Photographer during apartheid

Michael Worsnip is a South African Anglican theologian, and the former Secretary General of the Lesotho Council of churches.

Nonseng Ellen Kate Kuzwayo was born on the 29th of June 1914. She grew up on her grandfathers farm in Thaba Nchu and inherited the farm in 1930 but lost it when it was declared a white area. She was a campaigner against Apartheid in South Africa and a fighter for womens emancipation; she was a teacher, social worker and community leader.

She refused to work with government agencies, collaborating instead with voluntary organizations such as the YWCA, where she held the position of General Secretary in the Transvaal Region 1964, working with women in deprived communities. After the Soweto uprising in June 1976 and the arrest and killing of many young people, Soweto residents chose ten persons to study the role of members of the Local Councils who were cooperating with the apartheid regime. Ellen Kuzwayo and nine men were selected to the Committee of Ten but all ten members of the Committee were arrested by the police and detained without trial. Ellen Kuzwayo was detained at the Johannesburg Fort' Womens Jail for five months.

Her activities included being President of the Black Consumers Union and serving on the Executive Committee of the Urban Foundation. She has published "Call me Woman" (1985), "Sit and Listen: Stories from South Africa" (1996) and "Tsiamelo - a place of goodness" (1984). Ellen Kuzwayo was honored by the Johannesburg City Council and on the 2nd of April 1987 she became the first black woman to receive an Honorary degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1994 she was appointed an African National Congress (ANC) member of parliament and retired after five years in 1999, receiving the State Order of Meritorious Service.

She died on the 19th of April 2006 at the age of 91, survived by her sons Bobo and Justice Moloto, six grandchildren and three great-grand children.

Captain of the 15th Company of rifle Volunteers and Magistrate of the County of Derby.

William Matlala is a freelance photographer specializing in Labour and Trade Union activities, who has served the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in his capacity as photographer particularly in the 1990s.

He was born and grow up in the Dithabaneng village in Mphahlele district Northern province (Limpopo). After leaving school he went to seek employment in Johannesburg. He found himself in Germiston on the East Rand where he worked in Trimpack, a food company. He started as a general worker and later trained as a machine operator. In Trimpack he joined the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) and was elected shop steward as well as chairman of the shop steward committee.

Whilst working in Trimpack he became interested in photography and started corresponding with the African School of Photography in Pretoria, where he obtained a Diploma. Initially he took photographs of colleagues at work and at their home with their families, and became fully involved in community activities particularly after the company closed in 1988. He then underwent more training in the field of photography through the Department of Manpower and later at the Market theather photo workshop and the South African Union of Journalists.

He built a large photographic archive throughout the 1990s, mainly of his own photographs but also of other South African photographers like Anna Zieminski, Cedric Nunn, Santu Mofokeng, Paul Weinberg, Morice Smithers and Abdul Shariff.

David Webster, born 19/12/1945 in Luanshya, (Northern Rhodesia) Zambia, studied Social Anthropology at Rhodes University and was a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand at the time of his assassination at the hands of a pro-apartheid hit squad on 1 May 1989. He was a dedicated anti-apartheid activist and supporter of NUSAS, the Detainees' Parents Support Committee, and Five Freedoms Forum. His research covered the Va-Chopi of Mozambique, and the Tembe Thonga of Ingwavuma, and he also did studies on poverty, TB and migrant labour. (For detailed biographical notes see file A1)

Baron Adolf von Koerber was born in 1891 on the Island of Rügen of a distinguished Prussian family. His father was a Doctor of Law and Landrat of Rügen and his mother was of an old Prussian military family. He was educated at military gymnasiums in Stettin, Potsdam and Lichterfelde. In 1909 he was appointed an ensign of cavalry and in 1910 a Lieutenant.

From 1910-1912 he saw service with the Danzig Black Hussars and it was during those years that he became interested in flying. In 1913 he had a year's leave during which he visited Italy, the Netherlands and Scandinavia to study art, literature and military science. His travels came to an end with the outbreak of the first World War, in which he served in the Air Force until he was invalided out in 1917.

After the war von Koerber went to Munich to practise the profession of journalism. His interest in political journalism was stimulated by the plight in which Germany found itself. He became correspondent for Finnish newspapers and came into contact with many political figures including Adolf Hitler. Like many young men he was captured by the ideals of the National Socialists and on 22 November 1922 joined the Nazi Party with the number 11640. He took part in the Putsch of 1923 and in this year wrote a biographical sketch of Hitler. From the beginning he saw the contradiction between the high ideals of the National Socialists and their actual conduct and soon became disenchanted with the Party.

In 1926 von Koerber visited France, where in conjunction with Arnold Rechberg, he worked hard for a Franco-German rapprochement. In an article of 6 May 1927 in the Berlin democratic organ "Vossische Zeitung" he prophesied that Hitler was seeking a dictatorship. From 1926 he was on Hitler's black list and came under increasing threats from the Nazis. Living in Berlin, he was Chief Correspondent for the "Neues Wiener journal" but wrote for many other newspapers as well.

After the Putsch of 1933 his career in journalism was virtually finished and because of his ant-Nazi feelings his house in Berlin was watched, his telephone tapped and his movements restricted. His wife travelled outside Germany on his behalf to keep in touch with those, like Father Muckermann, who had been forced to flee the country. His support of his Jewish friends brought him further into Nazi disfavour. By 1938 he knew war was inevitable and warned the British military attache in Berlin of this (See Documents of British Foreign Policy 1919-1939. Ed. by E. L. Woodward & R. Butler, 3rd series, vol. 2, 1938, N0. 595).

On the outbreak of the second World War von Koerber was forbidden to travel and had to remain on the island of Rügen. He continued his illegal activities and passed information to the British Broadcasting Corporation in London and to foreign newspapers. After the war he claimed that he helped to encourage the growing antagonism to Hitler, particularly amongst military men. He was arrested on 21 July 1944, the day after the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler and was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen. His wife, despite her ill health, was sent to a labour camp. On 15 February 1945 he was liberated by the Russians, went to Potsdam and joined free Germany as Comrade 179. Thereupon he claimed that he was a victim of fascism and worked for the de-nazification of Germany. His private affairs were in a bad shape, his house at Hinz plundered and his house in Berlin bombed.

In 1946 von Koerber went to Berlin, where he was licensed as a journalist by the Information Central Board, and in 1948 he was flown out of the Eastern Section by the British and went to Baden-Baden as chief editor of the "Europaeische Illustrierte". The following year he became Press Chief of the French zone of the Economic Co-operation Administration of the Marshall Aid Plan. In 1952 he went to Bonn to work for the Arbeitgemeinschaft Demokratischer Kreise. From 1958 he lived in Nice until 1968 when, disillusioned with Europe and its politics, he immigrated to South Africa, settling in Johannesburg until his death on 19 November 1969.

Jack Viviers was a reporter, journalist and editor for several English and Afrikaans newspapers in South Africa and England. He was the founding member of Editorial Board of Image, a representative of National Newspapers, and director of public services and presidential spokesman in P W Botha’s government.