This essay was produced in collaboration with the Apartheid Archive Study project, initiated and produced by academics from the Wits School of Community Development, amongst others.
The images talk to the issues generated in a post-apartheid South Africa and query the state of various aspects of SA society such as health, housing, welfare, labour, capital etc.
The contemporary nature of the project is informed by the notion that most of what we see in SA today is a direct result our apartheid past, and is therefore a reflection of that past. Of course, an effort was made to comment on those aspects of society that I deemed especially connected to that past.
South Africa obviously carries the baggage of its historical past, complicated by the ravages of western neoliberal economics, within which it is entwined, contribute, along with state and bureaucratic bungling and corruption, to a dire contemporary situation where the gap between the wealth and poverty is at its greatest, as well an unprecedented and growing unemployment metric.
These shortcomings impact on every aspect of the quality of life for the majority of South Africans, and the rainbow promise they greeted the dawn of democracy with has rapidly faded.
