Portrait of an Iconic Hero
Nelson Mandela, Heritage Day celebration, KwaZulu-Natal 2003
I first travelled to South Africa, at age sixteen in June 1989. From the moment I landed at Johannesburg’s international airport (formerly Jan Smuts, now OR Tambo) headlines signaling a possible release of African National Congress’ from political imprisonment were displayed everywhere. The purpose of my visit was to spend my summer break on friends’ farms across the Natal and Orange Free State. While I had yet to develop a keen interest in South African politics, the tension across the country was palpable. The extreme, racial segregation infrastructure was still in place though fracturing. Resistance movements were very visible and tensions between the ultra-conservative white population and more progressive whites were growing. Among groups opposing apartheid, divisions had grown between groups escalating the armed struggle against the white government and others like the Inkatha Freedom Party that chose to collaborate (to much criticism from leftists’ revolutionaries) with South Africa’s white, National Party-run government.
That summer 1989 trip to South Africa greatly shaped my identify and worldview and sparked my latent activism for justice for indigenous communities. The farms I stayed on were adjacent to KwaZulu homeland territory and my friends had been breaking the regimes strict and outlandish segregation rules, quietly in one form or other for decades.
Months after I returned to California to start eleventh grade, Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990. He had been imprisoned for 27 years.
Little did I know in 1989 that my new love for South Africa would continue to grow and I would return repeatedly and observe as the nation overcame the apartheid regime, elected Nelson Mandela as president concurrent with the establishment of a democratic, constitutional republic. In 1998, I became a permanent resident of the country when I was recruited by a Zulu community development organization to assist in the immense work of developing rural, tribal communities severely damaged by British colonialism and 20th century apartheid injustices. Concurrent with my humanitarian work in South Africa in 2000 I launched a side-career in photojournalism in affiliation with one of the continent’s first online media agencies, African Media Online/The Media Bank.
My work in community development gave me very strong networking opportunities with the African National Congress-led government and I was in early stages of working on an interview opportunity with former president Mandela. Sadly, a family crisis forced me back to the US but before returning in 2003 I was in the press corps photographing Heritage Day celebrations in KwaZulu-Natal and while photographers were photographing King Goodwill Zwelithini and Inkatha Freedom Party’s Gatsha Buthelezi performing a royal Zulu dance together, I turned my lens to Nelson Mandela sitting very close by in the dignitary spectator area. While this was not the formal portrait session I had originally envisioned, I was honored to have “Madiba” (clan name for Nelson Mandela) acknowledge me as the sole photographer pointing a camera his way and making his dignified visage available for me for few minutes. This was truly the ultimate farewell gift, to have that direct eye contact and for me to be able to spend a roll of film on one of the most, if not the most iconic African leaders in modern history.