Stuck in traffic on a downtown Johannesburg street, while giving our kids’ nanny a lift back to her apartment, a shadowy figure filled my window. I turned to look and there was a youngish man, thin, wearing a blue windcheater and his face covered with lesions. He has The Sickness, I thought, as I began to pay attention to what he was saying.
“Give me your cellphone, or I will kill you!” His hand was fluttering and scrabbling at the jacket, as if he was struggling to get at his gun.
As the adrenalin surged, along an almost forgotten and weirdly comforting path from my chest to my limbs, thoughts began racing through my mind. Despite having left space between myself and the minibus taxi ahead, there was no way out of bedlam of Claim Street. Edleen, our nanny, still had a smile on her face. She had no idea yet as to what as was going on.
As the man repeated the order and threat, I decided he did not have a gun at all. A rage was building and between being thankful the kids were not in the car and fantasizing violently about what I was going to do to him.
Swallowing my urges, I growled “Fuck off!” wound up the window and edged forward. He disappeared from view.
“My God,” Edleen muttered, burying her face in her hands. I began, oddly enough, to apologize. Then she apologized to me, shaking. Pretty weird, really, us apologizing because some half-wit was willing to entertain the notion of killing a person for a cellphone.
I was giving Edleen a lift home that day as she had missed the taxis home; wife Leonie and I had been on the set of the Bang Bang Club, a feature film based on the book by Joao Silva and myself.
The filming that day was about the Boipatong massacre of 1992. It is a very strange post-modern experience to see a Hollywood star – Ryan Phillippe – playing yourself better than you. They were re-enacting the death of a nine month old baby who had died in the name of politics and democracy. The props people had called me over to “show me something” in a large nylon shopping bag. It turned out to be the prosthetic of little Aaron Mathope, with a gaping wound in his soft skull. “We tried to make it exactly like in your picture,” the woman said. I shot a picture – as is my wont - turned and walked away down the street of a shanty town trying to hide my tears under my cap.
While Phillippe and Malin Ackerman as the female lead playing Robin Comley were both amazing, the day was stolen by Vusi Kunene. Kunene plays Aaron’s grief stricken father telling Greg/Ryan about how his wife and infant were pointlessly killed on a cold winter’s night in the Vaal.
Memories of death, violence and angry frustration swamped my sub-conscious when that Aids-stricken thug thought he’d choose me as his mobile phone donor of the evening. I wanted to purge it all all, but some sense of restraint, morality or good sense prevailed.
Later, I recalled other brushes with thugs, from the early ‘Nineties. On more than one occasion in Soweto, armed tsotsies had stopped me to hijack my car. Yet in those violent but somehow innocently idealistic times, they first asked if it was my own car or a company car. On hearing it was my own, they simply said “Go,” and looked to another victim.
And so, as we approach a possibly crucial election in which the choices seem to be all about morality, I have to remind myself about what we struggled for. Little Aaron Mathope and his mother did not die for the liberty of someone to think it is okay to kill a person for a second-hand cellphone. Nor for two two almost-victims to apologize to each other for a fearful moment filled with the potential for tragedy.
clare louise thomas
greg, this has moved me to tears…. i do not have words to express this….
i appreciate you sharing this very important sentiment and message with us…. good people did not indeed die for this….. your pictures are powerful and carry such weight in them….
still, these are not the right words. it’s just to say, i hear you. loud and clear.
Apr 10, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
Pippa
Hi Greg,
I left SA an ignorant young SAFFA for a two year “jol” around Europe 11 years ago. I was very proud to vote YES because I knew that Apartheid was wrong but I didn’t actually know much about it. I had grown up in a sleepy Free State town and never questioned anything.
Your book was the first that I read and then Country of my Skull. Both books have opened up my eyes to the horrors of those days and the only question I could ask was WHY?
THank you for shedding light on a very difficult subject, for showing us what was really happening, for experiencing everything that you you did and for surviving to tell your tale.
You are a very special man and I wish you everything of the best for the future.
May 05, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
Amy Hewett
Greg , your images, as they always have been , have left me speachless, you speak from your heart.
i was not old enough to be a part of the Apartheid, but from learning and reading the bang bang club and being told what it was like from your points of view , moved me to the core.
I hope next year to go and study photojournalism and try and make a differance in the world with my pictures, just like you have done.
you are an amazing man.
Regard
Amy Hewett
Jun 24, 2009 @ 10:59 pm
Ettore
Hi Greg
i bought your book 5 years ago during a trip in SA.
Im still very imperessed and i think is one of my favorite book ever.
Honesty is the quality i found in your book. You dont bullshit around but you a have a big hart and despite of what you have witness you are never cinical and your humanity is there.
I wish you all the best my friend!!
Ettore Francinetti
Oct 30, 2009 @ 3:24 pm
Jesse Groening
Hi Greg,
I am a fourth year Journalism Student with a concentration in Photography. I am currently reading the Bang Bang Club, and I am using it in my final Capstone project about how much of a role photographers should play in interfering with a subject. I have been researching the NPPA list of ethics and ethic number 5 tells all photographers not to interfere. I feel that this rule or guideline is in place so that Utilitarianism can prevail. I was wondering what your theory is on all of this. Do you think that in War Photography the photographer should never interfere even if it means that the person might die right in front of you? As a photographer who are you taking the pictures for? What is your main goal in war photography? Do you think that interfering or helping after you got the photograph is okay? or is it never okay to interfere or help. I am in great awe of you and your career. All that you have been a part of and accomplished is amazing and any help on your views about War Photography would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.-Jesse
May 03, 2010 @ 9:53 pm
admin
Thanks Ettore
much appreciated
May 10, 2010 @ 8:04 am
admin
Hi Jesse
thanks for your comment, as you continue with the book, i think it will become clear that I certainly do do subscribe to the ‘do not interfere’ rule.
I and many other journalists have put down our cameras etc on many an occasion to assist, esp civilians caught up in war and conflicts. sometimes there is no conflict between getting the images and helping, and sometimes there is. depends on how you slept the night before, and what you had for breakfast, I reckon.
I am a human being first and a journalist second.
May 10, 2010 @ 8:43 am