How Images Shaped the Anti-Apartheid Movement

In the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, images were used as weapons against the oppressive government to attack the injustices of the system.

Written by Emmanuela Onyilofor

Mar 1, 2019

A dying Hector Pieterson at age 13, being carried by another Soweto resident (Mbuyisa), with his older sister (Antoinette) running next to them during the Soweto Uprisings of 1976. SAM NZIMA.

In the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, authors like Marietta Kesting have shown, documentary-style images were used as weapons against the oppressive government to attack the injustices of the system. Gil Hochberg has written that ‘visual politics’ are embedded in the relationship between vision, power, domination and control as well as in visual arrangements created by the oppressor in an oppressive regime. As such, during Apartheid in South Africa, visual arrangements informed what was seen, how they were seen, and in what ways/circumstances they could be seen. Therefore, to understand how oppressive regimes unravel implies understanding the disruption of such a regime’s visual arrangements.

Apartheid South Africa, one of the most notable examples of institutionalized racial segregation, serves as a useful case study to examine the impact of images, using the lens of visual politics. This means analysing the iconic images of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (‘AAM’ or ‘the Struggle’), within the framework of the visual arrangements that existed in South Africa, in order to highlight the disruptive effect images can have in an oppressive system.

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This story features in our print issue, 'Race and Identity in the Modern World'.

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About the Author

Emmanuela Onyilofor

is a graduate student in International Affairs at the Graduate Institute Geneva.

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How Images Shaped the Anti-Apartheid Movement