Meet 0 Makhelwane, 0 Makhi Bami's

Documenting at hostel communities which were/are segregated from the township communities they are in. This project is aimed at showing the other how the other lives, also the similarities and the same challenges we face as South Africans in today’s realities. Independence starts with and is affirmed by individuals who make up communities and collectives. The people photographed are such individuals who left their homelands in Rural South Africa for the bigger city of Johannesburg, where they live in Hostels. This independence came with different responsibilities; like working so they could gain financial freedom in these bigger cities. Meet o makhi bam, means meet my neighbours.

From an outside perspective looking in it all seems like a prison with poverty, and nobody wants to be poor or imprisoned. ‘MEET 0 MAKHELWANE, 0 MAKHI BAMI' meaning meet the neighbours, my neighbours. For a long time I have looked outside my immediate environment for inspiration, but growth brought me back to my own back yard. The individuals portrayed in this series represent the people from where I come from and where I am in many ways than one. From the outside its a picture of poor of people living below the comfortable line, a life situated in shacks and in hostel communities that live in crowded rooms that are hostile and unwelcoming, it’s the four roomed houses that are falling apart with outside toilets and with rats roaming around that are reported in the local media for eating infants feet.

I coming from it all decided that this was not the picture that represents me and my neighbours, because behind these walls and shacks, lives decent people, strong individuals, mothers who work hard to give their children better education than they received so they too can have a brighter future, united families living with confused teenagers, young men and women who have big dreams and are doing their bit to pave their road to success. Despite where we are in terms of the unfortunate environment and joblessness we find ourselves in; we are beautiful people who take pride in the little that we have.

This work began with the black and white series, of which I photographed my immediate neighbours in the area of Orlando east Soweto 1804,The neighbours inspired, collaborated and helped me to give birth to the meet the neighbours series.

The colour work was inspired and is a progression of the black and white work, the portraits are made in the secluded environment of hostels in Soweto, these structures were built by the apartheid government mainly for a working force of men coming from rural South Africa to work in the mines and to do construction work. The hostels where land locked in and is part of the townships, but sadly segregated from their neighbouring communities because of the fear that was instilled in the people. These spaces were seen as slaughter houses and no go areas of violence and blood bath. Even years after the the black on black violence passed and the hostels became more of family homes and more of "normal" communities, the stigma and the separateness of the past still remained, and as children growing up in the late 1980's a time that promised peace and was seeing the end of apartheid, we were given strict warnings about not playing near these hostels, as the IFP(Inkatha freedom party) members who lived there killed children and used their body parts for traditional muthi (medicine).

Statements driven by fear contributed towards increasing the gap between the people; which also showed ignorance and lack of knowledge about the other. Finding myself in the hostels and realising that the people living there were too similar to my people and that we faced the same challenges of service delivery from the government, Most of the hostels i visited were without electricity for 16 years since the electing of a democratic government in 1994. These people living here are not the animals we were told they were these were communities made of individuals who had dreams and working towards achieving. And as a photographer it’s my work to introduce one to the other and help break these walls and stigmas that were built to separate us, I want us to look each other in the eye and see each other as neighbours who can live and work together to build a better future for our children and especially the future generations to come.

Meet the Neighbours

This project was to show the faces of the people who still hope for a better way of life, people who still live in rested outside shacks and hoping to elevate to ‘owning’ a house. When the media portrays the housing issue the show the structure and people protesting, hardly as people who lead normal lives, like my neighbours here in Orlando East Soweto.

"As two of her four children cling to her blue tracksuit, she says: "I don't mind if it's an RDP house and I don't care if it's in a black township, so long it has electricity and running water and my children can be safe." Ronel Barnard (37),Coronation Park 'Krugersdorp'Mogale City.

This project was to show the faces of the people who still hope for a better way of life, people who still live in rested outside shacks and hoping to elevate to ‘owning’ a house. When the media portrays the housing issue the show the structure and people protesting, hardly as people who lead normal lives, like my neighbours here in Orlando East Soweto.

"As two of her four children cling to her blue tracksuit, she says: "I don't mind if it's an RDP house and I don't care if it's in a black township, so long it has electricity and running water and my children can be safe." Ronel Barnard (37),Coronation Park 'Krugersdorp'Mogale City.

My photographic inspiration is drawn from my environment and its people. As a resident of Soweto, the living conditions my neighbours and I grew up in and live in have always been a reflection of the social, political and economical challenges we face daily. But beyond that, the very nature of the spaces we call our homes has always reflected my community's sense of pride, aspiration and ownership - however fleeting.

Shacks and informal settlements are very much a part of South Africa's urban landscape. A history of rapid urbanization and disenfranchisement has led directly to generations of black families who rent or only partly own the homes that they have built from scratch. Shantytowns and informal settlements are a blatant instance in which people have sought some form of independent land ownership, despite legal implications.

In this project, my focus is on families and individuals who fall within this instance. People who have built their homes out of found materials and disposable items such as corrugated sheets of iron, wooden planks, cardboard and the like to develop structures that are commonly referred to in townships as `IMIKhukhu.1 entered these spaces to show that decent people and families live in these spaces.

My intention was to capture telling portraits of the individuals and families that live within these awkward environments to help draw attention to the way in which marginalized communities shape their identities according to how they shape the small spaces they take ownership of.

The importance of this project becomes all the more obvious within this socio-political landscape. I believe that it will certainly be a way in which those who view the completed project will engage more significantly with issues that they already encounter in everyday South African society

Soccer series