The re-release of Ernest Cole’s House Of Bondage brings back to mind the days of hellish suffering of non-whites under the system of apartheid in South Africa,
‘T oday I think the split between black and white in South Africa is irreconcilable. The whites are certain that it is our heart’s desire to be integrated into their society as social and economic equals, but they are wrong. The cruelty of apartheid – separateness – has infected us as well as them: We believe as fervently as they that there should be as little contact between the races as may be possible. For only by a separation more absolute than the most ardent racist could wish does there seem to be a chance of freedom from the suffering and oppression that living beside white men inflicts upon us.’
These were Ernest Cole’s opening lines for his book House Of Bondage when it was first published in 1967. They couldn’t be more devastating or less full of hope, and reflect the depth of his despair at the system that was crushing non-white people in his country – aculture that was ingrained in each new generation of whites and which dehumanised each new generation of blacks. Through his pictures, Cole showed, and shows, the world just how horrific and degrading the situation was in South Africa in the early and mid-1960s – and not the slightest power has left them. When one looks at his pictures and reads his written accounts of his experiences, it’s almost impossible not to fully sympathise with the sentiments expressed in those opening lines. It’s only with our retrospective viewpoint and the knowledge that the apartheid era did eventually come to an end that we can see hope did have a place, though tragically not within Cole’s own lifetime.
Reviving the original edition
Cole had fled his native South Africa for Europe and then New York only a year before the original version of House Of Bondage was published. It says something about the power of the images he had created in his short photographic career to that point – he was 27 – that the book was published so quickly, not to mention that Magnum Photos helped with the introductions. It’s easy to see why the deal was done so quickly, as Cole’s body of work is incredibly powerful and moving, showing not only black & white images of his first-hand experience of the horrors of life for black people in South Africa but his extensive written description of the way people around him were treated. The tagline for the book read ‘A South African Black Man Exposes in His Own Pictures and Words the Bitter Life of His Homeland Today’. It’s a bit long, but it explains exactly what the book is about. Banned in South Africa almost immediat
