Gallery of Injustice

An unfamiliar picture of South Africa, captured in more than 60 photographs, is on display at UCLA. This is neither the familiar image of violence and repression, now concealed by pervasive censorship, nor the Kodachromes of travel-office calendars celebrating the fabled beauty of the land. Rather, this is the face of poverty, the face of the majority, of life as it is lived by so many of the non-whites.

The photographs were taken by 20 South African photographers as part of the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa, and have been collected in a book that shares the title of the exhibit: “South Africa, the Cordoned Heart.”

Why South Africa? Francis Wilson, director of the study, has a prompt answer. Because it is a special case. Other African nations share the poverty and despair and hunger of these blacks. But in South Africa there is an inequality between rich and poor beyond that of other nations, there is a deliberate policy of denying basic rights to the majority, of imposing human degradation by government mandate.

The harshness and dehumanization are evident in the photographs: a migrant worker lying on a concrete compound bunk better suited for stowing sacks of grain, the desperately weary faces of workers in the bus that carries them to work on a commute of four hours in each direction from their isolated and segregated lodgings, a family waiting--with its pitiful collection of clothing, pots and pans--for forced government removal from its squatter-camp shelter.

This is the story of injustice everywhere, but with a special message for those who ponder the future of South Africa and its regimen of apartheid. The exhibit will continue through May 17; it is open Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. in Room 2 of Haines Hall.