Thread by @YourWullie

Ernest Cole was born in South Africa’s Transvaal in 1940. In his book: House of Bondage – published in 1967, he was the 1st photojournalist to highlight the daily realities, humiliations, and horrors of apartheid to the outside world.
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Here are some of those images.

'During group medical examinations the men are herded through a string of doctors’ offices.
South Africa. 1960. © Ernest Cole

'Students kneel on floor to write. Government have no desire to furnish schools for blacks'
© Ernest Cole

'In order to legalize a black worker’s presence in a white area, he had to be fingerprinted for a pass. Black people over 16 were required to carry passbooks, basically visas that let them exist in their own country'

'Every African must show his pass before being allowed to go about his everyday business. More often than not, a check broadens into search of a man’s person and belongings'

'A student who said he was going to fetch his textbook is pulled in. To prove he was still in school he showed his fountain pen and ink-stained fingers. But that was not enough; in long pants he looked older than sixteen'

House of Bondage was the first way for a lot of people to actually understand what was going on in South Africa. While the anti-apartheid movement was getting into full swing at the time, most people had in general been turning a blind eye to what was happening in the country.

There was very little visual information coming out of South Africa, and the book changed that. House of Bondage and the subsequent serialisations in the new color supplements and magazines around the world brought apartheid into the public visual consciousness.

Cole knew what he was doing was extremely dangerous so he usually shot from the hip. In 1966 he was arrested. He was offered two options: join their ranks as an informer, or be punished.
He swiftly left the country.
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The reality of apartheid without the need for any words.

Cole left South Africa for Europe and took with him little more than the layouts for his book. His photographs and negatives were separately smuggled out of the country shortly after.
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Mamelodi, South Africa. 1960. © Ernest Cole

Handcuffed and arrested for being in a white area illegally. The law forbade pictures like this being taken of people being handcuffed by the police. Cole knew he had to show the suffering to the outside world. He was taking huge risks.

Uprooted from his home and community and divorced from the circumstances that had fired his creative imagination, Cole never found his feet in Europe or America.
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Johannesburg station, South Africa. 1960. © Ernest Cole

Cole, born Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole, had ambitions to be a doctor but dropped out of school when he was 16 after apartheid laws forced black schools to adopt a curriculum that trained students to be no more than servants.

City benches were for whites only and were so inscribed. There were no “blacks only” benches in Johannesburg; blacks were forced to sit at a lower level than whites, on the pavements.

Changeover.
Contract-expired miners are on the right, carrying their discharge papers and wearing “European” clothes while new recruits, many in tribal blankets, are on the left.

Cole attempted to get back his South African passport at one point, and was denied. From that point on he knew that he would probably never go home again.
He was stateless.
Cole drifted away from photography, then came homelessness.

After processing, they wait at railroad station for transportation to the mine. Identity tags on their wrists to show the shipment of labour to which man is assigned.
© Ernest Cole

'Newspapers are her carpet; fruit crates are her chairs and table'
© Ernest Cole

'One out of every four African babies die before their 1st birthday because their fathers earn starvation wages. Half of all black children die before 16. This four month old baby died of malnutrition two weeks after this picture was taken' - Handwritten note by Ernest Cole

Ernest Cole in Johannesburg. According to Struan Robertson this was in the bank in the building where he and Cole had their studio. There were separate counters for blacks and whites. © Ernest Cole

”Penny baas, please, baas, I hungry...”

This is part of nightly scene in the Golden City, as black boys beg from whites. They may be thrown a coin, or, as in this photo they may get punched in the face.

“We sleep anywhere,” a boy told me, “in drainpipes, parks, junk yards, anywhere.” At dawn I found them lying in a park, shivering.
© Ernest Cole

"Servants are not forbidden to love" this woman holding child said, ”I love this child, though she’ll grow up to treat me just like her mother does. But for now she is innocent.” - From Ernest Cole's notes.
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That ladies and gentlemen, is humanity in the face of adversity ❤

The relocation of people from Eersterust to Mamelodi, South Africa, 1960. 
© Ernest Cole

A white pocket being picked. Whites are angered if touched by anyone black, but a black hand under the chin is enraging. This man, distracted by his fury, does not realize his back pocket is being  rifled. He is allowed to go his way – till next time. © Ernest Cole

Washing conditions at the mines were primitive. Shower rooms were crowded with men trying to bathe while others did their laundry as they had no means to do it at home. © Ernest Cole

Living in her ”kaya” out back, a servant must be on call six days out of seven and seven nights out of seven. She lives a lonely life apart from her family. In white suburbs there are no recreation centres open to black servants. 
© Ernest Cole

People returning after a long day’s work and a train ride from Pretoria. Mamelodi, South Africa. 1960. © Ernest Cole

A boy squats on his haunches and strains to follow the lesson in the heat of packed classroom.
© Ernest Cole

The train accelerates with its load of clinging passengers. They ride like this through rain and cold, some for the entire journey. 
© Ernest Cole

Which black train to take is matter of guesswork. They have no destination signs, and no announcement of arrivals is made. In confusion, passengers sometimes jump across track, and some on occasion were killed by express trains.
© Ernest Cole

To put the risk Cole was taking into context, some of his images could've resulted in life imprisonment – especially those taken in prisons or mines featuring people undergoing inhumane medical checks and other humiliations. Yet he did it.

"The essential cruelty of the situation is not that all blacks are virtuous and all whites villainous, but that the whites are conditioned not to see anything wrong in the injustices they impose on their black neighbors."

- Ernest Cole, House of Bondage, 1967.

After 27 years, Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11th, 1990.
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Cole died of cancer in New York seven days after Mandela's release, after more than 23 years of painful exile. He was 49, homeless and penniless.

We shall remember him. ❤