Alfred Kumalo

Life through a lens

Alfred Khumalo. Photo courtesy Stephen Frank

If any South African has been present and captured the history of this country unfolding, it is Alf Kumalo.

His professional life as a photographer has spanned more than 50 years and, in this time, he has documented everyday life as well as pivotal events.  His personal South African collection of photographic history – representing the struggle for democracy and freedom from oppression – is remarkable and will remain a national treasure, arresting the past in dramatic clarity for future generations.

Covering events as a black journalist in the apartheid era was risky and led to detention, arrests and harassment, yet the intense urgency and need to “get the picture” reveals Kumalo’s commitment and passion to his craft and to the history of his country. Events covered by the renowned man behind the lens include the Treason Trial, the Rivonia Trial, the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement, the Student Uprising of 1976, the State of Emergency, the unbanning of the liberation movements, the Codesa talks, the first democratic elections and the inauguration of South Africa’s first democratic government.

Born in Johannesburg in the then Transvaal on September 5, 1930, Kumalo matriculated at the WiIberforce Institute in Evaton and began his working life as a journalist freelancing for Bantu World in 1951. He quickly developed an interest in photography, using images to support his reporting and “freeze moments in time” – a concept that had fascinated him even as a youngster, when he had experimented with sketching.

Kumalo worked as a permanent staff member at the Golden City Post and for Drum magazine in the vibrant days of Sophiatown. In 1963, South African Breweries ran a photographic competition and Kumalo’s image of mine workers won him a motor car. In 1971 he did an eight-month stint as a freelancer in New York, where he tried to crack it as a freelancer. In 1980, he joined The Star newspaper in Johannesburg.

Kumalo’s work has appeared in local and international publications, including The Observer (UK), New York Times, New York Post, and The Sunday Independent (UK). In September 2004, he exhibited of his life’s work solo at the 59th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The next month, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver by the South African government for his contribution to documentary photography and journalism in South Africa.

The man behind the camera is still active in his work and, at his photographic school in Diepkloof, Soweto, he affords photographers from disadvantaged backgrounds the opportunity to study a formalised, nine-month course part time.

Kumalo’s work is on exhibition and can be viewed at the Alfred Kumalo Museum in Soweto.