[DEBATE] : WITNESS: Photographing evil in S.Africa's townships

[Sean Jacobs]

WITNESS: Photographing evil in S.Africa's townships

Reuters
Thursday, May 29, 2008; 8:30 AM

Siphiwe Sibeko, who was born and raised in Soweto township, is a  
mostly self-taught photographer who joined Reuters in Johannesburg in  
2005 after working for several leading South African newspapers. In  
the following story, he describes covering the anti-foreigner violence  
that has swept parts of South Africa.

By Siphiwe Sibeko

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - I only realized how serious the attacks were  
when I saw a photograph of a man being burnt alive in a township east  
of Johannesburg.

Having worked as a photographer in South Africa for more than 10  
years, I was no stranger to violence: I had seen angry people chanting  
slogans, blocking roads and destroying property.

But burning a man alive was evil and barbaric, a flashback to the  
worst violence under apartheid when opponents of the white minority  
government were shot and tortured by police and informers were  
"necklaced" with burning tires.

That photograph of the burnt man was not mine, but in the following  
days I came face-to-face with this new brutality as attacks on  
immigrants spread across Johannesburg and to other cities.

In one informal settlement, I found a badly beaten man who had  
narrowly escaped being burnt. He was lying a few steps from a pile of  
partly burnt plastic and paper.

Residents said a mob tried to burn him but ran away when some of the  
locals approached.

In the worst violence since the end of apartheid 14 years ago, angry  
people stabbed, clubbed and burnt migrants from other parts of Africa,  
accusing them of taking jobs and fuelling South Africa's notoriously  
high levels of crime.

At least 50 African migrants were killed and up to 100,000 were forced  
to flee their homes. Thousands of immigrants from Mozambique and  
crisis-torn Zimbabwe returned home.

The outbreak started on May 11 in Johannesburg's Alexandra township --  
across the city from Soweto where I was born -- before spreading  
through shantytowns and townships around the financial and industrial  
capital.

Then, the attacks spread down to Cape Town and east to the port city  
of Durban.

The explosion of deadly anger dealt a blow to the international image  
of a country that calls itself the "Rainbow Nation," making investors  
wonder just how stable Africa's biggest economy really was.

It surprised and disappointed me.

DANGER

On May 18, I received a call from a colleague who told me foreigners  
were being chased and beaten in central Johannesburg.

This was just a day after I had returned from assignment in Malawi,  
where people are so humble, warm and happy to have a visitor from  
another country.

I grabbed my cameras and went to town.

When I arrived, I was amazed by the number of police who were driving  
around, searching and arresting suspects.

I thought the trouble would pass, but I was wrong.

Later that day, after I had finished filing my pictures, I was shocked  
to see photos taken from other areas, including that picture of a man  
being burnt alive.

I decided to go to Reiger Park, an informal settlement east of  
Johannesburg, and the place where the man was burnt.

When I got there, I saw hundreds of young men with sticks, knives,  
pangas (machetes) and spears, angrily shouting that they wanted all  
the foreigners out of South Africa.

I found the injured man who had nearly been burnt in front of a shack.

I kept shooting pictures but then some people from the mob told us  
they didn't want the media there. This happens most of the time when  
you try to take photographs in tense situations in South Africa. But  
this time, it looked serious.

They came up to us, threatening us and wielding their weapons. We  
could see the anger in their eyes.

We stopped taking pictures and only returned when we thought it was  
safe, sometimes going back in with the police.

But it was a difficult situation. The mob threw stones at the  
photographers and the police occasionally fired shots to disperse the  
crowd.

I've covered violence before but this was bad. I was disappointed that  
my countrymen had turned against their brothers and sisters from  
countries that had helped us during apartheid.

South Africa's government has been criticized for its slow reaction to  
the violence and for not addressing the poverty that is widely blamed  
for the bloodshed.

Last Sunday, President Thabo Mbeki called the wave of attacks a  
"disgrace," and said the government would act firmly to curb the  
bloodshed.