Details

Quiet momentsQuiet Moments in the Struggle combines images and text to portray the life of a writer and documentary photographer in South Africa during the 1980s. The narrative weaves reportage with personal memoir and presents the human face of dispossessed rural people, industrial workers and women workers; as well as white South Africans preparing themselves for radical political change. 

The photographs are an integral part of the story telling and portray an intimate picture of South African communities in the late 1970s, and 1980s. Published as an e-book on Blurb in 2019.

Download the PDF here...(44MB)

 

 

Side effects is a work of narrative non-fiction that asks why South Africa has one of the worst AIDS epidemics in the world, and why all the early attempts to deal with it led to deepening controversy and strife.

The historical narrative reveals how and why AIDS conquered one of the richest countries on the African continent. It is a tale of the failures of presidents and people, of the legacy of apartheid, of bureaucratic indifference and corporate greed. It lays bare the lost opportunities and fateful decisions that led to mass death at a time when medical and social science had cleared the way to the prevention and treatment of the worst disease ever to have afflicted humankind.

Above all, Side effects is the biography of an extraordinary virus. A virus that enters a society, just as it enters the body, at its weakest point: an opportunistic virus that triumphed over the vulnerabilities of a country in transition.

Published in 2008 by Double Storey, Juta, Side Effects is now out of print, but available second-hand at Amazon and other online bookstores. Contact the author for new copies.
Prologue (Download PDF)
Reviews
City Press (Download PDF)
Sunday Times (Download PDF)
South African Labour Bulletin (Download PDF)
Sunday Independent (Download PDF)

Working Women is a book of photographs and text published by The Sached Trust/Ravan Press in 1985 and Pluto Press in 1986.
Using interviews and photographs, Working Women documents the daily lives of ordinary working class women in South Africa. From the low-paid forestry worker to the big city sex worker, women tell their tales of survival, triumph and despair. Despite the complex web of legislation and gender discrimination, in the early 1980s black women were beginning to exert their economic muscle to form a growing and important sector of the workforce. The book was written for the nascent trade union women's movement, but was also used extensively by literacy workers and community organisers.


Reviews, excerpts etc:
Weekly Mail and Guardian (Download PDF)
African Business (Download PDF)
Times Literary Supplement (Download PDF)

 

Details

Jon Snow at a Durbar, Yendi, northern Ghana. Living on the Line, a journey of adventure through the eight countries on the Greenwich meridian. Channel 4, 2000 (associate producer, shoot photographer).

Bophuthatswana community at dawn, reclaiming historic land. The Promised Land. Channel 4 Dispatches, 1991 (researcher, shoot photographer).

God Bless Africa, three-part series on the history of the Christian missionaries in South Africa. SABC, 1996. (director).

Roots of Struggle, first episode of the official history of the African National Congress, Ulibambe Lingashoni. MNET, SABC, 1993. (director).

Apartheid’s children, the epidemic of child abuse in South Africa. Channel 4 Dispatches, 1998 (producer).

Peter Busse, one of the first South Africans to live openly with HIV. Consultant on the film Mashayabhuqe, AIDS kills everything. Interfund 1996, SABC 1997 (director, photographer).

Booklet accompanying the Interfund version of Mashayabhuqe, AIDS kills everything which examines the HIV epidemic as a development issue (writer, photographer).

During the 1990s I worked on many films and educational video projects in South Africa and the UK, as a researcher, associate producer, producer and director.

 

Details

Paul Verryn christening a new member of his Soweto congregation. From A Samaritan in Soweto, the Methodist minister accused of pederasty by Winnie Mandela, photographs and text, Leadership, 1992.

Crying on the hard shoulder, cover page, Leadership, 1999.

Rikki and Liz, Pretoria 1995. From The Colour of our love, an investigation of trans-racial adoption, photographs and text, Millennium

Life at the top, an investigation into Johannesburg’s ghettoes in the sky. Cover page, Sunday Star, 1990.

David Goldblatt, introductory essay, Phaidon Press

Maureen Sithole, night nurse on her way home at 7am, Soweto, 1982. From Nightshift, slide and tape show produced for the Human Awareness Programme.

During the late 1980s I began combining images and photographs to tell more complex stories. These and other feature articles were published as magazine articles, audio-visual programmes and in books.

READ SOME OF THE STORIES

 A samaritan in Soweto 27062022 Crying on the hard shoulder 27062022  the colour 27062022 
A Samaritan in Soweto,
Leadership, 1992.
DOWNLOAD
  Crying on the hard shoulder,
Leadership, 1999.
DOWNLOAD

The colour of our love,
Millennium, 1996

DOWNLOAD

Details

Launch of Working Women, Noordgesig, 1985.

Photocomic from a learner’s story, English Literacy Programme, 1988 (script and photographs).

The Reader, SACHED post-literacy magazine, 1982 (story and photographs).

Nutrition series, Learning Post, SACHED, 1979 (text and photographs).

Publication for the women’s group of the National Union of Metalworkers, 1987 (text and photographs).

Photographer Gideon Mendel and I worked on a publication to celebrate 10 years of community action on AIDS by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance (2004) (text)

A narrative account of ICAP’s ground-breaking antiretroviral therapy programmes of the late 1990s (text).

Since 1976 I have produced educational and technical materials for a range of civil society organisations focussing on women’s issues, land and environment, worker education and literacy, HIV and health. In the past ten years I have worked in communications and knowledge management for Mott MacDonald on a series of health programmes funded by UKaid.

I joined the SACHED Trust, a South African non-profit organization, to work on Peoples College, an educational supplement to the newspaper Weekend World. Under the guidance of subject experts, I wrote a 26-part series on health care, courses on chemistry and biology and articles on African history and current affairs. I also worked on other SACHED publications including Working Women, which I wrote and photographed.

 

Details

Hostel barbershop, East Rand foundry, 1980.
Protest outside the Silverton trial, after three men were sentenced to death, Pretoria 1982.
Self portrait, Crown Mines, Johannesburg, 1978.
Community health workers, educational song about trachoma, Lebowa, 1980.
Alice and Baba Kunene, retired labour tenants posing in their favourite spot, Eastern Transvaal, 1982.
Funeral of Neil Aggett, a friend and trade unionist murdered in police custody, Johannesburg, 1982.
Night cleaner polishing the boardroom table, Johannesburg, 1984.
Southdale shopping centre, Johannesburg, 1982.
Police stand, Rand Easter show, Johannesburg, 1988.
Inner city Johannesburg, 1984.

During the 1980s I was active in the social documentary movement in South African, being a founder member of the Afrapix collective. In these times photography was seen as ‘cultural work’ and most of my efforts were in the service of trade unions and other civil society organisations. My photographs appeared in the anti-apartheid exhibitions and publications of the day. While much of my photography documented ordinary lives under apartheid, I also worked on more personal projects. Another day in the suburbs was an extended essay with interviews charting white Johannesburg’s response to the emergencies of the late 1980s.

My book Quiet Moments in the Struggle narrates the experience of the 1980s in images and text. It is available as an e-book or pdf at Blurb.

 

Details

Quiet momentsQuiet Moments in the Struggle combines images and text to portray the life of a writer and documentary photographer in South Africa during the 1980s. The narrative weaves reportage with personal memoir and presents the human face of dispossessed rural people, industrial workers and women workers; as well as white South Africans preparing themselves for radical political change. 

The photographs are an integral part of the story telling and portray an intimate picture of South African communities in the late 1970s, and 1980s. Published as an e-book on Blurb in 2019.

Download the PDF here...(44MB)

 

Details

Side effects 2Side effects is a work of narrative non-fiction that asks why South Africa has one of the worst AIDS epidemics in the world, and why all the early attempt to deal with it led to deepening controversy and strife.

The historical narrative reveals how and why AIDS conquered one of the richest countries on the African continent. It is a tale of the failures of presidents and people, of the legacy of apartheid, of bureaucratic indifference and corporate greed. It lays bare the lost opportunities and fateful decisions that led to mass death at a time when medical and social science had cleared the way to the prevention and treatment of the worst disease ever to have afflicted humankind.

Above all, Side effects is the biography of an extraordinary virus. A virus that enters a society, just as it enters the body, at its weakest point: an opportunistic virus that triumphed over the vulnerabilities of a country in transition.

Published in 2008 by Double Storey, Juta, Side Effects is now out of print, but available second-hand at Amazon and other online bookstores. Contact the author for new copies.

Prologue (Download PDF)

Reviews
City Press (Download PDF)
Sunday Times (Download PDF)
South African Labour Bulletin (Download PDF)
Sunday Independent (Download PDF)

Details

WW edited cov 23102019Working Women is a book of photographs and text published by The Sached Trust/Ravan Press in 1985 and Pluto Press in 1986.

Using interviews and photographs, Working Women documents the daily lives of ordinary working class women in South Africa. From the low-paid forestry worker to the big city sex worker, women tell their tales of survival, triumph and despair. Despite the complex web of legislation and gender discrimination, in the early 1980s black women were beginning to exert their economic muscle to form a growing and important sector of the workforce. The book was written for the nascent trade union women's movement, but was also used extensively by literacy workers and community organisers.

Reviews, excerpts etc:
Weekly Mail and Guardian (Download PDF)
African Business (Download PDF)
Times Literary Supplement (Download PDF)

Details

Lesley Lawson was born in Durban, South Africa and now lives in London. She has been a photographer, film maker and writer, documenting ordinary lives under apartheid. She now works in communications and knowledge management for HIV- and health-system-strengthening programmes.