as an advanced case of lung cancer. He passed away not long after these images were taken.
This patient had been bedridden within the treatment centre for over 6 months due to a combination of opportunistic infections and tuberculosis. After returning home for a brief period he returned he returned where I photographed him being examined after developing a large growth on his chest, which was diagnosed as an advanced case of lung cancer. He passed away not long after these images were taken.
The treatment centre has a vegetable garden that it uses to feed the patients that come to the centre. Here the gardener stands with all the rainwater they collected, which they will use to water the vegetables.
Poverty is a serious problem in Hamburg and the neighbouring communities. Hamburg itself has a population of just under 100 and most of those rely on government grants and pensions.
This was a project I undertook between 2009 and 2011. Unfortunately, in the intervening period I lost all of my notes and captions. The captions are now particularly minimal and only includes the first names that I included in images file names.
The Red Location in Port Elizabeth is one of South Africa's oldest formal townships. It was first built in the early years of the 1900s with materials sourced from the 'Boer' concentration camp in nearby Uitenhage and the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at De Aar. These materials were mostly corrugated iron, and as this rusted it turned a deep red colour creating the name for the community.
Since that time it has continued to be an important place in the history of South Africa. Numerous struggle stalwarts were born or lived in the area including, Govan Mbeki and Ernest Malgas. It also saw the formation of the first cell of Umkonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, in 1961.
To commemorate this history the municipality decided to build a cultural precinct in the area. 2005 saw the opening of the internationally awarded Red Location Museum with a number of exhibitions celebrating Port Elizabeth's unique struggle and social cultures. The museum became one of the most attended municipal facilities and intoduced many tourists and white South Africans to the realities of life in modern South Africa.
In the years following that a state of the art digital library and art gallery were also built. These facilities should have gone a long way to answering the desperate needs of the community.
Unfortunately, nothing works out quite as planned. In order to build the precinct numerous people were forced to move from land that they had been informally living on. In return for this forced removal these people were promised new houses that would actually be their own.
Yet, as the saying goes, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ Though the first stage of people who were moved received the houses they were promised; a massive series of bureaucratic bungles and municipal time wasting meant that the second stage’s houses were delayed indefinitely.
The effect of this is that a large number of people were forced out of the homes, given what seemed to be empty promises and then forced to watch as millions of Rands were spent on building structures that wouldn’t answer their immediate and pressing needs of housing and sanitation.
Needless to say, this did not go down well and in 2014 the precinct was forced to close due to protests from the community. Finally, in 2016 the museum was reopened to the public.
It was within this context that these images were created. I don’t intend for these images to ‘take a side’ in the argument regarding this precinct. As I feel that both sides of the argument hold some weight. “Why should those who have nothing continue to have nothing while development around them occurs”, contrasted with, “If the areas have world class facilities it will hasten other types of development and encourage others to enter and encounter these communities.’ It is a thoroughly complicated system and one that needs to be continually tested.
