COVER STORY
Our eyes have seen too much Scores of photographers, both
black andwhite, risk their lives everyday capturing the unfolding tragedy that is South Africa today. Sally Roper spoke withfour of them-Kevin Carter and Guy Adams of the Weekly Mall, Alf Kumalo currently a senior photographer withThe Star and Herbert Møbuza a senior photographer for The Sunday Times - on how they coped with the stresses and strains of recording.a s eemingly never ending succession of death and destruction.
The scrap heap of history ... the Soviet Union collapses. But security in the new Europe will not primarily be a question of military forces and balances. lncreasingly, lhe concept
of security will be a concept that
in-
cludes economic, trade, social, ethnic and ecological issues as well. lf the cost of deterring war during the decades of the Cold War was a heavY one, we must soon stafi confronting the fact that the cost of building the peace is
unlikely to be much smaller. The new freed nations of the former Soviet area are going to need huge amounts of capital during the next decade, and it will be as much in our own interest to help with that as it was in the past to pay for the defence that was necessary. The complete collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union has inspired hopes among the peoples of other socialist societies, and created fears among their ruling elites. This has been obvious not the least in East Asia. ln a sense, it was the exPectations and the fears generated by the changes in Russia that lead to the massacre in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. All those assembled in that square hoped for the same change to happen in China, and those who took the decision to send
THE CORRESPONDENT MAY
1993
in the tanks must have feared the same.
China's long march from socialism towards an open society and a free economy is unlikely to be smooth and steady in the years to come. But the tide
of history has turned for socialism, for dictatorship and for planned economies
everywhere. The fate of socialism in Asia will be no different from the fate of socialism in Europe.
A desperate regime like the one in North Korea might think that a people can be hermetically sealed off from the outside world forever, but the only result will be that the coming collapse will be more dramatic. A China opening up towards the outside world, and striving to be a world economic power, will never be able to resist the pressures for change. We all know that a society can never be halffree and half-slave, and that the freeing of the economy sooner or later makes the transition to a free and open society,
respecting the human rights and freedoms of each and everyone, unavoidable. The future of Hong Kong is an essential part of this process, and the discussions now raging over this issue are followed with keen interest around the
world. Sweden, in common with Hong Kong's many othertrading partners, has a clear interest in the future success of Hong Kong as the centre for an increasingly important economic region with the Pearl River area as its core. And although it is
a matter we hope will be resolved by Britain and China, we believe that a people that asks for a greater say in the running of its own affairs must never be denied this. History clearly shows, that long term there is no better guarantee for stability than democracy and the rule of law.
We are living in a time of turbulent change. The collapse of communism and socialism is transforming the strategic, political and economic landscape of the entire Eurasian continent at the same time as rapid advances in new technologies are opening up staggering new possibilities for the future. It is no longer brute force, but rather skilled knowledge, and not plutonium, but rather silicon, that is the key to success as the old structures collapse and as the rivalries between the nation states gradually give way to competition and cooperation in the emerging global village.
@
.l
ç 5 vq a Weekly,Møil political reporter Philip Van Niekerk emerging from emergency air ambulance after being shot by robbers.
ast September The Correspondentcarried a picture story by Guy Adams documenting the kangaroo trial and summary execution of a young black man at the mass funeral for those killed in the Boipatong township massacre. The young man's crime -- he was a suspected lnkatha member. So remarkable were the pictures that
Johannesburg's liberal Weekly Mail newspaper, which employs Adams, received several calls claiming that the series had been staged. The pictures graphically captured the
suspicion-charged
atmosphere
amongst the disaffected youth of South Africa's townships an atmosphere greatly inflamed by the assassination recently of Communist Party chief Chris Hani. For the photographers that record the daily toll of death and violence in South Africa the stress is starting to show. "The nature ofthe beast haschanged," says Kevin Carter. "Back in the mid1980s there was not much factional violence. lt was the comrades versus
-
the police. "Towards the end of the 80s the police started to clamp down on photographers going into the townships. lf they saw you anywhere near a township with a camera you were arrested. "They'd take you back to John Vorster Square (Johannesburg's main police interrogation centre and charge office). You'd call your editor and down would come the paper's lawyer. "Little was actually done for these contraventions (of the state of emergency), but there was nonetheless the threat of a Z1-year jail sentence. "You did think about it because they could have used it. lt reached a stage where it became virtually impossible to work in the townships at all." Guy Adams said: "Back then, the comrades appreciated our presence. We were on their side, against the apartheid oppressors. The priority then was to get the story out and let people known what was happening." Towards the end of the 1980s the laws restricting journalist and photogra-
a period when the Berlin Wall had come down in Germany and communism died in the Soviet Union. At the same time, in South Africa, the winds of change had already started to arrive with the release of Nelson Mandela in 1989. "After Mandela was released there was this feeling of euphoria ... as though someone had letthe pressure off," Carter said. For a time South Africa was relatively peaceful but that peace was short lived. phers were relaxed. lt was
The rise of lnkatha saw to that, unleashing a wave of violence that even shocked the most hardened South Africans who thought they had seen it all. "Many of us worked around the clock for almost three months documenting the violence," Cañer said. "The nature of the beast had changed
again. Groups of ethnically divided blacks in townships fought each other
with pangas (machetes) and spears. The lnkatha Freedom Party (lFP) began to infiltrate the hostels. Zulus in THE CORRESPONDENT MAY 1993 5