Sygma and others where I had left off three months earlier. One day, the police came in to the AP office to try to pressurize the bureau chief, Barry Renfrew, into giving them
Seb Balic’s address. I was in the newsroom and watched him courteously let them out after telling them that he did not have an address for me, but would let them know when he did. It was all a charade, but it kept my stress levels pretty high. I then began to get phone calls about awards the Lindsaye Tshabalala photographs were winning; the pictures had been submitted for awards from institutions I had never heard of without my even knowing about it. While visiting my uncle and aunt on their mango farm outside Barberton, a rural farming area 450 kilometres east of Johannesburg, Renfrew called to tell me in reverent tones that I was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and, as I had a one-in-three chance of winning, I should stick close to the phone that night. I made an appropriately awed response, but I really was not very excited as I had no idea what this Pulitzer thing was. After putting the phone down, I went and looked it up in the encyclopedia.
4
FAME AND FRIENDSHIP
Kafirs? [said Oom Schalk Lourens] Yes, I know them. And they’re all the same. I fear the Almighty, and I respect His works, but I could never understand why He made the kafir and the rinderpest.
‘Makapan’s Caves’, from the collection of short stories entitled
Mafeking Road by Herman Charles Bosman, Central News
Publishers, 1947
April 1991
The phone rang at about ten that night, waking me from a deep sleep. I heard the distinctive click of an overseas line. It was the AP photo boss, Vin Alabiso, to tell me that I had won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News. Less than four months after turning away from the Danube’s frigid waters, I had joined that journalistic elite - I was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, but right then I did not have a clue as to its significance. I wondered if there were money involved, but I was soon to discover what all the fuss was about. The next call was from the Johannesburg office - they needed pictures of me celebrating as soon as possible. They had the champagne ready. A sense of the importance of the prize was taking shape: they had not asked for pictures of me when I had won any of the other prizes. I became excited as I got dressed to drive to Johannesburg through the night.
My new-found fame was awkward. The fact that I was winning prizes for shooting Tshabalala’s gruesome death troubled me, but when
I passed a huge newspaper billboard proclaiming ‘SA Lensman Wins Pulitzer’, I could not but feel a surge of pride. While a few photographers resented my quick success, most seemed genuinely pleased for me. We had a party to celebrate the prize at the new home I shared with my old housemates. The house was packed with friends and journalists, some of whom I had never met before. I was already drunk when photographer Ken Oosterbroek stood on a table in the livingroom and gave a speech. Ken was taller than anyone else in the room anyway, but he wanted to make sure people paid attention. He was like that: when he wanted to be noticed, he would straighten out of his normal, easy-going slouch and get a stern, commanding air about him. I recall Ken recounting how, three years before, I had come up to him in the daily newspaper The Star ’s newsroom and complimented him on a picture that had been splashed across the front page. ‘I wish I could shoot pictures like that!’ I had said. The picture that I so admired had won Ken South Africa’s leading photographic award in 1989. Ken, truly a very talented photographer, and a perfectionist, had also struggled to gain a foothold in the industry. He had gone from paper to paper trying to get a job on the strength of pictures he had illegally taken of his fellow-conscripts during his military service.
He had kept a diary while serving as a soldier in southern Angola, where the South Africans were fighting
Seb Balic’s address. I was in the newsroom and watched him courteously let them out after telling them that he did not have an address for me, but would let them know when he did. It was all a charade, but it kept my stress levels pretty high. I then began to get phone calls about awards the Lindsaye Tshabalala photographs were winning; the pictures had been submitted for awards from institutions I had never heard of without my even knowing about it. While visiting my uncle and aunt on their mango farm outside Barberton, a rural farming area 450 kilometres east of Johannesburg, Renfrew called to tell me in reverent tones that I was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and, as I had a one-in-three chance of winning, I should stick close to the phone that night. I made an appropriately awed response, but I really was not very excited as I had no idea what this Pulitzer thing was. After putting the phone down, I went and looked it up in the encyclopedia.
4
FAME AND FRIENDSHIP
Kafirs? [said Oom Schalk Lourens] Yes, I know them. And they’re all the same. I fear the Almighty, and I respect His works, but I could never understand why He made the kafir and the rinderpest.
‘Makapan’s Caves’, from the collection of short stories entitled
Mafeking Road by Herman Charles Bosman, Central News
Publishers, 1947
April 1991
The phone rang at about ten that night, waking me from a deep sleep. I heard the distinctive click of an overseas line. It was the AP photo boss, Vin Alabiso, to tell me that I had won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News. Less than four months after turning away from the Danube’s frigid waters, I had joined that journalistic elite - I was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, but right then I did not have a clue as to its significance. I wondered if there were money involved, but I was soon to discover what all the fuss was about. The next call was from the Johannesburg office - they needed pictures of me celebrating as soon as possible. They had the champagne ready. A sense of the importance of the prize was taking shape: they had not asked for pictures of me when I had won any of the other prizes. I became excited as I got dressed to drive to Johannesburg through the night.
My new-found fame was awkward. The fact that I was winning prizes for shooting Tshabalala’s gruesome death troubled me, but when
I passed a huge newspaper billboard proclaiming ‘SA Lensman Wins Pulitzer’, I could not but feel a surge of pride. While a few photographers resented my quick success, most seemed genuinely pleased for me. We had a party to celebrate the prize at the new home I shared with my old housemates. The house was packed with friends and journalists, some of whom I had never met before. I was already drunk when photographer Ken Oosterbroek stood on a table in the livingroom and gave a speech. Ken was taller than anyone else in the room anyway, but he wanted to make sure people paid attention. He was like that: when he wanted to be noticed, he would straighten out of his normal, easy-going slouch and get a stern, commanding air about him. I recall Ken recounting how, three years before, I had come up to him in the daily newspaper The Star ’s newsroom and complimented him on a picture that had been splashed across the front page. ‘I wish I could shoot pictures like that!’ I had said. The picture that I so admired had won Ken South Africa’s leading photographic award in 1989. Ken, truly a very talented photographer, and a perfectionist, had also struggled to gain a foothold in the industry. He had gone from paper to paper trying to get a job on the strength of pictures he had illegally taken of his fellow-conscripts during his military service.
He had kept a diary while serving as a soldier in southern Angola, where the South Africans were fighting
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