There was also tension and violence between the Zulu-led Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC, often at crucial times in negotiating processes. Under his rule, police and army units would patrol the townships, often firing indiscriminately at civilians. By the 1980s, opposition had become violent, and President PW Botha oversaw bloody retaliation in the later years of the decade. Opposition parties such as Nelson Mandela‘s African National Congress were banned, and their leaders imprisoned. Opposition was suppressed, often brutally. Of course, in these areas the land was invariably poor, and there was little or no infrastructure. Blacks were forcibly relocated to homelands through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and these areas became largely autonomous. Blacks had few rights outside of areas known as ‘homelands’ and ‘townships’, which were set up for them to live and work in and transport, education, healthcare and even beaches were strictly segregated. Various laws enshrined apartheid as a way of life. From 1948 to 1994, South Africa was ruled by an ideology called apartheid, which sought to separate the whites from the non-whites in order to give whites a social and economic advantage. It is worth prefacing Carter’s tale with a brief history of South African politics. His work drew praise and condemnation in almost equal measures until finally, haunted by the horrors of the scenes he had witnessed, and beset by financial problems, he committed suicide at the age of 33. Kevin Carter was a South African Pulitzer Prize-winning1 photographer and member of the Bang-Bang Club, a group of four photojournalists working in the last years of apartheid in that country. – Dan Krauss, who made the 2004 film The Life of Kevin Carter. His was a cautionary tale that we whispered among ourselves about the dangers of becoming too sensitised to your subjects and to witnessing extreme violence.
He was the photographer who saw too much.
0 kommentar(er)
