Alfred Khumalo

9/5/1930-10/21/12

Alfred "Alf" Khumalo was born on the fifth of September 1930 in Johannesburg. When he was young he loved taking pictures and he was captivated on the camera’s “power” to freeze time. His dream was to actually get paid to take pictures. He attended Wilberforce Institute in Evaton to further his education and get a degree in journalism. He first began his career in photography when he was a journalist. He frequently sold articles to the newspaper “Bantu World” which he made even better through adding great pictures that he had taken to them as an illustration. Also, the paper was so small that the journalists had to take all of their pictures themselves but that’s not as special. Khumalo covered many events including the Soweto uprising and the Black Consciousness movement. He is most famous for his ability to be in the right place at the right time. He was also famous for being able being able to get candid pictures even out of terrible events such as protestors being attacked or jailed or even shot. He was influential to apartheid because he was able to capture all of the important moments in his photographs, which were put in magazines all over the world. The amount of people against apartheid increased each time a new person looked at one of his great pictures in any number of magazines including Time and Life and newspapers such as the New York Times. He also took many pictures of Nelson Mandela before and after he was imprisoned. I think that Mr. Khumalo was a very noble and determined man because he devoted himself to the group against apartheid and eventually he was able to help Nelson Mandela and F. W. De Klerk to make Apartheid illegal in South Africa. If you want to learn more about Alfred Khumalo you can go to many different museums that showcase his photographs. Here are a few.