Alf Kumalo: The anti-apartheid photographer

"They hated photographers," said Alf Kumalo, the late South African photographer, recounting the crackdown by the country's police under apartheid. "We were assaulted, beaten up, jailed — this happened many times. We actually got used to it."

Kumalo, who died in 2012 at the age of 82, covered it all: the Soweto uprising of 1976, the police raids on Winnie Mandela's home, trials of anti-apartheid activists, Nelson Mandela's release from prison and subsequent ascent to the presidency, and South Africa's transition to democracy.

Kumalo said that from a young age he loved making images. He said he wanted to become a photographer but it was expensive, so he began his journalism career as a writer to "save money and buy a good camera. And that's what I did."

He taught himself photography in the 1950s when he started working for publications like Drum, a magazine aimed toward black readers, and later The Sunday Times. "I prefer taking pictures to writing," Kumalo said, wearing his trademark black rimmed cap and Nikon digital camera hanging from his shoulder. "Images have a greater impact than writing … a picture says exactly what happened."

On the occasional assignment, Kumalo said he could write features and take photographs, such as when he covered the famous "Rumble in The Jungle" 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).

"Once the editors knew I could write and photograph, they started wanting both things at the same time. And there was no digital back then," he laughed, remembering the cumbersome process of developing film before sitting down at a typewriter to write his story.

Kumalo became famous for his coverage of the tumultuous resistance to apartheid that swept South Africa, and especially the Soweto area, where he lived for most of his life.

As a black photographer during this period, getting the shot was never easy. He described how he would sometimes take one image on a roll of film before hiding the canister in his socks or elsewhere on his body to protect it from the police. At other times he risked his life to ensure that the story would be told.

In 1976, students led an uprising in Soweto after the apartheid government tried to force the instruction of the Afrikaans language in black schools. The uprising spread to black communities across the country and is remembered as one of the turning points of the apartheid era.

During the police crackdown that ensued, Kumalo said that even The Sunday Times’ regular drivers refused to work in Soweto. "It was too dangerous," he said. He was in a car with one of the writers when he captured one of his most famous images, depicting two bodies lying on the street in front of a large armored police vehicle. He described how he shot the image from the car's rear window, adding that the pair could easily have been killed by the police who had orders to "shoot and kill anyone, even photographers.”

Kumalo said he felt guilty having taken such a risk, and felt even worse when censorship stood in the way of the photo's publication. "I went to the office the following day and listened to one of the editors telling BBC guys that I was unlucky and I didn't get any good pictures." Kumalo said they not only kept the pictures from being published in The Times, but also prevented them from appearing in other foreign publications.