|
|
|
| |
| |
Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
March 7, 2009
|
|
| site design imagesparkle.com |
| February 11, 2009 |
South African Photojournalist Victor Matom shares his struggle against Apartheid |
|
| |
|
| Victor Matom demonstrates his famous, strong handshake |
Victor Matom joined the Peace Boat as a guest educator for the seventh time, sharing some of his many experiences and accomplishments as a photojournalist and a South African. As a black man living during the apartheid era, he experienced the sharp pain of injustice from an early age. After watching some of his friends and family members be maimed and even murdered during an anti-apartheid rally when he was only 16 years old, Mr Matom, tired of guns and violence, decided to use a camera as his only weapon in the fight against apartheid. His mission in life became clear: “My work was now trying to show the outside world what was happening inside South Africa, from our point of view.” |
site design imagesparkle.com |
|
For most Peace Boat participants, apartheid is a hell impossible to imagine. Under the government’s official policy, black people were treated as “second-class citizens,” less important and less human than the white Afrikaners who had colonized the country. Everything from drinking fountains to buses, schools and even entire cities were declared “white only.” Small, inadequate reservations were set up for black people, who were stripped of South African citizenship. The government deliberately made services for black people inferior in an effort to persuade them to leave the country. The system was not entirely abolished until 1994. |
| |
|
It was in this climate that Mr Matom grew up. Because there were no institutes of higher learning and no artistic training available for black people, he taught himself photography by browsing bookstores in Johannesburg, the city nearest his native township of Soweto. But even this had its problems: Mr Matom told the story of a white man one day becoming angry at the sight of a black man reading. “The white man, an Afrikaner, would come and say, ‘Hey, you keffer, you’re not supposed to be here!’ and would call the manager. And I’d have to leave, getting punched, just because I’m a black man in a bookstore.” |
| |
|
Although apartheid ended so recently, Mr Matom harbours no ill feelings toward his former oppressors, and insists that the country has gone through an effective healing process through the Truth and Reconciliation Policy, where the horrors of apartheid were fully disclosed and the aggressors held accountable. “There is nothing as good as people who say, ‘We did this.’ When people come and confess and say, ‘Look here, I’m the person who did this and this to you,’ then the people at least know what happened and who did it, and they can forgive,” says Mr Matom. Despite suffering from bullet wounds and hearing loss due to police beatings, he says “we have forgiven, but we will not forget.” |
| |
|
These days, Mr Matom works against the continuing effects of apartheid in his hometown of Soweto, a collection of townships that house some of the poorest people in the country. He began by teaching photography, but his classes ended up having a much wider scope. “The whole idea is not necessarily to teach them photography or to be photographers, but my work is to try to get them off the streets and try to encourage them about education,” he says. The participating youth range from ages 4 to 28, and many have gone on to work for international magazines and to study abroad. It’s the little things that give the students the confidence to do big things, Mr Matom says. “I sometimes just take them into town to show them what’s going on in the world—it’s only 40 kilometers away, but some kids have never been there. It just makes them feel like they are human beings, just like everyone else.” The name that Mr Matom chose for the school could be an apt motto for the entire country of South Africa: Figele, meaning “We have arrived.” |
| |
Guest Educator Profile
Victor Matom, Freelance Photographer
Victor Matom is a self-taught photographer from Soweto, South Africa, and has freelanced for various publications, including New Nations, Weekly Mail, and Ebony, amongst many others. He was also a special correspondent for US News and World Report from 1994 to 1996. He is a world-renowned photographer, whose work has also appeared in many foreign publications in Germany, Sweden, and Japan. Mr Matom published his own book, Our People in South Africa, in Japan in 1993, and has also contributed to various books in South Africa. He received the Mother Jones Photojournalist Award in 2001 and currently serves on the Board of Advisors at Tshwane University of Technology and Bensunan Museum of Photography. |
| |
|
|
|
