IN PICS | James Oatway, Alon Skuy brilliantly capture xenophobic attacks in new book
"Whenever fresh violence erupts, my stomach begins to knot with tension,” writes photographer James Oatway at the beginning of '[BR]OTHER'.
South Africans blockade a road. The root causes of local residents’ anger point to government failure to address crime, unemployment, lack of housing and poor service delivery in impoverished areas. (Alon Skuy)
"Whenever fresh violence erupts, my stomach begins to knot with tension,” writes photographer James Oatway at the beginning of [BR]OTHER, a collaboration with colleague Alon Skuy.
This powerful book is a journey into the dark depths of xenophobia - a frightening world where helpless victims are set alight, stabbed, hounded and robbed just because they are foreign.
See below the powerful images the duo captured during their coverage of the xenophobic violence that has flared across SA since 2008.
Police react to the rioting in which as many as 50 businesses owned by Africans from the rest of the continent were reportedly destroyed or damaged. (Alon Skuy)
Displaced brothers wear T-shirts bearing the face of President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Alon Skuy)
A community protest against ‘criminals and drug-dealers’ in Pretoria West in February 2017 turned into a series of random attacks on migrants during which this church minister was injured. (James Oatway)
Chantal Nsunda was born in Angola, but later lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1997 she moved to South Africa where she now runs a small but successful dress-making business. (James Oatway)
Vigilantes demand entry to a house in Orange Grove. The occupant, who claimed to be South African, was forced to open the gate and was turned out onto the pavement with all his possessions. (Alon Skuy)
Shop owner Sipho Sibiya alongside his premises in Atteridgeville at a time when xenophobic rhetoric was rife, and tensions were running high. (James Oatway)
A group armed with crude weapons on the outskirts of Ramaphosa, shortly before they gave chase to several men who appeared to evade attack by hiding among nearby mine dumps. (James Oatway)
A man fights the flames engulfing a shack in Ramaphosa. Tens of thousands of people were displaced, more than 342 shops looted and 213 burnt down in the weeks of violence that swept the country in May and June 2008. (Alon Skuy)
A youth approaches Emmanuel Sithole but is stopped by ‘a man in a leather jacket’ whose arm appears at the right of the image. (James Oatway)
A heavily outnumbered man is saved by producing his South African ‘book of life’ after being attacked during an ‘anti-crime’ march that turned into an ‘anti-migrant’ hunt. (James Oatway)
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