| Time | Summary | |
| 13:07 | Most of us remember the picture of the crying young man carrying the limp body of Hector Peterson on June 16 1976. That photograph captured some of the spirit of those times and became a symbol in itself. That is the power of a stills camera. While we on television can show the movement and sound, a photograph can freeze a special moment or face for us to look at over and over. Let’s turn our cameras on four award winning photographers who have captured many of the dramatic defining moments of the Truth Commission process. | Full Transcript |
| 13:40 | ‘Images of Truth’ // This year the series of pictures with Jeff Benzien were for me by far the strongest pictures; the strongest, the most disturbing pictures. | Full Transcript |
| 14:25 | During his amnesty hearing in July this year Jeffrey Benzien, one of the most feared security policemen in the Western Cape during the 1980s, was asked to demonstrate his infamous wet-bag method of torture. The request came from one of his victims, former MK commander Tony Yengeni. These are some of the images that made the headlines the following day. | Full Transcript |
| 14:49 | I first got to hear about Jeff Benzien in the eighties when he was torturing people and they were untouchable. I mean, you couldn’t ask them questions related to it, you could do nothing. There were three or four photographers and it happened very quickly. One of the judges asked if anybody had a bag or a cloth or whatever. I jumped across the line because Benzien now got over onto the guy’s back and he was about to pull the bag over his head and it was very quick. I didn’t know whether to shoot a wide shot and at the end of it I thought to myself what I’d want to get here is the expression on his face, watching his eyes twitch, watching his hands move. I felt sorry for him. He’s had a lot of bad press. I mean he’s had a lot of pictures of him with doing the wet-bag treatment on almost every single paper across the country. And for that whole week running his name was all over. I think at the end of the day even if he does get amnesty his image and his name will be ...more | Full Transcript |
| 16:09 | Leon Muller has been covering the Truth Commission since day one. That first emotional day in East London when nobody knew what to expect until victim after victim started pouring out their gut wrenching stories, the day the Archbishop himself was overcome with emotion. | Full Transcript |
| 16:31 | We were actually restricted not to sort of take pictures at that time when that happened, when we heard the Archbishop sort of broke down. We all flied out of there, which was the media room to try to get pictures of it. With the result, we got there and it was all over and done with. But then I captured the moment where his wife came and sort of comfort him and actually brought him a cup of tea. It was also very touching, even people the calibre of the Archbishop can break down. | Full Transcript |
| 17:04 | I had survived a gruelling day, that first day, and this was the last witness and that is what it did to me. I couldn’t take it anymore and that is when I broke down too … Leah has been, she has always been, throughout this interesting time that we have lived through, she has been there for me, for us. And it’s been tremendous and I can never thank her enough. | Full Transcript |
| 17:40 | Muller is adamant that he doesn’t easily become emotionally involved in his work, but he admits that he was deeply touched when he took this picture of Mrs Joyce Mtimkulu holding up bits of hair of her activist son, Siphiwo Mtimkulu, who was tortured, poisoned and eventually murdered by the notorious Eastern Cape security police. | Full Transcript |
| 18:02 | And everybody was stunned by that. You know you hear this Ah! Oh! All those sort of things that came out of it when she hauled out this piece of, a ball of hair. | Full Transcript |
| 18:11 | There’s real cooperation. I mean, I’m asking somebody if they will be photographed which means I’m going into their territory or if I’m not in their territory then I’m trying to be in their emotional territory so to speak and it’s very much, it has to be a two way process. | Full Transcript |
| 18:33 | Gillian Edelstein has worked abroad for more than a decade. This year she published a set of portraits on the Truth and Reconciliation process in the New York Times and several other international publications. | Full Transcript |
| 18:44 | I haven’t stopped coming home and when I started watching what was going on, especially in terms of the Truth Commission, it really struck a chord. I mean it’s absolutely a universal subject, one of forces of good and evil; that are completely universal. And it reminded I guess of the Nuremberg trials and maybe being a Jewish white South African said a lot. And it seemed a very obvious thing for me to do and one that I felt extremely motivated to do. // Joyce Mtimkulu, the visit to her in the township, her dignity, her anger, her fortitude. I had heard that she still had the hair of Siphiwo and I asked her how she felt about having them in the photograph. We were in her backyard and she held this up and it reminded me of a kind of black power symbol or something, this kind of symbol of power. And it symbolized her pain and her power and I think that that picture is incredibly expressive of those two things: the frown on her brow, the hair in her hand, the anger, the pain that ...more | Full Transcript |
| 21:26 | When I first started photographing this process I didn’t know what was going on. It was a totally new and novel experience. I think the biggest shock for me was when I had to photograph Capt Benzien showing how he tortured people. | Full Transcript |
| 21:47 | But as the official photographer of the TRC George Hallet’s work has to go beyond photographing the main players in the drama of the Truth Commission. // I think the TRC also wants to make clear that besides what’s happening on the stage there’s also a process that takes place in the offices behind closed doors or doors slightly ajared. There are researchers, there are people that dig and find the information that’s necessary to make this process work. There are all kinds of people that do little things; there’s a process there. I’m not a photojournalist per se; I think I regard myself more as a photo historian. But what is important to me is that people have short memories and I want to keep people’s memories alive. | Full Transcript |
| 22:50 | I have to pay a very warm tribute to all of you in the media, but in this case particularly to stills photographers for a tremendous job of work in communicating the Commission to a nation. | Full Transcript |
