Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (2024) Movie Script
1
(dramatic music playing)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (pensive music playing)
(traffic rumbling)
(siren wailing in distance)
(somber music playing)
Narrator: "November 25th, 1968."
"To the Alien Commissioner,
Norwegian Government,
Oslo, Norway."
"Dear sir,
I was born on March 21, 1940,
at Pretoria, South Africa."
"I'm presently 28,
and unmarried."
"I am a stateless person
in political exile in
New York."
"I've been advised
that my passport
will not be renewed,
but that I could obtain
an emergency
travel certificate."
"I've been in the US
for the past 26 months,
and while this experience
has been insightful for me,
I cannot afford
to remain here much longer
since the nature of my work
requires me to travel."
"Without wishing to be negative
about life in this country,
it is quite evident to me
that it will be difficult
for me to work here
at this particular period
of my life."
"When I left home, I thought
I would focus my talent
- on other aspects of life..."
- (playful piano playing)
"...which I assumed
would be more helpful
- and with some joy to do."
- (indistinct chatter)
(glasses clinking)
Narrator: "However,
what I've seen in this country
over the past three years
has proved me wrong."
"Exposing the truth
at whatever cost is one thing,
but having to live a lifetime
of being the chronicler
of misery and injustice
- and callousness is another."
- (police siren wailing)
Narrator: "And such matter
is about the only assignments
magazines here
want to offer me..."
(footsteps shuffling)
"...because the subject matter
of my first book
happened to be centered
on race issues,
the color of my skin,
another incidental matter,
and the fact
that I endured and escaped
the living hell
that is South Africa."
- (Baby wailing)
- (Kids chattering, clamoring)
Narrator: "The total man
does not live one experience."
("Mill"
by Miriam Makeba playing)
(singing
in foreign language)
(singing continues)
(singing fades)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (Kids laugh)
- (music concludes)
- (birds chirping)
Well, it all started
at the end of 1956.
I had just finished
my second year in high school.
And instead of going further,
I decided to leave school
because the government
had deliberately lowered
the already low standard
of education for Africans,
with what they call
the introduction
of the Bantu Education Act.
So, I decided this was going
a little bit too far
and I left,
and decided to finish
my schooling by correspondence.
Then of course,
it took me a year...
before I could get a break...
as a darkroom assistant.
So, in about May 1958,
I got my first break
through a young
German photographer,
Jrgen Schadeberg,
on Drum magazine.
And...
because Drum
was in Johannesburg,
which is two and a half hours
away from my hometown,
I, you know, had to
read my lessons on the train.
- (papers shuffling)
- (school bell ringing)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (train tracks rattling)
- (crowd clamoring)
- (bicycle bell dinging)
Ernest: Later in 1959,
I saw my first
photographic book,
which is entitled
"People of Moscow"
by Cartier-Bresson.
So, then I decided,
"Well, this is the form
I wanted my work to take."
And slowly,
I started documenting,
you know, just to show what life
was really like in South Africa.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (crowd clamoring)
(train horn blaring)
(camera shutter clicking)
(train tracks rattling)
Ernest: I was of course aware
that after finishing it,
it wouldn't be possible
to remain in South Africa,
but then I...
you know, I didn't care
because this is a chance
you take,
and all of us have taken.
You don't want, you know,
to live under the...
those miserable conditions.
I've been banned in absentia,
but that doesn't matter.
It'll stand, I mean, you know,
in the future, because, uh...
I'm sure
South Africa will be free.
- (dramatic music playing)
- Reporter 1:
Demonstrations against
the South African government's
strict Apartheid policies.
At Sharpeville,
an industrial township,
thousands gather
outside a police station
in protest against new laws
requiring every African
to carry a pass at all time.
- (plane engine roaring)
- (Soldiers clamoring)
(crowd screaming, clamoring)
Reporter 2: (in French)
Reporter 3: (in English)
Sharpeville, police fired
into a crowd
of unarmed demonstrators,
killing 69,
including women and children.
Reporter 4: (in French)
Reporter 5: (in English)
Worldwide protests were raised,
including a condemnation
of the violence
by the United States
State Department.
(melancholic music playing)
UN Delegate:
Operative paragraph three
of Document S/5384
which reads as follows.
Three calls upon all states
to boycott
all South African goods
and to refrain
from exporting to South Africa
strategic materials
of direct military value
is now put to the vote.
Will those in favor
of that paragraph
please raise their hands?
Translator: (in French)
(council members muttering)
UN Delegate: (in English)
The result of the vote
is nine in favor,
none opposed,
and two abstentions.
The resolution, as amended,
has consequently been adopted
by the Security Council.
(jovial folk music playing)
Presenter:
The achievement in the towns,
new homes for over
a million people in 12 years.
Budget, 120 million pounds.
- (music concludes)
- (bulldozer engines rumbling)
(bricks crumbling)
Narrator: One morning, in 1960,
government bulldozers
came clanking down the road,
into the neighborhood
where I lived.
This was Eersterust,
a freehold township
ten miles past Pretoria.
Some would call it a slum,
but I loved Eersterust.
I had lived most of my 21 years
in that neighborhood.
(hammer clanking)
Narrator: My father,
a self-taught tailor,
and my mother, a washerwoman,
had raised their six children
in that house.
- (debris crashing)
- (bulldozer engines rumbling)
Narrator: Once the bulldozers
began their work,
they were quick about it.
Within minutes, the Black spot
had been eradicated.
(brooding music playing)
Narrator: In South Africa,
a "Black spot"
is an African township
marked for obliteration
because it occupies an area
into which
whites wish to expand.
- (Baby wailing)
- (Kids chattering)
Narrator: The government
describes relocation
as "slum clearance,"
and likes to brag
about its housing developments
as a humanitarian solution
to an acute housing shortage.
But the African knows,
he is only exchanging his slum
that was home
for the sterile prison
of a government ghetto.
(pensive music playing)
- (birds chirping)
- (indistinct chatter)
(bicycle bell dinging)
(bicycle bell dinging)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (traffic rumbling)
Narrator: The African
does not also have the right
to walk the city streets
of his country.
His presence
in the white urban areas
is tolerated
as long as he's doing
the required job.
At all other times,
he is a trespasser,
unless he has
his "reference book."
Without it,
a Black man is nothing.
He cannot get a job,
find housing, get married,
or even pick up
a parcel at the post office.
A man's pass
contains his life history
- in brief detail.
- (music concludes)
Narrator: It tells his name,
where he comes from,
which tribe he belongs to,
the place and date of his
birth,
and his father's birthplace.
The pass tells
whether he has paid his taxes
and indicates his grade
of employment,
"domestic servant,
laborer, student, clerk, etc."
The government
can pull a man's pass
at any time, for any reason,
or for no reason at all.
- (metal gate clanking)
- Narrator: This happens
thousands of times in a day,
and still,
it remains a spectacle.
(playful jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Like in an Afrikaans Rashomon,
these characters are locked
in their own narrative.
In this picture,
these three women
in the background
show passive curiosity,
or anxiety tinged with fear,
or downright panic.
The young boy behind
seems to be reasonably
reassured
that he is not to be
the victim.
The Black policeman
does his job by the book,
accurately and conscientiously.
There can be no objections
to his routine.
He has a uniform, an income,
a place in society,
more than any other fellow.
It is not clear from this photo
whether he was entrusted
with a gun or not.
But gun or no gun,
he remains his master's man.
And then,
there's this
white-looking character
on the right.
Clearly passive,
not even curious.
He has nothing at stake here.
Both hands in his pocket.
He observes,
like he might observe
a lizard devouring a fly.
A day like any other day.
Same incident,
different realities.
- (van door opening)
- (tense music playing)
Narrator: Even in the court,
the African must wait.
But once his turn comes,
justice is swift.
(footsteps shuffling)
Narrator: The prisoners
are led into the courtroom
- in small groups...
- (door opening)
...and one at a time,
they are called forward.
(typewriters clacking)
Narrator:
One fine old British custom
survives in South Africa's
penal system,
- the whip.
- (whip cracking)
Narrator: In 1963,
according to records
meticulously kept,
83,206 lashes were meted out
to 17,404 prisoners.
- (pensive music playing)
- Narrator: House of Bondage.
I feel like I put my whole life
into creating that book.
I risked my life every day.
I had to learn
to shoot at eye level.
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator:
I had to shoot while walking.
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator:
It's a matter of survival.
To steal every moment.
But the monster
does not even need to hide.
He is on a mission.
(camera shutter clicking)
(camera reel clicking, whirring)
Narrator:
I am collecting evidence,
and sometimes,
the monster looks back at me.
Our policy is one,
which is called by
an Afrikaans word, "Apartheid."
And I'm afraid that has been
misunderstood so often.
It could just as easily
and perhaps,
much better be described
as a policy
of good neighborliness.
Accepting that there are
differences between people.
(bell tolling)
Reporter: Outside
the High Court in Pretoria,
sympathizers waited
for the verdict
on Black leader
Nelson Mandela.
Reporter:
Mandela had declared in court,
"I planned sabotage
because all lawful methods
of opposition were closed."
"I have cherished the ideal
of democratic society
with equal opportunity for all."
"That is an ideal," he said,
"for which I am prepared
to die."
(somber music playing)
Narrator:
South Africa is a land
of signs.
A total separation of
facilities on the basis
of race.
For every African, the signs,
oppressive, are always there.
(upbeat drums playing)
Narrator: Sometimes,
the sign says only, "Goods."
But if you are Black,
you know that elevator
is for you too.
The depravity of Apartheid,
a morbid system of separation.
- (pensive music playing)
- (birds chirping)
(water flowing)
- (cash register dings)
- (typewriters clacking)
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: When I say
that people can be fired,
or arrested,
or abused, or whipped,
- or banished for trifles...
- (handcuffs clinking)
...I'm not describing
the exceptional case
for the sake
of being inflammatory.
Legal indignities
eventually become part
of the reality
of your existence.
Onerous, but unavoidable,
and in a way, tolerable,
like a bad climate.
You may escape,
but you carry
your prison smell with you.
The white man's fear
of Blackness...
(cigarette sizzling)
...and whatever
it symbolizes for him,
goads him unmercifully.
His hatred erupts
on slight provocation.
One slip, one fancied slight,
one ill-considered act
or hasty word,
and he is upon you,
an enemy ablaze with rage
and emboldened by his immunity.
All Blacks have seen
white men and women thus.
All have been tongue-lashed.
Perhaps not quite all
have been bullied,
threatened, shoved,
spat upon, slapped, or slugged.
There is no recourse.
(music concludes)
Radio presenter: (over radio)
The more you need Ajax,
the most powerful name
in cleaning!
- (birds chirping)
- (water rippling)
Narrator:
White homes are crucibles
of racism in South Africa.
Here, the races meet
face to face
- as master and servant.
- (somber music playing)
Narrator: All servants are Black
and all masters white.
- (bats clacking)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: The typical pay
for a live-in servant
is 15 to 20 dollars a month,
plus bed and meals.
If you don't complain,
they think... you're happy.
If you do complain,
they think you're ungrateful.
- (Kids wailing, giggling)
- (indistinct chatter)
(tender music playing)
(children laughing)
Narrator: "I love this child,"
says the nanny,
"Though she'll grow up
to treat me
just like her mother does,
now, she is innocent."
(Babies giggling)
- (Babies crying)
- (indistinct chatter)
Presenter:
This leaflet has been prepared
by the Non-European
Affairs Department
in the hope that it will assist
European employers
in their day-to-day dealings
with their Bantu servants.
One of the most
popular fallacies prevailing
amongst South Africans is that,
"I know the Bantu
and how to treat him."
For this reason,
it is earnestly hoped
that this little booklet
will prove of some value
- to the public.
- (menacing music playing)
Narrator: The manual says
to speak to the servant
- in a language they
understand.
- (camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: And try to remember
that they are human.
- (whimsical music playing)
- (dog yaps)
(dog pants, barks)
(dog whines, barks)
- (music concludes)
- (dog whimpers)
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: A few white policemen
decided that the world
was normal.
- Just a man and a woman.
- (child yelling)
- (Resident laughing)
- Narrator: More, if compatible.
Human again.
Even for a brief moment.
Does the woman have a choice?
("Kitty's Blues"
by Dolly Rathebe playing)
(singing in foreign
language)
(Kids chattering)
Narrator:
How do you keep your humanity
in the face of all this?
It's not a question.
It's an observation.
(Kids yelling, clamoring)
Narrator:
I am trying to find sense
where there ain't any.
As close to reality
as possible.
Find an immediate connection
to life and its contradictions.
(Kids chattering, laughing)
Narrator: A link
which I can't afford to lose.
But I can't find anything
that justifies all this.
(machines whirring)
Narrator: South Africa's wealth
is rooted firmly
in great mineral resources.
- Diamonds, platinum, iron...
- (metal clanging)
- ...copper, uranium...
- (indistinct chatter)
...and above all, gold.
- (machines humming)
- (tools clanking)
Narrator: These mines produce
about 70 percent
of all the free world supply
of gold.
The brute work is done
by Africans.
Recruits from all points
are brought to the tremendous
Witwatersrand Native Labor
Association
main depot in Johannesburg.
Here, they are processed
and assigned to the mines,
where they will work
for the duration
of their contract.
- (birds chirping)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: One will tell you,
"I'll be going home
when the drought ends."
(train tracks rattling)
Narrator: But it never does.
- And life in the mines
goes on.
- (train engine hissing)
(pensive music playing)
(stamp clacking)
- (music concludes)
- (bell ringing)
Narrator:
The scale of payment is frugal.
For losing two legs
above the knee,
and thus his livelihood,
one fellow I saw,
received 1,036 dollars,
which was being paid out
at the rate of eight dollars
and 40 cents a month,
and was supposed to last him
for the rest of his life.
(funky jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Your own people are nothing.
The strong father,
the harboring mother,
the blood brother, nothing.
The loyalty of families,
nothing.
The allegiance of tribes,
nothing.
They are nothing.
You look vainly
for heroes to emulate.
Many already half believe
the white man's estimate
of their worthlessness.
- But inside, there is fire.
- (Residents shouting)
Narrator:
You rise in the morning,
filled with sour thoughts
of your poverty
under the white economy...
where parks are free
and benches available,
- you do not want them.
- (crowd clamoring)
Narrator:
Good food does not impress you.
Vacations are for fools.
You do not try too hard
or expect too much of yourself,
for it is still
a white man's world.
Your anger is unabated,
for each day's newly discovered
small liberties...
recall restrictions
in the past.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (passing footsteps)
(crowd applauding)
- (bell ringing)
- (crowd cheering)
Narrator: And as we overcame
our deficiencies,
lost our political
and economic innocence,
- civilized our savage
nature...
- (instruments rattling)
...and worshiped
the white God...
we would earn
the white man's friendship
and approval.
Then would the best of us
would have a seat
in his councils
and the privilege of acting
like white men.
Yet, it has turned out...
that we studied
the white man's language
only to learn the terms
of our servitude.
Narrator: Three hundred years
of white supremacy
have placed us in bondage,
stripped us of dignity,
robbed us of self-esteem,
- and surrounded us with hate.
- (crowd clamoring)
(gunshots firing)
The foreigners
who are operating businesses,
we need to regulate them.
- (glass shattering)
- (crowd shouting, clamoring)
(pensive music playing)
Narrator: The Native
Administration Act of 1927
empowers the government,
whenever it is deemed expedient
in the general public interest,
to move any individual African,
or an entire tribe
for that matter,
from any place
within South Africa
to any other place.
No prior notice is required
and no time limit set.
I was determined to visit
a banishment camp
and see for myself.
I made my trip in 1964.
I picked Frenchdale,
an isolated outpost
in the northern reaches
of Cape Province
near the border of Botswana.
(car engine rumbling)
Narrator: An acquaintance agreed
to drop me off
and return for me
five days later.
(somber music playing)
Narrator: We drove
for several hours
down the dirt road
that stretched through miles
of flat nothingness.
It was arid,
semi-desert country,
treeless, and barely able
to support shrubs.
- (wind howling)
- (crickets chirping)
Narrator: Late at night,
we reached the banishment camp.
Soon, everybody in the camp
came together to greet us.
They were so glad to see us,
to see anyone.
(gentle music playing)
Narrator: Piet Mokoena,
formerly a tribal leader
in the Orange Free State,
had been in Frenchdale
for ten years.
Paulus Mopeli, a Basotho chief
and the grandson
of the great leader Moshesh,
had been in Frenchdale
for 14 years.
(melancholic music playing)
Narrator: Treaty, his wife,
was banished three years later
and ended up in the same camp
by pure coincidence.
She's still worried
over the fate
of her six-year-old grandchild
who had been pushed out
by police
and told to fend for himself
the night she was picked up.
The first thing about the camp
that strikes the visitor
is the quiet.
(wind whistling)
Narrator:
There were no
children's voices,
none of the murmuring sounds
of daily living.
Nothing.
The banished had lost count
of the days.
Monday looks like Friday
in Frenchdale.
Nothing breaks the monotony.
The passage
from light to darkness
- is their calendar.
- (crickets chirping)
Narrator: In another day or so,
my friend came back for me,
as we had arranged.
- (traffic honking)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: As I re-entered
the restricted Black life
of Johannesburg...
I felt free.
Miriam: I ask you,
and all the leaders
of the world,
would you act differently?
Would you keep silent
and do nothing
if you were in our place?
Would you not resist
if you were allowed no rights
in your own country
because the color of your skin
is different
to that of the ruler,
and if you were punished
for even asking for equality?
Mr. Chairman,
there is already too much hate
in my country.
(camera shutters clicking)
Harold: The Labour Party
are not in favor
of trade sanctions.
They would harm the people
we are most concerned about,
the Africans,
and those white South Africans
who are fighting
to maintain some standard
of decency there.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (water trickling)
Narrator: It was May 19th, 1966.
The day I left the beast.
A group of friends came with me
to the airport.
It was scary and cordial,
all at once.
I was happy to leave nothing,
sad to leave everything.
- (indistinct chatter)
- Narrator: At any moment,
Special Branch could interfere
and arrest us all,
- and for sure...
- (plane engine roaring)
...confiscate all of
my hidden negatives.
(singing in
foreign language)
(upbeat drums playing)
(hisses, exhales)
(chuckles)
(continues singing, fades)
Narrator: Leaving South Africa
was a shock to my friends.
Few had dared to confront
the racist administration.
Now, I am here
in this beautiful world,
one we all dreamt about.
("Lovely Lies" by
Miriam Makeba, The Manhattan
Brothers playing)
You tell such lovely lies
With your two lovely eyes
When I leave your embrace
Another takes my place...
Narrator:
A world without prejudice,
without the maddening fear,
without the endless persecution
and nullification
of all identity.
(skipping rope swatting)
Narrator: Yes, some of us
who made it into exile
thought that the world
was just waiting for us,
- great artists...
- (subway tracks rattling)
...but we were driven
to insanity.
(melodic saxophone playing)
Narrator:
The shock was too violent.
We were lost.
Some had been sent back
into hell, battered.
That's what happened to Kippie.
Kippie couldn't bear the exile.
He went back and faced
the regime in South Africa.
He refused to play for years...
and died there, poor, in 1983.
Miriam survived.
The Manhattan Brothers
survived.
And Miriam sang
with The Manhattan Brothers.
("Baby Ntsoare" by Miriam
Makeba, The Manhattan Brothers
playing)
(singing in foreign
language)
Narrator: "What does it take
to survive the West?"
"How am I going to fare
in this land of freedom
and democracy?"
The world loved us
when we were down there,
suffering from Apartheid
and all that stuff.
For some reason,
we thought they would
welcome us with open arms.
But we were wrong.
(triumphant music playing)
Reporter: The flags
of Commonwealth nations
flew over Marlborough House.
It was the start
of the Commonwealth Conference.
Then came the shock news.
Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd,
South African premier,
had been assassinated.
At South Africa house
in London...
Narrator:
I remember that day very well.
I had just left the offices
of Stern magazine.
They had refused all my photos.
They were not interested.
- (tense music playing)
- Narrator: And then,
the wires exploded with the
news of the assassination.
Stern magazine called me back.
A racist bigot died.
Suddenly, you have an opening.
Suddenly, your work
makes sense.
(music concludes)
I was, of course, really naive
when I started out
because I thought...
being so far away, you know,
South Africa being so isolated,
that all the noise
at the United Nations
was leading somewhere,
in other words,
that they were going to step in
and bring about some change.
But in coming away
from South Africa,
I found out that South Africa
really was just
one of the topics
on the United Nations agenda.
(brooding
jazz music playing)
Narrator: House of Bondage
took me ten years to make.
So much of me is in it.
All of me is in it.
It made me famous.
It made me.
But why do I feel a sense
of betrayal?
The world didn't want art,
didn't want a book
about just humans,
about the human condition.
It was more
than a political pamphlet.
It was not conceived
as an anti-Apartheid
political crusade.
It was about my life
in South Africa,
and the lives of millions
of others.
(music fades)
Leslie: I became aware
of the existence
of House of Bondage in 1999,
when I was on holiday.
I was walking around the streets
of Cape Town.
I came across a bookstore
called Clarke's Bookstore.
Walked in there.
I found a book of my...
uncle.
It's then that I learned
that the book
was banned in 1967,
and it was never sold
in South Africa.
(mellow jazz music playing)
- (traffic rumbling)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: Now comes the part
where I tell you
what happened to my work...
during all these years I spent
in the US and elsewhere.
The story
of my slow disintegration
and descent into hell.
How I would transition
from famous
and celebrated photographer
to homeless at
the 34th street train station.
All these photos of New York...
only a few
have seen them before.
For a long time,
people believed they were lost,
dumped somewhere in a landfill.
Some 60,000
photos and negatives.
(cheerful music playing)
Narrator: I see you.
I see you every day.
Maybe others
don't see you anymore.
You're too common.
Not exotic enough.
You're not even seen anymore,
or even looked at.
For me, everything is new,
every smile,
every glance,
whether they look
at the camera or avoid it,
and look away
as if it didn't exist.
I see children.
Adults with children.
Women.
(scoffs) Lots of women.
Alone.
In groups...
of two...
or three...
or four.
Black women, white women,
women with hats,
women with scarves,
women with umbrellas,
women without umbrellas,
sometimes also sitting,
reading the paper.
(scoffs)
Not wanting to be annoyed,
or not giving a damn.
Men too.
Men sitting as well.
Sleeping.
Men in groups, looking...
waiting.
Looking again.
And sometimes I come across
faces that I know,
or moments
that I've experienced.
And sometimes,
I see things that could have
never existed in my world.
In South Africa...
these images
are legally a crime.
Here too, not so long ago.
Yes, I photographed a lot
of mixed couples.
It's not so much
by fascination.
It just releases me
from past pains.
In a country where
everything...
anything, is a crime.
Men who love each other,
who kiss,
who look at each other,
who hold hands
in the middle of the street.
Another crime in my country...
- (music fades)
- ...whether white or Black.
Although two Blacks
holding hands
in the streets of Johannesburg
would not attract
much attention.
Black men can hold hands
in public.
It is a sign of deep
friendship.
(lively
country music playing)
- (grass rustling)
- (Kids chattering)
(cicadas chirping)
(birds chirping)
Narrator:
"It was never going to work,"
said a journalist commenting
on my photos of the South.
What did he expect?
In South Africa,
I photographed my life,
my reality.
Here in the US,
I am the other.
I accepted this mission
with mixed feeling.
A country I did not know.
An assignment
which was a false good idea.
The negro in the country.
"An outsider's point of view,"
it said.
Taking me totally
out of my comfort zone
in a territory
so ironically similar to mine.
Apartheid there, Jim Crow here.
When I think of it,
there is some perversity
in this.
How is this an outsider's
point of view?
I was 27 years old,
for God's sake.
(indistinct TV chatter)
Narrator: What did they expect?
Michelangelo?
I don't know
if this was my fight or not,
as some have argued.
They said I didn't put
my passion into the assignment.
- (Kids chattering)
- Narrator: Possibly.
But again,
what were your expectations
from a young man
who just spent all of his years
in a racist, hazardous,
and mortal country?
And you just thrust him
into the Deep South?
What did you imagine?
In the South,
I was more scared there
than I ever was in
South Africa.
In South Africa,
I was afraid of being arrested.
In the South,
when I was taking pictures,
I was terribly frightened
of being shot.
(music concludes)
Narrator: I was just ten months
in New York.
I imprudently
told a New York Times
journalist that...
"White people
in the United States
are very much like whites
in South Africa
in their attitudes
towards Black people."
He printed it verbatim
in his newspaper...
while observing
that I was just given
a 6,000-dollar grant
from the Ford Foundation.
I added...
"I was so very much surprised
to find
bitter white racism
in America,"
which he printed too.
("God Bless America"
by Ondara playing)
In fifty years
(traffic whizzing by)
When I'm frail
Barely on my feet
Will you be kind, oh, dear
Like you promised
At the embassy?
Oh, God bless America
The heartache of mine
Oh, God bless America
The heartache of mine
Narrator: This country
that I've traveled across
in such a short time,
maybe it's not what I thought
I would see.
It won't matter
Who your god is
Narrator: Perhaps,
it showed me very little.
Or the tone of your skin
Narrator: Perhaps,
its essence and deepest soul
escaped me completely.
Or who you choose
To share your love with
Narrator: I saw men in Memphis,
- protesting with dignity...
- (Protesters clamoring)
...for the rights
that I too had been denied.
Oh, God bless America
(indistinct chatter over radio)
Narrator: I crossed paths
with leaders
that I had never
heard of before.
Oh, God bless America
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: Stokely Carmichael,
who in the end,
after a decisive
political career,
will be ejected
from this country
to start a new life in Africa,
on my continent.
Crossed visions,
opposite destinies.
(music concludes)
In '68,
I went and met him in New York.
I was doing some work there,
photography.
And...
- I was... somehow felt...
- Interviewer: Mm-hmm.
...began to be very worried
about him
because he seemed
very depressed and...
and isolated.
Narrator: I saw Jrgen again.
I was not well.
(pensive jazz music playing)
Narrator: He probably thought
I was depressed, isolated.
Maybe I was.
He wanted us to bond again.
I was not so inclined.
But I went along.
Jrgen had always been
good to me.
- We entered the restaurant.
- (cutlery clinking)
- (indistinct chatter)
- Narrator: All eyes were on me.
Not on us. On me.
The Black lad.
Measuring, dissecting,
from bottom to top and back,
incredulous to my presence,
my identity,
my demeanor.
In a flash,
I was back in South Africa,
- back to the dirty looks...
- (whistle blowing)
...to the piercing brutality
of staring...
the tranquil violence
of privilege.
I was not in South Africa,
but in New York.
- The year is 1968.
- (police siren blaring)
Narrator:
I was in the free world,
but the world is still
not free.
- (dramatic music playing)
- (Officers clamoring)
(indistinct chatter)
(crowd clamoring)
- (crowd clamoring)
- (Officers shouting)
(siren wailing)
(supporters chanting
in Czech)
Narrator: My book
is banned in South Africa.
I'm not surprised,
but it still hurts.
No one at home will see
my work.
(music fades)
Narrator: I am homesick,
and I can't return.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
Narrator: Some of my fellow
white American photographers
claimed that my work
in America was lacking edge.
What is the object
of their comparison?
What do they know
about my reality,
my urgency?
The price you pay for exile
is supposedly living safer.
I can only photograph
my own experiences.
South Africa is my frame
of reference.
My frame of life.
What are you
actually blaming me for?
That I turned my camera on you
and saw nothing?
(tense music playing)
Narrator:
I have an explorer's gaze.
- Explorer in a distant land.
- (indistinct chatter)
(water rippling)
Narrator:
A land I vaguely dreamt of.
A land that promised
milk and honey...
- (fountain sputtering)
- ...in multiple forms.
(Kids laughing, chattering)
Narrator: There are these photos
where we do not know
where we are.
(music fades)
Narrator: It could be
Johannesburg, Soweto,
or the suburbs of Pretoria.
- These same faces...
- (drum beating)
...this familiarity,
the same gleam in the eyes
challenging the photographer.
Here...
there,
I am trying to capture
moments of reality,
finding the fractures,
the essence,
the nature of human lives.
(upbeat jazz music playing)
(Kids laughing, screaming)
(Kids chattering)
Narrator: These are not answers.
They are questions.
An America that was sold to me.
I don't judge, I observe.
Sometimes amazed,
other times appalled.
(mellow jazz music playing)
Narrator: I applied
for a new passport.
One to go home.
The weight of isolation.
(cart wheels rattling)
Narrator:
No family, no real friends.
No support structure
you can trust.
Friends coming and going.
Each one more or less
as disheveled as you are.
No remedy to despair.
Literally eating you away.
Leslie: He used
to make reverse calls,
and most of the time,
he wanted to speak to me
because he wanted me to come
and visit him in New York.
But unfortunately,
I couldn't do that
because my mother
was not happy about that.
She said that I'm not going
to come back
like my uncle.
(exciting jazz music
playing)
(music fades)
Leslie: He decided
to go to Sweden,
I believe, around 1968.
He thought maybe
if he goes to Sweden,
he might find a different place
to America.
But unfortunately,
there were very few
Black people in Sweden.
He was not even allowed
into some of the public spaces,
like restaurants,
because he was Black.
(pensive jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Looking for new places,
I was able to secure
short-term visas
to England, Denmark,
and Sweden.
That's how I found Ingrid
on the way.
Ingrid Wigh,
and her sister, Catarina
I lived some time with them.
Locked in that flat
outside Stockholm,
we didn't know
what to do with ourselves.
Today, Ingrid is 85 years old.
She does not remember much
of these endless afternoons.
"My memory fails me," she says.
Leslie: Fortunate for him,
he met Rune Hassner
and they became good friends,
and he introduced him
to Tiofoto agency,
and then he became
a member there,
and they decided to help him
with his body of work.
He has actually spent
in a year,
I would say,
three months in Sweden
from 1968 until 1972.
And thereafter,
he stopped traveling to Sweden
until 1979,
and he went there
for about a week.
And that was the last time
he visited Sweden.
What is happening
outside South Africa
is as important
as what might be happening
within South Africa itself.
And therefore,
what we are asking
the world to do
is not to solve
our problems for us,
but to assist us
solve those problems.
Because the worst
of all horrors in the world
is to live forever
as a slave, as a hated,
despised subhuman.
Narrator: "22nd November, 1971.
To Miss Dolly A. McPherson
at the Institute
of International Education."
"This is to inform you
that the first half
of my travel and study award
is now finished."
(traffic rumbling)
Narrator: "I would therefore
like to request
from the Ford Foundation
and extension,
so that I can complete
the second half
of my project."
- (rain pattering)
- (somber music playing)
Narrator:
"On 14th November, 1972,
as you may recall,
when the last grant
was made to Mr. Cole,
it was anticipated
that a subsequent award
would be authorized
for a 12-month period."
"But Miss McPherson,
who administered
the earlier awards to Mr. Cole,
has recently left
the Institute.
Furthermore, there is no
evidence in the file
that the recipient
ever submitted a single picture
in exchange
for the allocated money."
(pensive jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Harlem requires patience.
Everybody's putting on a front.
Acting important and
suspicious.
And I don't blame them.
My soul is of two minds,
torn and battered.
This city is hard
to keep up with.
It hustles
for your total attention,
and it's driving me crazy.
Yes, a lot of people thought
I'd stop photographing
in all those years,
that fame had crushed me,
that I'd lost my way
in this new jungle
that was the modern West.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (cutlery clinking)
Narrator: Yet,
I never stopped photographing
for a single moment.
(bell dinging)
Narrator: I photographed
light American stuff
and heavy American stuff.
I don't show new material
for the sake of showing it.
I want the viewer to walk away
with a message...
(crowd cheering, applauding)
...not just a head
full of images.
(mellow jazz music playing)
- (music concludes)
- (traffic whizzing by)
Narrator: I called Mother today.
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: Not much to say.
We are living
in two different worlds.
I will send some money soon.
I'm homesick...
and I can't return.
(pensive jazz music playing)
- (traffic rumbling)
- (police siren wailing)
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: "January 1973."
(music concludes)
Narrator:
"A preliminary approval
for a 6,000-dollar grant
to Ernest Cole
to start the second half
of his project,
and a waiving of the overspend
have been allocated."
"The only minor difficulty
is that this new payment
would have to wait
for the new tax year."
I must leave this room.
And find another
good Samaritan.
I need shelter for a few days.
More would be preferable.
Announcer: (over PA)
This is the 2nd Avenue bound E.
(subway tracks rattling)
Narrator: I found some respite
at Riverside Church Dormitory.
That's where I eat, sleep,
rest.
Taking it a day at a time.
A home far away from home,
where school children
are killed by the police.
- (gunshots firing)
- (crowd clamoring)
(Officers shouting)
(Protesters clamoring)
Narrator:
I saw a psychiatrist today
at the Harlem Hospital.
Well, was kind of forced to,
in order to keep
my Social Security checks.
So many questions.
So many cadavers.
The doctor thinks
I might be paranoid. (scoffs)
I certainly have
good reasons to be.
Reporter: (in French)
(traffic rumbling)
Narrator: (in English)
New York, summer of 1977.
Standing at the window,
I can barely see the sky.
Neither sunset, nor sunrise.
It is a lie
to put things in the frame.
All photographs are lies.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (police siren wailing)
Narrator: Blackout in the city.
There is this YMCA on 34th.
I used to pass by it
so many times, years ago.
(traffic honking)
- Narrator: Now, I live there.
- (firetruck siren wailing)
Narrator: Scary to be
in a YMCA room these days.
- Today's meal, Indian lentils.
- (lively chatter)
Narrator: A tin of tomato soup.
A boiled frankfurter,
late at night, if I'm lucky.
Am I a traitor to my country?
That's what the state radio
says in South Africa.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
Narrator: Today,
I am not in the mood to talk.
A Soviet surveillance satellite
detects South Africa's
nuclear test
and alerts the United States.
President Carter
asks for less consumption
of oil.
Steve Biko is arrested
for breaking a ban order.
He died under torture.
What is political?
What do they want from me?
(crowd chanting indistinctly)
We should not mourn
the death of Steve Biko
We must plan
to act to punish the culprits,
to destroy the Apartheid regime
and liberate the patriots
from its clutches.
(Kids laughing, chattering)
Narrator: It's been a while
since I took any picture.
My cameras are lost,
sold, forgotten somewhere.
I miss the warmth of a love.
(uplifting music playing)
(indistinct chatter)
- (music concludes)
- (subway tracks rattling)
Leslie: I believe
Ernest started losing ground
with his work during the '80s.
He stopped photographing.
He became homeless.
His career fizzled out,
and his photograph...
his pictures rather,
were completely forgotten.
Narrator: Received a letter
from my mother.
Left it unopened
in my pocket...
- (bicycle bell ringing)
- ...for months.
(somber jazz music playing)
Narrator: I'm homesick.
And I can't return.
My passport is denied.
I can never go home again.
But I remember,
so vividly,
the market on Wanderer Street.
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: (inhales)
I remember two young girls
walking home to Soweto...
as if the world
was still in order.
I stopped to talk to them.
One in particular,
a smile to die for.
Everything could be so simple.
(traffic whizzing by)
- (music concludes)
- (subway tracks rattling)
Narrator: Yes,
there were these rumors
that I was on drugs.
I never drank, never smoked,
never indulged in drugs,
even though I had enough
reasons
- to do any or all of it.
- (match flicking, sizzling)
(syringe clattering)
Narrator: "May 15th, 1991."
"Mr. John Hillelson,
The John Hillelson Agency."
"Dear Mr. Hillelson,
Ernest always led me to believe
he had negatives in Sweden."
"What he had
in the United States,
as far as I know,
he lost irretrievably
when he left his belongings
in a storeroom
in a Manhattan rooming house
without claiming them
for more than a year."
"They were then discarded
by the rooming house
in 1977."
"I know because I went there
with Ernest in the vain effort
to reclaim the stuff."
"I'm sorry
I can't be more helpful."
"Sincerely, Joseph Lelyveld,
managing editor,
The New York Times."
(intriguing music playing)
Leslie: I received an email
dated the fifth of July, 2016.
Subject, "Urgent, can we meet?"
The email further said
that before the meeting
they would like to have
the following information.
Names of family members
that were alive
when Ernest Cole died,
including
their identification numbers,
as well as their
home addresses.
I was a bit suspicious
as to why, you know.
- as to why, you know.
- (music concludes)
What I did was I,
you know, at first,
you know, decided
that I'm not going to respond.
But after processing the content
of the email...
took me about two or three days,
and then I decided,
"Let me respond."
At that stage, the advocate,
Ulf Bergquist,
responded to my email.
by saying that...
he has been appointed
by the district court
of Stockholm
to act as an administrator
because they have found...
material belonging
to Ernest Cole
in a bank safe in Sweden.
(intriguing music playing)
Leslie:
I received a call from Sweden
suggesting that we should come
and collect the material
- in Sweden.
- (music concludes)
Leslie: Then I accepted
the invitation from
the advocate
and he arranged tickets for us,
myself and my son, Gontse.
I was not happy when I saw
his initial itinerary.
I said, "No, perhaps,
maybe we should extend
the number of days
that, you know, we should spend
in Sweden."
So that I could have
the opportunity
to ask questions.
"What really happened
to Ernest Cole's material?"
"Why is it in the bank?"
"Who was paying?"
"And then for how many years
was the material
in the bank," you know,
so that, you know,
this could... should not be
part of dustbin of history.
He addressed me like a
schoolboy and then
he then said,
"You will arrive in the morning
and then I will ensure
that you receive the material
from my office,
and then you will travel back
to South Africa
the same evening."
I became more
and more suspicious.
They took us
to a meeting office...
(elevator dinging)
...and we sat there
in the meeting office,
and one of the ladies
went out and brought back
the first safety deposit box,
put it on the table.
Man: We're going
to let you guys open them.
- (intriguing music playing)
- (indistinct chatter)
Is there a way to open this?
- Woman: Yeah.
- Ulf Bergquist: No.
(group laughing)
- Yes, we have scissors.
- Oh, okay.
- (speaks indistinctly)
- So it's there. Thank you.
(chuckles)
So, it's the normal way
of opening.
- There we are, huh?
- Woman: Okay.
- Man: Perfect.
- Voil!
(group chuckling)
(exclaims) I have to be
very careful, huh?
Ulf: Yeah.
Woman: Should I open
the second one
- or you want to?
- Man: Yes, please.
- Man: Huh?
- Leslie: Yeah.
- Leslie: Wow!
- (indistinct chatter)
Leslie: The files of...
my uncle's
South African negatives.
nicely, you know, organized
in beautiful files
made in Sweden,
marked, you know,
the years and the place
when they were taken
and so forth.
When they brought
the third box,
also fell open lots of
Ernest Cole research material,
paper clips,
magazines,
his notes on House of Bondage
and so forth.
I couldn't really believe
what I'd found.
Shortly after being excited
to see what we found,
and then we decided
now maybe it's a perfect moment
to start asking questions.
The answer was
unfortunately disappointing
because all they could say
was that...
there is absolutely no record
who deposited...
the safety deposit...
the material in the bank.
And also, there is no record
of anyone doing any payments
for them to keep
the information in the bank.
I couldn't even believe,
you know...
A bank in Sweden?
No record?
And they handed over
this material to us
without signing anything?
It was something
very, very, very strange to me.
(somber jazz music playing)
Narrator: Winter of 1982.
(truck beeping)
Narrator: My crises
are getting worse by the day
and more burdensome.
I met a friend on Broadway
and 113th Street.
He introduced me
to his Indian wife.
She is beautiful and smart.
Such a lucky fellow.
I live with Feni now,
in the same apartment.
He is working
on his defining sculpture.
History, he calls it.
We do not speak much,
but we understand
each other's torments
in this freezing town.
Feni's work has been banned
in South Africa,
like mine,
and like Nat Nakasa's writings
a few years back.
Nat was around our age.
He left South Africa
because he did not want to,
as he said,
perish in his own bitterness.
(tense music playing)
Narrator: One day in July 1965,
he threw himself
from the seventh floor
of a building in New York.
- He was 28 years old.
- (music concludes)
Narrator: "I want to write
about people, not enemies,"
- he used to say.
- (indistinct chatter)
(car engine rumbling)
Narrator:
Exile is destroying us,
one by one.
(melancholic music playing)
Narrator:
When the Apartheid regime fell,
Feni decided to go home.
The day before flying back,
he wanted to buy
a few records to bring home.
He had a massive heart attack
in the store
and died there.
Ellington was playing
on the loudspeakers.
("African Flower"
by Duke Ellington playing)
Narrator: I walk and I walk
and I walk through the city.
If I stop walking,
I will just die.
Maybe I'm bitter
like they all say,
but nothing new
that others have not
lived through before me.
(sirens wailing in distance)
Narrator: I am bitter.
I try to protect myself
from the noise, from the hype,
from the bloody hell
that my country has become,
while the world
is still finding excuses.
(music concludes)
(in French)
Reporter: (in English)
British Prime Minister
whose unbending opposition
to sanctions
against South Africa,
is threatening to break apart
the Commonwealth.
I have not taken...
I've not made any changes
in my own position
on South Africa.
Well, let me tell you
why we believe
Mrs. Thatcher is right.
The primary victims
of an economic boycott
of South Africa
would be the very people
we seek to help.
De Klerk: When I was a young man
of 21 and 25,
why did I support
separate development?
Soon after I entered politics,
and in my years
as a backbencher already,
I came to the realization,
"It's not working."
And especially
since the early '80s,
I became convinced
that where we stand
is morally indefensible,
and that Apartheid was wrong.
(Residents chanting
in foreign language)
Narrator: (in English)
History is a strange thing.
It is amazing
how people's discourse changes
within just a few years.
A comfortable position
to be in,
I would say even a privilege,
to just acknowledge
that you were wrong
with hardly any consequences
whatsoever.
You will just go on
and enjoy your loot.
(birds chirping)
(rain pattering)
Narrator:
I did contemplate suicide,
not just once.
I reviewed time and again
all possible scenarios
for my death.
At home,
people were disappearing
every day,
kidnapped in the night
or in plain daylight.
Bodies would resurface
mutilated,
disfigured, unrecognizable,
in some dumps or in car trunks.
I did contemplate suicide.
Not just once.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (Kids laughing)
(brooding music playing)
Gerrie: They would kidnap
or abduct middle of the night,
kick down doors,
take the individual they want,
take him back to the complex
and then interrogate him
up to the third degree.
Interviewer: What do you mean
by third degree?
Well, we made use of...
(hesitates)
...half drownings,
electric shocks,
tubing, favorite term,
that's where
you step somebody's face into...
the inner of a car tire
and basically suffocate him.
Alex: You have told us
today, that you were tortured
many times
in many different places.
What actually
did they do to you?
(speaking in native language)
Translator:
"During the torturing,
I always..."
(speaking in native language)
Translator: "I was always
suffocated with a mask,
and there was
this helicopter training."
(speaking in native language)
Translator: "And a stick was put
inside your knees
and you had
to stretch your knees."
"During that period,
you were suffocated."
(speaking in native language)
It's fine, don't worry about it.
(sobs)
(breathes heavily)
(indistinct chatter)
Alex: That's all.
Interviewer: How many people
have you killed
as a security policeman?
Well...
As an individual,
it's hard to say how many,
but collectively, we killed
between 30, 35.
Interviewer: Why did you kill
these people?
It was instructions
from the head office.
It was instructions
from my immediate commanders.
Ashley: Do you remember
saying to me that
you are able to treat me
like an animal
or like a human being,
and that how you treated me
depended on whether...
I cooperated or not?
Jeffrey: I can't remember it
correctly, sir,
but I would concede,
I may have said it.
Can I then also just ask
if you remember that
while I was laying
on the ground, that somebody...
inserted a metal rod
into my anus and shocked me?
What actually led to that,
I cannot say,
except that I concede
the method of detention
was...
a Draconian... law
instituted by the then
Nationalist Government, sir.
(melancholic music playing)
Narrator: Roaming for days,
for months,
in this temple
for hurried travelers,
vaguely monitoring
streams of bodies
going somewhere.
The new rumor was
that I had become a vagrant,
a bag person in New York.
Maybe the rumors were right.
Sometimes,
people would recognize me.
"Look, the great Ernest Cole,"
they say to their friends.
They shake my hand.
They praise my work.
Tell me about their admiration.
I usually don't talk much.
Sometimes they come back
the next day,
bringing new friends,
wanting to help.
But my torments
are not curable.
This nagging feeling
of rootlessness.
(camera shutter clicking)
(mellow jazz music playing)
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: It's been eight years
since I touched a camera.
Eight long years.
I feel like an old man.
I am an old man.
My friend, the great jazz
player and composer,
Abdullah Ibrahim,
told me
about a Magnum photographer
who wanted to meet me.
Rashid Lombard was his name.
Rashid Lombard
took these pictures.
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: I took one
of his cameras in my hands.
It was cold.
"Can I take a picture?"
I asked.
- "Yes," he said.
- (music concludes)
Narrator: "Do you mind
sitting there?" I asked.
I took just one frame.
- Only one.
- (camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: That's all I could.
- (brooding music playing)
- (birds chirping)
Narrator: You might still want
to know how my negatives
and my personal archives
got into a Swedish bank vault.
Who put them there?
Who paid for the deposit?
Since when?
But you know what?
I don't really care anymore.
Whatever happened, happened.
And it definitely
was not right.
Who ordered, omitted, hid,
swapped, covered up,
silenced anything,
will still have to answer
to their own conscience.
(music concludes)
Narrator: Today, what counts
is that all my work
is finally home,
where it belongs.
Let us never break faith
with our people or our land,
with our martyrs
who have died for us,
or with our heroes
who live for us.
- Amandla!
- Supporters: Awethu!
- Amandla!
- Supporters: Awethu!
- (pensive music playing)
- (birds chirping)
Narrator:
New York is a soulless city.
No one looks at the sky here.
Someone urgently needs
to watch the sky.
Maybe I should.
I'll watch over the sunset.
- I'll watch over the
sunrise...
- (indistinct chatter)
...for all the people.
(music concludes)
Narrator:
"New York, January 1990."
"Dear Mrs. Cole,
I'm calling you to let you know
that your son,
Ernest, is not well."
"His doctors think
that it would be a good time
to come and be with him."
"He has not long to live."
Nelson Mandela is to be set free
at one o'clock tomorrow.
South Africa's president,
De Klerk, hopes it will create
a positive, peaceful climate
for negotiations
on a new South Africa.
(sirens wailing in distance)
Narrator: "It's terminal,"
Dr. Rafii tells me.
Pancreatic cancer.
A few weeks, tops.
That's it.
I wish I could die
in my country.
At the consulate,
they said I was no longer
a South African citizen.
(crowd clamoring, echoing)
Narrator: Mother flew
all the way from South Africa
to see me die.
At first,
standing in my room...
she didn't say a word.
Then...
very softly, she put her hand
behind my neck,
as if feeling something.
(sighs)
"He is dying," she said.
Mother stayed until the end.
She looked at me
as I was gasping into death.
She stayed there in the room...
until I died.
("The Funeral"
by George Fenton playing)
(crowd cheering)
Reporter: There's Mr. Mandela,
Mr. Nelson Mandela,
a free man
taking his first steps
into a new South Africa.
(choir singing)
Reporter: This is
Winnie Mandela next to him,
- waving to the crowds.
- (crowd clamoring)
(song continues)
(crowd cheering)
(crowd cheering)
(song fades)
Narrator: There were cries
and speeches.
There were ministers
at my funeral,
artists,
important people.
After the ceremony,
they all gathered.
People came from all over.
They brought
cooked African foods.
"I will not bury him here,"
said Mother.
So, they cremated my body.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
Narrator: She took the ashes
on her lap, on the airplane,
all the way
to Mamelodi Cemetery.
(birds chirping)
It'll stand, I mean, you know,
in the future because, uh...
I'm sure South Africa
will be free.
- Amandla!
- Crowd: Awethu!
- Amandla!
- Crowd: Awethu!
- Nelson: Free Africa!
- (crowd cheering)
(Nelson speaking indistinctly,
echoing)
(uplifting jazz music
playing)
(birds chirping)
Narrator:
The last photos I took...
lost souls.
Long ago,
detached from everything.
Empty, useless bodies.
My ultimate photos.
An absurd catchphrase...
but so fitting.
(chuckles softly)
I still have some humor left.
One last look.
Yes.
I do see you.
(lively jazz music playing)
(pensive jazz music playing)
(music concludes)
(dramatic music playing)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (pensive music playing)
(traffic rumbling)
(siren wailing in distance)
(somber music playing)
Narrator: "November 25th, 1968."
"To the Alien Commissioner,
Norwegian Government,
Oslo, Norway."
"Dear sir,
I was born on March 21, 1940,
at Pretoria, South Africa."
"I'm presently 28,
and unmarried."
"I am a stateless person
in political exile in
New York."
"I've been advised
that my passport
will not be renewed,
but that I could obtain
an emergency
travel certificate."
"I've been in the US
for the past 26 months,
and while this experience
has been insightful for me,
I cannot afford
to remain here much longer
since the nature of my work
requires me to travel."
"Without wishing to be negative
about life in this country,
it is quite evident to me
that it will be difficult
for me to work here
at this particular period
of my life."
"When I left home, I thought
I would focus my talent
- on other aspects of life..."
- (playful piano playing)
"...which I assumed
would be more helpful
- and with some joy to do."
- (indistinct chatter)
(glasses clinking)
Narrator: "However,
what I've seen in this country
over the past three years
has proved me wrong."
"Exposing the truth
at whatever cost is one thing,
but having to live a lifetime
of being the chronicler
of misery and injustice
- and callousness is another."
- (police siren wailing)
Narrator: "And such matter
is about the only assignments
magazines here
want to offer me..."
(footsteps shuffling)
"...because the subject matter
of my first book
happened to be centered
on race issues,
the color of my skin,
another incidental matter,
and the fact
that I endured and escaped
the living hell
that is South Africa."
- (Baby wailing)
- (Kids chattering, clamoring)
Narrator: "The total man
does not live one experience."
("Mill"
by Miriam Makeba playing)
(singing
in foreign language)
(singing continues)
(singing fades)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (Kids laugh)
- (music concludes)
- (birds chirping)
Well, it all started
at the end of 1956.
I had just finished
my second year in high school.
And instead of going further,
I decided to leave school
because the government
had deliberately lowered
the already low standard
of education for Africans,
with what they call
the introduction
of the Bantu Education Act.
So, I decided this was going
a little bit too far
and I left,
and decided to finish
my schooling by correspondence.
Then of course,
it took me a year...
before I could get a break...
as a darkroom assistant.
So, in about May 1958,
I got my first break
through a young
German photographer,
Jrgen Schadeberg,
on Drum magazine.
And...
because Drum
was in Johannesburg,
which is two and a half hours
away from my hometown,
I, you know, had to
read my lessons on the train.
- (papers shuffling)
- (school bell ringing)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (train tracks rattling)
- (crowd clamoring)
- (bicycle bell dinging)
Ernest: Later in 1959,
I saw my first
photographic book,
which is entitled
"People of Moscow"
by Cartier-Bresson.
So, then I decided,
"Well, this is the form
I wanted my work to take."
And slowly,
I started documenting,
you know, just to show what life
was really like in South Africa.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (crowd clamoring)
(train horn blaring)
(camera shutter clicking)
(train tracks rattling)
Ernest: I was of course aware
that after finishing it,
it wouldn't be possible
to remain in South Africa,
but then I...
you know, I didn't care
because this is a chance
you take,
and all of us have taken.
You don't want, you know,
to live under the...
those miserable conditions.
I've been banned in absentia,
but that doesn't matter.
It'll stand, I mean, you know,
in the future, because, uh...
I'm sure
South Africa will be free.
- (dramatic music playing)
- Reporter 1:
Demonstrations against
the South African government's
strict Apartheid policies.
At Sharpeville,
an industrial township,
thousands gather
outside a police station
in protest against new laws
requiring every African
to carry a pass at all time.
- (plane engine roaring)
- (Soldiers clamoring)
(crowd screaming, clamoring)
Reporter 2: (in French)
Reporter 3: (in English)
Sharpeville, police fired
into a crowd
of unarmed demonstrators,
killing 69,
including women and children.
Reporter 4: (in French)
Reporter 5: (in English)
Worldwide protests were raised,
including a condemnation
of the violence
by the United States
State Department.
(melancholic music playing)
UN Delegate:
Operative paragraph three
of Document S/5384
which reads as follows.
Three calls upon all states
to boycott
all South African goods
and to refrain
from exporting to South Africa
strategic materials
of direct military value
is now put to the vote.
Will those in favor
of that paragraph
please raise their hands?
Translator: (in French)
(council members muttering)
UN Delegate: (in English)
The result of the vote
is nine in favor,
none opposed,
and two abstentions.
The resolution, as amended,
has consequently been adopted
by the Security Council.
(jovial folk music playing)
Presenter:
The achievement in the towns,
new homes for over
a million people in 12 years.
Budget, 120 million pounds.
- (music concludes)
- (bulldozer engines rumbling)
(bricks crumbling)
Narrator: One morning, in 1960,
government bulldozers
came clanking down the road,
into the neighborhood
where I lived.
This was Eersterust,
a freehold township
ten miles past Pretoria.
Some would call it a slum,
but I loved Eersterust.
I had lived most of my 21 years
in that neighborhood.
(hammer clanking)
Narrator: My father,
a self-taught tailor,
and my mother, a washerwoman,
had raised their six children
in that house.
- (debris crashing)
- (bulldozer engines rumbling)
Narrator: Once the bulldozers
began their work,
they were quick about it.
Within minutes, the Black spot
had been eradicated.
(brooding music playing)
Narrator: In South Africa,
a "Black spot"
is an African township
marked for obliteration
because it occupies an area
into which
whites wish to expand.
- (Baby wailing)
- (Kids chattering)
Narrator: The government
describes relocation
as "slum clearance,"
and likes to brag
about its housing developments
as a humanitarian solution
to an acute housing shortage.
But the African knows,
he is only exchanging his slum
that was home
for the sterile prison
of a government ghetto.
(pensive music playing)
- (birds chirping)
- (indistinct chatter)
(bicycle bell dinging)
(bicycle bell dinging)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (traffic rumbling)
Narrator: The African
does not also have the right
to walk the city streets
of his country.
His presence
in the white urban areas
is tolerated
as long as he's doing
the required job.
At all other times,
he is a trespasser,
unless he has
his "reference book."
Without it,
a Black man is nothing.
He cannot get a job,
find housing, get married,
or even pick up
a parcel at the post office.
A man's pass
contains his life history
- in brief detail.
- (music concludes)
Narrator: It tells his name,
where he comes from,
which tribe he belongs to,
the place and date of his
birth,
and his father's birthplace.
The pass tells
whether he has paid his taxes
and indicates his grade
of employment,
"domestic servant,
laborer, student, clerk, etc."
The government
can pull a man's pass
at any time, for any reason,
or for no reason at all.
- (metal gate clanking)
- Narrator: This happens
thousands of times in a day,
and still,
it remains a spectacle.
(playful jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Like in an Afrikaans Rashomon,
these characters are locked
in their own narrative.
In this picture,
these three women
in the background
show passive curiosity,
or anxiety tinged with fear,
or downright panic.
The young boy behind
seems to be reasonably
reassured
that he is not to be
the victim.
The Black policeman
does his job by the book,
accurately and conscientiously.
There can be no objections
to his routine.
He has a uniform, an income,
a place in society,
more than any other fellow.
It is not clear from this photo
whether he was entrusted
with a gun or not.
But gun or no gun,
he remains his master's man.
And then,
there's this
white-looking character
on the right.
Clearly passive,
not even curious.
He has nothing at stake here.
Both hands in his pocket.
He observes,
like he might observe
a lizard devouring a fly.
A day like any other day.
Same incident,
different realities.
- (van door opening)
- (tense music playing)
Narrator: Even in the court,
the African must wait.
But once his turn comes,
justice is swift.
(footsteps shuffling)
Narrator: The prisoners
are led into the courtroom
- in small groups...
- (door opening)
...and one at a time,
they are called forward.
(typewriters clacking)
Narrator:
One fine old British custom
survives in South Africa's
penal system,
- the whip.
- (whip cracking)
Narrator: In 1963,
according to records
meticulously kept,
83,206 lashes were meted out
to 17,404 prisoners.
- (pensive music playing)
- Narrator: House of Bondage.
I feel like I put my whole life
into creating that book.
I risked my life every day.
I had to learn
to shoot at eye level.
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator:
I had to shoot while walking.
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator:
It's a matter of survival.
To steal every moment.
But the monster
does not even need to hide.
He is on a mission.
(camera shutter clicking)
(camera reel clicking, whirring)
Narrator:
I am collecting evidence,
and sometimes,
the monster looks back at me.
Our policy is one,
which is called by
an Afrikaans word, "Apartheid."
And I'm afraid that has been
misunderstood so often.
It could just as easily
and perhaps,
much better be described
as a policy
of good neighborliness.
Accepting that there are
differences between people.
(bell tolling)
Reporter: Outside
the High Court in Pretoria,
sympathizers waited
for the verdict
on Black leader
Nelson Mandela.
Reporter:
Mandela had declared in court,
"I planned sabotage
because all lawful methods
of opposition were closed."
"I have cherished the ideal
of democratic society
with equal opportunity for all."
"That is an ideal," he said,
"for which I am prepared
to die."
(somber music playing)
Narrator:
South Africa is a land
of signs.
A total separation of
facilities on the basis
of race.
For every African, the signs,
oppressive, are always there.
(upbeat drums playing)
Narrator: Sometimes,
the sign says only, "Goods."
But if you are Black,
you know that elevator
is for you too.
The depravity of Apartheid,
a morbid system of separation.
- (pensive music playing)
- (birds chirping)
(water flowing)
- (cash register dings)
- (typewriters clacking)
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: When I say
that people can be fired,
or arrested,
or abused, or whipped,
- or banished for trifles...
- (handcuffs clinking)
...I'm not describing
the exceptional case
for the sake
of being inflammatory.
Legal indignities
eventually become part
of the reality
of your existence.
Onerous, but unavoidable,
and in a way, tolerable,
like a bad climate.
You may escape,
but you carry
your prison smell with you.
The white man's fear
of Blackness...
(cigarette sizzling)
...and whatever
it symbolizes for him,
goads him unmercifully.
His hatred erupts
on slight provocation.
One slip, one fancied slight,
one ill-considered act
or hasty word,
and he is upon you,
an enemy ablaze with rage
and emboldened by his immunity.
All Blacks have seen
white men and women thus.
All have been tongue-lashed.
Perhaps not quite all
have been bullied,
threatened, shoved,
spat upon, slapped, or slugged.
There is no recourse.
(music concludes)
Radio presenter: (over radio)
The more you need Ajax,
the most powerful name
in cleaning!
- (birds chirping)
- (water rippling)
Narrator:
White homes are crucibles
of racism in South Africa.
Here, the races meet
face to face
- as master and servant.
- (somber music playing)
Narrator: All servants are Black
and all masters white.
- (bats clacking)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: The typical pay
for a live-in servant
is 15 to 20 dollars a month,
plus bed and meals.
If you don't complain,
they think... you're happy.
If you do complain,
they think you're ungrateful.
- (Kids wailing, giggling)
- (indistinct chatter)
(tender music playing)
(children laughing)
Narrator: "I love this child,"
says the nanny,
"Though she'll grow up
to treat me
just like her mother does,
now, she is innocent."
(Babies giggling)
- (Babies crying)
- (indistinct chatter)
Presenter:
This leaflet has been prepared
by the Non-European
Affairs Department
in the hope that it will assist
European employers
in their day-to-day dealings
with their Bantu servants.
One of the most
popular fallacies prevailing
amongst South Africans is that,
"I know the Bantu
and how to treat him."
For this reason,
it is earnestly hoped
that this little booklet
will prove of some value
- to the public.
- (menacing music playing)
Narrator: The manual says
to speak to the servant
- in a language they
understand.
- (camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: And try to remember
that they are human.
- (whimsical music playing)
- (dog yaps)
(dog pants, barks)
(dog whines, barks)
- (music concludes)
- (dog whimpers)
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: A few white policemen
decided that the world
was normal.
- Just a man and a woman.
- (child yelling)
- (Resident laughing)
- Narrator: More, if compatible.
Human again.
Even for a brief moment.
Does the woman have a choice?
("Kitty's Blues"
by Dolly Rathebe playing)
(singing in foreign
language)
(Kids chattering)
Narrator:
How do you keep your humanity
in the face of all this?
It's not a question.
It's an observation.
(Kids yelling, clamoring)
Narrator:
I am trying to find sense
where there ain't any.
As close to reality
as possible.
Find an immediate connection
to life and its contradictions.
(Kids chattering, laughing)
Narrator: A link
which I can't afford to lose.
But I can't find anything
that justifies all this.
(machines whirring)
Narrator: South Africa's wealth
is rooted firmly
in great mineral resources.
- Diamonds, platinum, iron...
- (metal clanging)
- ...copper, uranium...
- (indistinct chatter)
...and above all, gold.
- (machines humming)
- (tools clanking)
Narrator: These mines produce
about 70 percent
of all the free world supply
of gold.
The brute work is done
by Africans.
Recruits from all points
are brought to the tremendous
Witwatersrand Native Labor
Association
main depot in Johannesburg.
Here, they are processed
and assigned to the mines,
where they will work
for the duration
of their contract.
- (birds chirping)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: One will tell you,
"I'll be going home
when the drought ends."
(train tracks rattling)
Narrator: But it never does.
- And life in the mines
goes on.
- (train engine hissing)
(pensive music playing)
(stamp clacking)
- (music concludes)
- (bell ringing)
Narrator:
The scale of payment is frugal.
For losing two legs
above the knee,
and thus his livelihood,
one fellow I saw,
received 1,036 dollars,
which was being paid out
at the rate of eight dollars
and 40 cents a month,
and was supposed to last him
for the rest of his life.
(funky jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Your own people are nothing.
The strong father,
the harboring mother,
the blood brother, nothing.
The loyalty of families,
nothing.
The allegiance of tribes,
nothing.
They are nothing.
You look vainly
for heroes to emulate.
Many already half believe
the white man's estimate
of their worthlessness.
- But inside, there is fire.
- (Residents shouting)
Narrator:
You rise in the morning,
filled with sour thoughts
of your poverty
under the white economy...
where parks are free
and benches available,
- you do not want them.
- (crowd clamoring)
Narrator:
Good food does not impress you.
Vacations are for fools.
You do not try too hard
or expect too much of yourself,
for it is still
a white man's world.
Your anger is unabated,
for each day's newly discovered
small liberties...
recall restrictions
in the past.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
- (indistinct chatter)
- (passing footsteps)
(crowd applauding)
- (bell ringing)
- (crowd cheering)
Narrator: And as we overcame
our deficiencies,
lost our political
and economic innocence,
- civilized our savage
nature...
- (instruments rattling)
...and worshiped
the white God...
we would earn
the white man's friendship
and approval.
Then would the best of us
would have a seat
in his councils
and the privilege of acting
like white men.
Yet, it has turned out...
that we studied
the white man's language
only to learn the terms
of our servitude.
Narrator: Three hundred years
of white supremacy
have placed us in bondage,
stripped us of dignity,
robbed us of self-esteem,
- and surrounded us with hate.
- (crowd clamoring)
(gunshots firing)
The foreigners
who are operating businesses,
we need to regulate them.
- (glass shattering)
- (crowd shouting, clamoring)
(pensive music playing)
Narrator: The Native
Administration Act of 1927
empowers the government,
whenever it is deemed expedient
in the general public interest,
to move any individual African,
or an entire tribe
for that matter,
from any place
within South Africa
to any other place.
No prior notice is required
and no time limit set.
I was determined to visit
a banishment camp
and see for myself.
I made my trip in 1964.
I picked Frenchdale,
an isolated outpost
in the northern reaches
of Cape Province
near the border of Botswana.
(car engine rumbling)
Narrator: An acquaintance agreed
to drop me off
and return for me
five days later.
(somber music playing)
Narrator: We drove
for several hours
down the dirt road
that stretched through miles
of flat nothingness.
It was arid,
semi-desert country,
treeless, and barely able
to support shrubs.
- (wind howling)
- (crickets chirping)
Narrator: Late at night,
we reached the banishment camp.
Soon, everybody in the camp
came together to greet us.
They were so glad to see us,
to see anyone.
(gentle music playing)
Narrator: Piet Mokoena,
formerly a tribal leader
in the Orange Free State,
had been in Frenchdale
for ten years.
Paulus Mopeli, a Basotho chief
and the grandson
of the great leader Moshesh,
had been in Frenchdale
for 14 years.
(melancholic music playing)
Narrator: Treaty, his wife,
was banished three years later
and ended up in the same camp
by pure coincidence.
She's still worried
over the fate
of her six-year-old grandchild
who had been pushed out
by police
and told to fend for himself
the night she was picked up.
The first thing about the camp
that strikes the visitor
is the quiet.
(wind whistling)
Narrator:
There were no
children's voices,
none of the murmuring sounds
of daily living.
Nothing.
The banished had lost count
of the days.
Monday looks like Friday
in Frenchdale.
Nothing breaks the monotony.
The passage
from light to darkness
- is their calendar.
- (crickets chirping)
Narrator: In another day or so,
my friend came back for me,
as we had arranged.
- (traffic honking)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: As I re-entered
the restricted Black life
of Johannesburg...
I felt free.
Miriam: I ask you,
and all the leaders
of the world,
would you act differently?
Would you keep silent
and do nothing
if you were in our place?
Would you not resist
if you were allowed no rights
in your own country
because the color of your skin
is different
to that of the ruler,
and if you were punished
for even asking for equality?
Mr. Chairman,
there is already too much hate
in my country.
(camera shutters clicking)
Harold: The Labour Party
are not in favor
of trade sanctions.
They would harm the people
we are most concerned about,
the Africans,
and those white South Africans
who are fighting
to maintain some standard
of decency there.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (water trickling)
Narrator: It was May 19th, 1966.
The day I left the beast.
A group of friends came with me
to the airport.
It was scary and cordial,
all at once.
I was happy to leave nothing,
sad to leave everything.
- (indistinct chatter)
- Narrator: At any moment,
Special Branch could interfere
and arrest us all,
- and for sure...
- (plane engine roaring)
...confiscate all of
my hidden negatives.
(singing in
foreign language)
(upbeat drums playing)
(hisses, exhales)
(chuckles)
(continues singing, fades)
Narrator: Leaving South Africa
was a shock to my friends.
Few had dared to confront
the racist administration.
Now, I am here
in this beautiful world,
one we all dreamt about.
("Lovely Lies" by
Miriam Makeba, The Manhattan
Brothers playing)
You tell such lovely lies
With your two lovely eyes
When I leave your embrace
Another takes my place...
Narrator:
A world without prejudice,
without the maddening fear,
without the endless persecution
and nullification
of all identity.
(skipping rope swatting)
Narrator: Yes, some of us
who made it into exile
thought that the world
was just waiting for us,
- great artists...
- (subway tracks rattling)
...but we were driven
to insanity.
(melodic saxophone playing)
Narrator:
The shock was too violent.
We were lost.
Some had been sent back
into hell, battered.
That's what happened to Kippie.
Kippie couldn't bear the exile.
He went back and faced
the regime in South Africa.
He refused to play for years...
and died there, poor, in 1983.
Miriam survived.
The Manhattan Brothers
survived.
And Miriam sang
with The Manhattan Brothers.
("Baby Ntsoare" by Miriam
Makeba, The Manhattan Brothers
playing)
(singing in foreign
language)
Narrator: "What does it take
to survive the West?"
"How am I going to fare
in this land of freedom
and democracy?"
The world loved us
when we were down there,
suffering from Apartheid
and all that stuff.
For some reason,
we thought they would
welcome us with open arms.
But we were wrong.
(triumphant music playing)
Reporter: The flags
of Commonwealth nations
flew over Marlborough House.
It was the start
of the Commonwealth Conference.
Then came the shock news.
Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd,
South African premier,
had been assassinated.
At South Africa house
in London...
Narrator:
I remember that day very well.
I had just left the offices
of Stern magazine.
They had refused all my photos.
They were not interested.
- (tense music playing)
- Narrator: And then,
the wires exploded with the
news of the assassination.
Stern magazine called me back.
A racist bigot died.
Suddenly, you have an opening.
Suddenly, your work
makes sense.
(music concludes)
I was, of course, really naive
when I started out
because I thought...
being so far away, you know,
South Africa being so isolated,
that all the noise
at the United Nations
was leading somewhere,
in other words,
that they were going to step in
and bring about some change.
But in coming away
from South Africa,
I found out that South Africa
really was just
one of the topics
on the United Nations agenda.
(brooding
jazz music playing)
Narrator: House of Bondage
took me ten years to make.
So much of me is in it.
All of me is in it.
It made me famous.
It made me.
But why do I feel a sense
of betrayal?
The world didn't want art,
didn't want a book
about just humans,
about the human condition.
It was more
than a political pamphlet.
It was not conceived
as an anti-Apartheid
political crusade.
It was about my life
in South Africa,
and the lives of millions
of others.
(music fades)
Leslie: I became aware
of the existence
of House of Bondage in 1999,
when I was on holiday.
I was walking around the streets
of Cape Town.
I came across a bookstore
called Clarke's Bookstore.
Walked in there.
I found a book of my...
uncle.
It's then that I learned
that the book
was banned in 1967,
and it was never sold
in South Africa.
(mellow jazz music playing)
- (traffic rumbling)
- (indistinct chatter)
Narrator: Now comes the part
where I tell you
what happened to my work...
during all these years I spent
in the US and elsewhere.
The story
of my slow disintegration
and descent into hell.
How I would transition
from famous
and celebrated photographer
to homeless at
the 34th street train station.
All these photos of New York...
only a few
have seen them before.
For a long time,
people believed they were lost,
dumped somewhere in a landfill.
Some 60,000
photos and negatives.
(cheerful music playing)
Narrator: I see you.
I see you every day.
Maybe others
don't see you anymore.
You're too common.
Not exotic enough.
You're not even seen anymore,
or even looked at.
For me, everything is new,
every smile,
every glance,
whether they look
at the camera or avoid it,
and look away
as if it didn't exist.
I see children.
Adults with children.
Women.
(scoffs) Lots of women.
Alone.
In groups...
of two...
or three...
or four.
Black women, white women,
women with hats,
women with scarves,
women with umbrellas,
women without umbrellas,
sometimes also sitting,
reading the paper.
(scoffs)
Not wanting to be annoyed,
or not giving a damn.
Men too.
Men sitting as well.
Sleeping.
Men in groups, looking...
waiting.
Looking again.
And sometimes I come across
faces that I know,
or moments
that I've experienced.
And sometimes,
I see things that could have
never existed in my world.
In South Africa...
these images
are legally a crime.
Here too, not so long ago.
Yes, I photographed a lot
of mixed couples.
It's not so much
by fascination.
It just releases me
from past pains.
In a country where
everything...
anything, is a crime.
Men who love each other,
who kiss,
who look at each other,
who hold hands
in the middle of the street.
Another crime in my country...
- (music fades)
- ...whether white or Black.
Although two Blacks
holding hands
in the streets of Johannesburg
would not attract
much attention.
Black men can hold hands
in public.
It is a sign of deep
friendship.
(lively
country music playing)
- (grass rustling)
- (Kids chattering)
(cicadas chirping)
(birds chirping)
Narrator:
"It was never going to work,"
said a journalist commenting
on my photos of the South.
What did he expect?
In South Africa,
I photographed my life,
my reality.
Here in the US,
I am the other.
I accepted this mission
with mixed feeling.
A country I did not know.
An assignment
which was a false good idea.
The negro in the country.
"An outsider's point of view,"
it said.
Taking me totally
out of my comfort zone
in a territory
so ironically similar to mine.
Apartheid there, Jim Crow here.
When I think of it,
there is some perversity
in this.
How is this an outsider's
point of view?
I was 27 years old,
for God's sake.
(indistinct TV chatter)
Narrator: What did they expect?
Michelangelo?
I don't know
if this was my fight or not,
as some have argued.
They said I didn't put
my passion into the assignment.
- (Kids chattering)
- Narrator: Possibly.
But again,
what were your expectations
from a young man
who just spent all of his years
in a racist, hazardous,
and mortal country?
And you just thrust him
into the Deep South?
What did you imagine?
In the South,
I was more scared there
than I ever was in
South Africa.
In South Africa,
I was afraid of being arrested.
In the South,
when I was taking pictures,
I was terribly frightened
of being shot.
(music concludes)
Narrator: I was just ten months
in New York.
I imprudently
told a New York Times
journalist that...
"White people
in the United States
are very much like whites
in South Africa
in their attitudes
towards Black people."
He printed it verbatim
in his newspaper...
while observing
that I was just given
a 6,000-dollar grant
from the Ford Foundation.
I added...
"I was so very much surprised
to find
bitter white racism
in America,"
which he printed too.
("God Bless America"
by Ondara playing)
In fifty years
(traffic whizzing by)
When I'm frail
Barely on my feet
Will you be kind, oh, dear
Like you promised
At the embassy?
Oh, God bless America
The heartache of mine
Oh, God bless America
The heartache of mine
Narrator: This country
that I've traveled across
in such a short time,
maybe it's not what I thought
I would see.
It won't matter
Who your god is
Narrator: Perhaps,
it showed me very little.
Or the tone of your skin
Narrator: Perhaps,
its essence and deepest soul
escaped me completely.
Or who you choose
To share your love with
Narrator: I saw men in Memphis,
- protesting with dignity...
- (Protesters clamoring)
...for the rights
that I too had been denied.
Oh, God bless America
(indistinct chatter over radio)
Narrator: I crossed paths
with leaders
that I had never
heard of before.
Oh, God bless America
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: Stokely Carmichael,
who in the end,
after a decisive
political career,
will be ejected
from this country
to start a new life in Africa,
on my continent.
Crossed visions,
opposite destinies.
(music concludes)
In '68,
I went and met him in New York.
I was doing some work there,
photography.
And...
- I was... somehow felt...
- Interviewer: Mm-hmm.
...began to be very worried
about him
because he seemed
very depressed and...
and isolated.
Narrator: I saw Jrgen again.
I was not well.
(pensive jazz music playing)
Narrator: He probably thought
I was depressed, isolated.
Maybe I was.
He wanted us to bond again.
I was not so inclined.
But I went along.
Jrgen had always been
good to me.
- We entered the restaurant.
- (cutlery clinking)
- (indistinct chatter)
- Narrator: All eyes were on me.
Not on us. On me.
The Black lad.
Measuring, dissecting,
from bottom to top and back,
incredulous to my presence,
my identity,
my demeanor.
In a flash,
I was back in South Africa,
- back to the dirty looks...
- (whistle blowing)
...to the piercing brutality
of staring...
the tranquil violence
of privilege.
I was not in South Africa,
but in New York.
- The year is 1968.
- (police siren blaring)
Narrator:
I was in the free world,
but the world is still
not free.
- (dramatic music playing)
- (Officers clamoring)
(indistinct chatter)
(crowd clamoring)
- (crowd clamoring)
- (Officers shouting)
(siren wailing)
(supporters chanting
in Czech)
Narrator: My book
is banned in South Africa.
I'm not surprised,
but it still hurts.
No one at home will see
my work.
(music fades)
Narrator: I am homesick,
and I can't return.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
Narrator: Some of my fellow
white American photographers
claimed that my work
in America was lacking edge.
What is the object
of their comparison?
What do they know
about my reality,
my urgency?
The price you pay for exile
is supposedly living safer.
I can only photograph
my own experiences.
South Africa is my frame
of reference.
My frame of life.
What are you
actually blaming me for?
That I turned my camera on you
and saw nothing?
(tense music playing)
Narrator:
I have an explorer's gaze.
- Explorer in a distant land.
- (indistinct chatter)
(water rippling)
Narrator:
A land I vaguely dreamt of.
A land that promised
milk and honey...
- (fountain sputtering)
- ...in multiple forms.
(Kids laughing, chattering)
Narrator: There are these photos
where we do not know
where we are.
(music fades)
Narrator: It could be
Johannesburg, Soweto,
or the suburbs of Pretoria.
- These same faces...
- (drum beating)
...this familiarity,
the same gleam in the eyes
challenging the photographer.
Here...
there,
I am trying to capture
moments of reality,
finding the fractures,
the essence,
the nature of human lives.
(upbeat jazz music playing)
(Kids laughing, screaming)
(Kids chattering)
Narrator: These are not answers.
They are questions.
An America that was sold to me.
I don't judge, I observe.
Sometimes amazed,
other times appalled.
(mellow jazz music playing)
Narrator: I applied
for a new passport.
One to go home.
The weight of isolation.
(cart wheels rattling)
Narrator:
No family, no real friends.
No support structure
you can trust.
Friends coming and going.
Each one more or less
as disheveled as you are.
No remedy to despair.
Literally eating you away.
Leslie: He used
to make reverse calls,
and most of the time,
he wanted to speak to me
because he wanted me to come
and visit him in New York.
But unfortunately,
I couldn't do that
because my mother
was not happy about that.
She said that I'm not going
to come back
like my uncle.
(exciting jazz music
playing)
(music fades)
Leslie: He decided
to go to Sweden,
I believe, around 1968.
He thought maybe
if he goes to Sweden,
he might find a different place
to America.
But unfortunately,
there were very few
Black people in Sweden.
He was not even allowed
into some of the public spaces,
like restaurants,
because he was Black.
(pensive jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Looking for new places,
I was able to secure
short-term visas
to England, Denmark,
and Sweden.
That's how I found Ingrid
on the way.
Ingrid Wigh,
and her sister, Catarina
I lived some time with them.
Locked in that flat
outside Stockholm,
we didn't know
what to do with ourselves.
Today, Ingrid is 85 years old.
She does not remember much
of these endless afternoons.
"My memory fails me," she says.
Leslie: Fortunate for him,
he met Rune Hassner
and they became good friends,
and he introduced him
to Tiofoto agency,
and then he became
a member there,
and they decided to help him
with his body of work.
He has actually spent
in a year,
I would say,
three months in Sweden
from 1968 until 1972.
And thereafter,
he stopped traveling to Sweden
until 1979,
and he went there
for about a week.
And that was the last time
he visited Sweden.
What is happening
outside South Africa
is as important
as what might be happening
within South Africa itself.
And therefore,
what we are asking
the world to do
is not to solve
our problems for us,
but to assist us
solve those problems.
Because the worst
of all horrors in the world
is to live forever
as a slave, as a hated,
despised subhuman.
Narrator: "22nd November, 1971.
To Miss Dolly A. McPherson
at the Institute
of International Education."
"This is to inform you
that the first half
of my travel and study award
is now finished."
(traffic rumbling)
Narrator: "I would therefore
like to request
from the Ford Foundation
and extension,
so that I can complete
the second half
of my project."
- (rain pattering)
- (somber music playing)
Narrator:
"On 14th November, 1972,
as you may recall,
when the last grant
was made to Mr. Cole,
it was anticipated
that a subsequent award
would be authorized
for a 12-month period."
"But Miss McPherson,
who administered
the earlier awards to Mr. Cole,
has recently left
the Institute.
Furthermore, there is no
evidence in the file
that the recipient
ever submitted a single picture
in exchange
for the allocated money."
(pensive jazz music playing)
Narrator:
Harlem requires patience.
Everybody's putting on a front.
Acting important and
suspicious.
And I don't blame them.
My soul is of two minds,
torn and battered.
This city is hard
to keep up with.
It hustles
for your total attention,
and it's driving me crazy.
Yes, a lot of people thought
I'd stop photographing
in all those years,
that fame had crushed me,
that I'd lost my way
in this new jungle
that was the modern West.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (cutlery clinking)
Narrator: Yet,
I never stopped photographing
for a single moment.
(bell dinging)
Narrator: I photographed
light American stuff
and heavy American stuff.
I don't show new material
for the sake of showing it.
I want the viewer to walk away
with a message...
(crowd cheering, applauding)
...not just a head
full of images.
(mellow jazz music playing)
- (music concludes)
- (traffic whizzing by)
Narrator: I called Mother today.
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: Not much to say.
We are living
in two different worlds.
I will send some money soon.
I'm homesick...
and I can't return.
(pensive jazz music playing)
- (traffic rumbling)
- (police siren wailing)
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: "January 1973."
(music concludes)
Narrator:
"A preliminary approval
for a 6,000-dollar grant
to Ernest Cole
to start the second half
of his project,
and a waiving of the overspend
have been allocated."
"The only minor difficulty
is that this new payment
would have to wait
for the new tax year."
I must leave this room.
And find another
good Samaritan.
I need shelter for a few days.
More would be preferable.
Announcer: (over PA)
This is the 2nd Avenue bound E.
(subway tracks rattling)
Narrator: I found some respite
at Riverside Church Dormitory.
That's where I eat, sleep,
rest.
Taking it a day at a time.
A home far away from home,
where school children
are killed by the police.
- (gunshots firing)
- (crowd clamoring)
(Officers shouting)
(Protesters clamoring)
Narrator:
I saw a psychiatrist today
at the Harlem Hospital.
Well, was kind of forced to,
in order to keep
my Social Security checks.
So many questions.
So many cadavers.
The doctor thinks
I might be paranoid. (scoffs)
I certainly have
good reasons to be.
Reporter: (in French)
(traffic rumbling)
Narrator: (in English)
New York, summer of 1977.
Standing at the window,
I can barely see the sky.
Neither sunset, nor sunrise.
It is a lie
to put things in the frame.
All photographs are lies.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (police siren wailing)
Narrator: Blackout in the city.
There is this YMCA on 34th.
I used to pass by it
so many times, years ago.
(traffic honking)
- Narrator: Now, I live there.
- (firetruck siren wailing)
Narrator: Scary to be
in a YMCA room these days.
- Today's meal, Indian lentils.
- (lively chatter)
Narrator: A tin of tomato soup.
A boiled frankfurter,
late at night, if I'm lucky.
Am I a traitor to my country?
That's what the state radio
says in South Africa.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
Narrator: Today,
I am not in the mood to talk.
A Soviet surveillance satellite
detects South Africa's
nuclear test
and alerts the United States.
President Carter
asks for less consumption
of oil.
Steve Biko is arrested
for breaking a ban order.
He died under torture.
What is political?
What do they want from me?
(crowd chanting indistinctly)
We should not mourn
the death of Steve Biko
We must plan
to act to punish the culprits,
to destroy the Apartheid regime
and liberate the patriots
from its clutches.
(Kids laughing, chattering)
Narrator: It's been a while
since I took any picture.
My cameras are lost,
sold, forgotten somewhere.
I miss the warmth of a love.
(uplifting music playing)
(indistinct chatter)
- (music concludes)
- (subway tracks rattling)
Leslie: I believe
Ernest started losing ground
with his work during the '80s.
He stopped photographing.
He became homeless.
His career fizzled out,
and his photograph...
his pictures rather,
were completely forgotten.
Narrator: Received a letter
from my mother.
Left it unopened
in my pocket...
- (bicycle bell ringing)
- ...for months.
(somber jazz music playing)
Narrator: I'm homesick.
And I can't return.
My passport is denied.
I can never go home again.
But I remember,
so vividly,
the market on Wanderer Street.
(indistinct chatter)
Narrator: (inhales)
I remember two young girls
walking home to Soweto...
as if the world
was still in order.
I stopped to talk to them.
One in particular,
a smile to die for.
Everything could be so simple.
(traffic whizzing by)
- (music concludes)
- (subway tracks rattling)
Narrator: Yes,
there were these rumors
that I was on drugs.
I never drank, never smoked,
never indulged in drugs,
even though I had enough
reasons
- to do any or all of it.
- (match flicking, sizzling)
(syringe clattering)
Narrator: "May 15th, 1991."
"Mr. John Hillelson,
The John Hillelson Agency."
"Dear Mr. Hillelson,
Ernest always led me to believe
he had negatives in Sweden."
"What he had
in the United States,
as far as I know,
he lost irretrievably
when he left his belongings
in a storeroom
in a Manhattan rooming house
without claiming them
for more than a year."
"They were then discarded
by the rooming house
in 1977."
"I know because I went there
with Ernest in the vain effort
to reclaim the stuff."
"I'm sorry
I can't be more helpful."
"Sincerely, Joseph Lelyveld,
managing editor,
The New York Times."
(intriguing music playing)
Leslie: I received an email
dated the fifth of July, 2016.
Subject, "Urgent, can we meet?"
The email further said
that before the meeting
they would like to have
the following information.
Names of family members
that were alive
when Ernest Cole died,
including
their identification numbers,
as well as their
home addresses.
I was a bit suspicious
as to why, you know.
- as to why, you know.
- (music concludes)
What I did was I,
you know, at first,
you know, decided
that I'm not going to respond.
But after processing the content
of the email...
took me about two or three days,
and then I decided,
"Let me respond."
At that stage, the advocate,
Ulf Bergquist,
responded to my email.
by saying that...
he has been appointed
by the district court
of Stockholm
to act as an administrator
because they have found...
material belonging
to Ernest Cole
in a bank safe in Sweden.
(intriguing music playing)
Leslie:
I received a call from Sweden
suggesting that we should come
and collect the material
- in Sweden.
- (music concludes)
Leslie: Then I accepted
the invitation from
the advocate
and he arranged tickets for us,
myself and my son, Gontse.
I was not happy when I saw
his initial itinerary.
I said, "No, perhaps,
maybe we should extend
the number of days
that, you know, we should spend
in Sweden."
So that I could have
the opportunity
to ask questions.
"What really happened
to Ernest Cole's material?"
"Why is it in the bank?"
"Who was paying?"
"And then for how many years
was the material
in the bank," you know,
so that, you know,
this could... should not be
part of dustbin of history.
He addressed me like a
schoolboy and then
he then said,
"You will arrive in the morning
and then I will ensure
that you receive the material
from my office,
and then you will travel back
to South Africa
the same evening."
I became more
and more suspicious.
They took us
to a meeting office...
(elevator dinging)
...and we sat there
in the meeting office,
and one of the ladies
went out and brought back
the first safety deposit box,
put it on the table.
Man: We're going
to let you guys open them.
- (intriguing music playing)
- (indistinct chatter)
Is there a way to open this?
- Woman: Yeah.
- Ulf Bergquist: No.
(group laughing)
- Yes, we have scissors.
- Oh, okay.
- (speaks indistinctly)
- So it's there. Thank you.
(chuckles)
So, it's the normal way
of opening.
- There we are, huh?
- Woman: Okay.
- Man: Perfect.
- Voil!
(group chuckling)
(exclaims) I have to be
very careful, huh?
Ulf: Yeah.
Woman: Should I open
the second one
- or you want to?
- Man: Yes, please.
- Man: Huh?
- Leslie: Yeah.
- Leslie: Wow!
- (indistinct chatter)
Leslie: The files of...
my uncle's
South African negatives.
nicely, you know, organized
in beautiful files
made in Sweden,
marked, you know,
the years and the place
when they were taken
and so forth.
When they brought
the third box,
also fell open lots of
Ernest Cole research material,
paper clips,
magazines,
his notes on House of Bondage
and so forth.
I couldn't really believe
what I'd found.
Shortly after being excited
to see what we found,
and then we decided
now maybe it's a perfect moment
to start asking questions.
The answer was
unfortunately disappointing
because all they could say
was that...
there is absolutely no record
who deposited...
the safety deposit...
the material in the bank.
And also, there is no record
of anyone doing any payments
for them to keep
the information in the bank.
I couldn't even believe,
you know...
A bank in Sweden?
No record?
And they handed over
this material to us
without signing anything?
It was something
very, very, very strange to me.
(somber jazz music playing)
Narrator: Winter of 1982.
(truck beeping)
Narrator: My crises
are getting worse by the day
and more burdensome.
I met a friend on Broadway
and 113th Street.
He introduced me
to his Indian wife.
She is beautiful and smart.
Such a lucky fellow.
I live with Feni now,
in the same apartment.
He is working
on his defining sculpture.
History, he calls it.
We do not speak much,
but we understand
each other's torments
in this freezing town.
Feni's work has been banned
in South Africa,
like mine,
and like Nat Nakasa's writings
a few years back.
Nat was around our age.
He left South Africa
because he did not want to,
as he said,
perish in his own bitterness.
(tense music playing)
Narrator: One day in July 1965,
he threw himself
from the seventh floor
of a building in New York.
- He was 28 years old.
- (music concludes)
Narrator: "I want to write
about people, not enemies,"
- he used to say.
- (indistinct chatter)
(car engine rumbling)
Narrator:
Exile is destroying us,
one by one.
(melancholic music playing)
Narrator:
When the Apartheid regime fell,
Feni decided to go home.
The day before flying back,
he wanted to buy
a few records to bring home.
He had a massive heart attack
in the store
and died there.
Ellington was playing
on the loudspeakers.
("African Flower"
by Duke Ellington playing)
Narrator: I walk and I walk
and I walk through the city.
If I stop walking,
I will just die.
Maybe I'm bitter
like they all say,
but nothing new
that others have not
lived through before me.
(sirens wailing in distance)
Narrator: I am bitter.
I try to protect myself
from the noise, from the hype,
from the bloody hell
that my country has become,
while the world
is still finding excuses.
(music concludes)
(in French)
Reporter: (in English)
British Prime Minister
whose unbending opposition
to sanctions
against South Africa,
is threatening to break apart
the Commonwealth.
I have not taken...
I've not made any changes
in my own position
on South Africa.
Well, let me tell you
why we believe
Mrs. Thatcher is right.
The primary victims
of an economic boycott
of South Africa
would be the very people
we seek to help.
De Klerk: When I was a young man
of 21 and 25,
why did I support
separate development?
Soon after I entered politics,
and in my years
as a backbencher already,
I came to the realization,
"It's not working."
And especially
since the early '80s,
I became convinced
that where we stand
is morally indefensible,
and that Apartheid was wrong.
(Residents chanting
in foreign language)
Narrator: (in English)
History is a strange thing.
It is amazing
how people's discourse changes
within just a few years.
A comfortable position
to be in,
I would say even a privilege,
to just acknowledge
that you were wrong
with hardly any consequences
whatsoever.
You will just go on
and enjoy your loot.
(birds chirping)
(rain pattering)
Narrator:
I did contemplate suicide,
not just once.
I reviewed time and again
all possible scenarios
for my death.
At home,
people were disappearing
every day,
kidnapped in the night
or in plain daylight.
Bodies would resurface
mutilated,
disfigured, unrecognizable,
in some dumps or in car trunks.
I did contemplate suicide.
Not just once.
- (indistinct chatter)
- (Kids laughing)
(brooding music playing)
Gerrie: They would kidnap
or abduct middle of the night,
kick down doors,
take the individual they want,
take him back to the complex
and then interrogate him
up to the third degree.
Interviewer: What do you mean
by third degree?
Well, we made use of...
(hesitates)
...half drownings,
electric shocks,
tubing, favorite term,
that's where
you step somebody's face into...
the inner of a car tire
and basically suffocate him.
Alex: You have told us
today, that you were tortured
many times
in many different places.
What actually
did they do to you?
(speaking in native language)
Translator:
"During the torturing,
I always..."
(speaking in native language)
Translator: "I was always
suffocated with a mask,
and there was
this helicopter training."
(speaking in native language)
Translator: "And a stick was put
inside your knees
and you had
to stretch your knees."
"During that period,
you were suffocated."
(speaking in native language)
It's fine, don't worry about it.
(sobs)
(breathes heavily)
(indistinct chatter)
Alex: That's all.
Interviewer: How many people
have you killed
as a security policeman?
Well...
As an individual,
it's hard to say how many,
but collectively, we killed
between 30, 35.
Interviewer: Why did you kill
these people?
It was instructions
from the head office.
It was instructions
from my immediate commanders.
Ashley: Do you remember
saying to me that
you are able to treat me
like an animal
or like a human being,
and that how you treated me
depended on whether...
I cooperated or not?
Jeffrey: I can't remember it
correctly, sir,
but I would concede,
I may have said it.
Can I then also just ask
if you remember that
while I was laying
on the ground, that somebody...
inserted a metal rod
into my anus and shocked me?
What actually led to that,
I cannot say,
except that I concede
the method of detention
was...
a Draconian... law
instituted by the then
Nationalist Government, sir.
(melancholic music playing)
Narrator: Roaming for days,
for months,
in this temple
for hurried travelers,
vaguely monitoring
streams of bodies
going somewhere.
The new rumor was
that I had become a vagrant,
a bag person in New York.
Maybe the rumors were right.
Sometimes,
people would recognize me.
"Look, the great Ernest Cole,"
they say to their friends.
They shake my hand.
They praise my work.
Tell me about their admiration.
I usually don't talk much.
Sometimes they come back
the next day,
bringing new friends,
wanting to help.
But my torments
are not curable.
This nagging feeling
of rootlessness.
(camera shutter clicking)
(mellow jazz music playing)
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: It's been eight years
since I touched a camera.
Eight long years.
I feel like an old man.
I am an old man.
My friend, the great jazz
player and composer,
Abdullah Ibrahim,
told me
about a Magnum photographer
who wanted to meet me.
Rashid Lombard was his name.
Rashid Lombard
took these pictures.
(camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: I took one
of his cameras in my hands.
It was cold.
"Can I take a picture?"
I asked.
- "Yes," he said.
- (music concludes)
Narrator: "Do you mind
sitting there?" I asked.
I took just one frame.
- Only one.
- (camera shutter clicking)
Narrator: That's all I could.
- (brooding music playing)
- (birds chirping)
Narrator: You might still want
to know how my negatives
and my personal archives
got into a Swedish bank vault.
Who put them there?
Who paid for the deposit?
Since when?
But you know what?
I don't really care anymore.
Whatever happened, happened.
And it definitely
was not right.
Who ordered, omitted, hid,
swapped, covered up,
silenced anything,
will still have to answer
to their own conscience.
(music concludes)
Narrator: Today, what counts
is that all my work
is finally home,
where it belongs.
Let us never break faith
with our people or our land,
with our martyrs
who have died for us,
or with our heroes
who live for us.
- Amandla!
- Supporters: Awethu!
- Amandla!
- Supporters: Awethu!
- (pensive music playing)
- (birds chirping)
Narrator:
New York is a soulless city.
No one looks at the sky here.
Someone urgently needs
to watch the sky.
Maybe I should.
I'll watch over the sunset.
- I'll watch over the
sunrise...
- (indistinct chatter)
...for all the people.
(music concludes)
Narrator:
"New York, January 1990."
"Dear Mrs. Cole,
I'm calling you to let you know
that your son,
Ernest, is not well."
"His doctors think
that it would be a good time
to come and be with him."
"He has not long to live."
Nelson Mandela is to be set free
at one o'clock tomorrow.
South Africa's president,
De Klerk, hopes it will create
a positive, peaceful climate
for negotiations
on a new South Africa.
(sirens wailing in distance)
Narrator: "It's terminal,"
Dr. Rafii tells me.
Pancreatic cancer.
A few weeks, tops.
That's it.
I wish I could die
in my country.
At the consulate,
they said I was no longer
a South African citizen.
(crowd clamoring, echoing)
Narrator: Mother flew
all the way from South Africa
to see me die.
At first,
standing in my room...
she didn't say a word.
Then...
very softly, she put her hand
behind my neck,
as if feeling something.
(sighs)
"He is dying," she said.
Mother stayed until the end.
She looked at me
as I was gasping into death.
She stayed there in the room...
until I died.
("The Funeral"
by George Fenton playing)
(crowd cheering)
Reporter: There's Mr. Mandela,
Mr. Nelson Mandela,
a free man
taking his first steps
into a new South Africa.
(choir singing)
Reporter: This is
Winnie Mandela next to him,
- waving to the crowds.
- (crowd clamoring)
(song continues)
(crowd cheering)
(crowd cheering)
(song fades)
Narrator: There were cries
and speeches.
There were ministers
at my funeral,
artists,
important people.
After the ceremony,
they all gathered.
People came from all over.
They brought
cooked African foods.
"I will not bury him here,"
said Mother.
So, they cremated my body.
(gloomy jazz music playing)
Narrator: She took the ashes
on her lap, on the airplane,
all the way
to Mamelodi Cemetery.
(birds chirping)
It'll stand, I mean, you know,
in the future because, uh...
I'm sure South Africa
will be free.
- Amandla!
- Crowd: Awethu!
- Amandla!
- Crowd: Awethu!
- Nelson: Free Africa!
- (crowd cheering)
(Nelson speaking indistinctly,
echoing)
(uplifting jazz music
playing)
(birds chirping)
Narrator:
The last photos I took...
lost souls.
Long ago,
detached from everything.
Empty, useless bodies.
My ultimate photos.
An absurd catchphrase...
but so fitting.
(chuckles softly)
I still have some humor left.
One last look.
Yes.
I do see you.
(lively jazz music playing)
(pensive jazz music playing)
(music concludes)