WHEW !! SO FRIGHTENING PICT

Tuesday, 17 February 2009

WHEW !! SO FRIGHTENING PICT

This image, by Halden Krog, a senior photographer with The Times of South Africa, was chosen by the paper’s picture editor Robin Comley and editor Ray Hartley.

Says Robin: “On May 18 this year Halden was covering the xenophobic violence that had been sweeping the country for almost two weeks. Photographers had been working day and night as bands of thugs terrorized settlements - beating, stabbing and torching the homes of residents whose only crime was being a "foreigner".

And all the while, politicians and leaders were silent - none of them standing up to condemn what was happening.

The Times had been running increasingly violent images and on this Sunday, reports of attacks poured in by the minute.

It was late afternoon when Krog heard from a bystander in Ramaphosa settlement, east of Johannesburg, that someone had been set alight. At the scene, he saw Mozambican national Ernesto Nhamwuave struggling beneath a burning mattress as emergency service workers and police tried to extinguish the flames.

Robin Comley

When the picture came through, the decision to use it on page one was made within minutes. The need for the public at large to be made aware of what was taking place in the country was overriding.

Publishing would also challenge those in power to take a stand and speak out. Within days of the picture appearing in newspapers around the country troops were sent into trouble spots and the violence rapidly decreased.

There was also a sense of outrage that we were once again seeing intolerance and brutality that many believed should have remained in the country’s painful past.

During the late eighties and early nineties, South Africans had become desensitized to endless images of violence and by the time of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994 people were only too ready to believe him when he said: "Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another." But 14 years later we were seeing it repeated.

Nhamwuave died in hospital later that afternoon. His body was transported to his home in Mozambique and his family asked to see the images from the newspapers in an attempt to come to terms with what had happened."