The Bang-Bang Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

kicking the dead man and calling him a Xhosa dog. I was even prepared to spit on the corpse. I knew I would be capable of desecrating the body to survive.
    ‘Lungile, ai problem!’ I called out in pidgin Zulu, surprised that my voice sounded calm as I tried to reassure them. Their attention returned to the body and in desperation I tried to ingratiate myself: ‘Who was he anyway?’
    ‘He was a Xhosa, he was shooting at us, a spy!’ said one of the men. I readily agreed, quick to seize this chance to justify the killing, to save myself. The killers were now treating the corpse with what I would later realize was the customary delicacy that Zulus display around dead bodies - to touch the dead is to be spiritually polluted. One of them
struggled to go through the dead man’s trouser pockets using the tips of two spears. He fished a green identity book out of a side pocket and opened the pages. Two or three others gathered over the worn book that would reveal the dead man’s tribe, and - in their minds - his political allegiance: ‘Ah, a Pondo - he deserved to die,’ one said.
    The dead man was not, after all, a Xhosa, not a member of the ethnic group that dominated the political leadership of the ANC. He was a Pondo, whose ancestral homeland lay between that of the Zulus and the Xhosas along South Africa’s east coast. Many were culturally more Zulu than Xhosa, and some supported Inkatha. But all that mattered was that he was not a Zulu (and in this instance, read ‘Zulu’ as ‘Inkatha-supporting Zulu’) and therefore an enemy. My mind was in turmoil, I tried not to think of what I had seen or what I had done.
    The killers rapidly lost interest in the corpse and drifted away. I began the long walk out of the hostel compound. Inside the dormitory where the terrified Pondo had hidden, several Zulus were searching for the gun, but there was none to be found. Two men with red headbands presented themselves to me, posing shoulder to shoulder, and demanded: ‘Shoota, baas, shoota us!’ I took the picture, gave a queasy grin and walked on. I feared I couldn’t maintain my calm any more, sure the shock was too apparent on my face for my safety. I concentrated on the well-established poplar trees that lined the road as I walked out. They were beautiful in the late afternoon light.
    I went to a newspaper office where I had friends and asked the darkroom technician, Rudy, to process the films for me - I thought I was too upset to do it properly. But shocked as I was, I was mindful of the importance of the pictures. No words would bring home the horror of what was happening in the townships as clearly as that set of brutal pictures could. I was also aware of the commercial value of those shots. A friend at the paper advised me to take the pictures to the Associated Press, the US wire service. When I got to the AP’s downtown Johannesburg office, I pressed the photo editor for a favourable deal and even persuaded him to put me on to one of the big-selling French
picture agencies as a part of the bargain. I was learning fast. This was my chance to make a mark in the world of photojournalism and, I hoped, to break out of the ranks of the perpetually broke freelancers. I was able to do so because of a man’s savage death.

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    ‘f5.6 SHOULD BE RIGHT’
    (JOH-106)SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA, SEPT. 15 - HUMAN TORCH - A small boy runs past as a youth clubs the burning body of a man identified as a Zulu Inkatha supporter and set alight by rival African National Congress supporters, Soweto, South Africa, Saturday morning.
(AP ColourPhoto) (mon71224/str. SEB BALIC) 1990
EDS. NOTE: - COLOUR CONTENT: ORANGE/RED FLAMES - PERSONS IN SILHOUETTE, VERY LITTLE DETAIL.
    Associated Press photo caption

    15 September 1990
    There aren’t many trees in Soweto. The gang-ravaged neighbourhood of White City has particularly few, but that morning it had lost several more. Some of the scarred thorn trees along the main through-road had been roughly