Writing Ranjith Kally into the history books

Despite six decades of documenting South Africa’s history, Ranjith Kally is not a household name. His legacy deserves to be remembered and his name etched into history books. Kally’s images span a time period of 1946-2010 and his diverse repertoire captures the South Asian community in KwaZulu Natal, political heroes, labour, apartheid, protests, jazz, beauty contests, street-life, sports and other forms of social history. In it, we find a kind of genuine solidarity and togetherness of the various segregated communities during apartheid, more so than we find today. 

Words: Atiyyah Khan

Images: Ranjith Kally

Kally was self-taught and had immense skill with a camera, something he carried with him until his last days. Born in 1925 to a family of second-generation Indian immigrants in Reunion, a village in Isipingo on the outskirts of Durban, Kally was a descendant of indentured Indian labourers who worked in British sugarcane field plantations; his father worked as a sirdar or overseer, and so did his grandfather. This rural upbringing reflected an empathy for the working class, evident in his images.

Cup Final Day at Curries Fountain in the 1970s where soccer teams presented beauty queens on top of cars. 

He left school in Standard 6 (Grade 8) at the age of 14 and went to work in a shoe factory. At the age of 21, he picked up his first camera, a Kodak Postcard, which he bought for sixpence at a jumble sale. This was enough to ignite a passion for photography and he recalls spending all his free time practicing the art form. Soon he started working at the Leader newspaper on weekends to supplement factory wages. He said in an interview, “I used to put soles on ladies shoes every day. I did that for 15 years, but I knew that it was not what I wanted to do for my whole life. I didn’t want to be inside a factory when history was happening outside.”

Turning to photography professionally from 1955, he started working from 1956 - 1965 and then again from 1968-1985 for the legendary Drum (national magazine populated by black intellectuals and photographers) and the Golden City Post. Kally produced some of his finest work while there and he was among the first generation of Indian photographers to work for Drum, alongside people like Farook Khan, Moosa Badsha and G.R.Naidoo – all important figures to be remembered. 

Both these publications were significant for black communities during apartheid. During these early years around 1957, Kally won third place out of 150 000 entries in an international competition held in Japan and he was selected for membership to the Royal Photographic Society in London in 1967. Later he worked for publications like Graphic, Leader, The Sunday Times and freelanced until he retired. 

A beautiful portrait in 1947 is an image of his mother draped in a sari sitting on the ground and sorting out stones from dhal. About the photo Kally said, “I had recently joined the Royal Photographic Society of London, and a group of us amateur photographers would eagerly study the magazines that they would send by post. We would then try to replicate the compositional techniques they showcased. In this portrait, I tried to reproduce the classic ‘pyramid’ composition.”

During the 1950s, Kally documented poor working conditions of sugarcane fields on the north coast of Natal where child labour was prevalent – remnants of the British colonial system. He photographed the multi-racial community Cato Manor, similar to District Six and Sophiatown, which was destroyed by apartheid’s forced removals. He captured anti-apartheid political heroes like Oliver Tambo, Albert Luthuli, Monty Naicker, Nelson Mandela, Yusuf Dadoo and important historic moments like the Treason Trial and the Rivonia Trial. Throughout her life, Kally frequently photographed anti-apartheid activist Fatima Meer and his images featured in her book Portrait of Indian South Africans released in 1969.

He also frequently photographed then President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) Albert Luthuli. Especially outstanding is the photograph of Luthuli receiving the news of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960, taken in his spaza shop in Groutville, which he had been banished to by the apartheid government. Kally said, “Even though he had faced extreme hardship from the State, and was isolated even from his own party because of his adherence to non-violent principles, he was such a jovial, humble person that it made him a joy to photograph.” He also said in one interview that photographing Luthuli was the highlight of his career.

Indian sugar cane labourers working on the north coast of Natal, 1957. 

Though his work was so artistically brilliant and the subject matter so compelling, he was largely overlooked in South Africa. Kally only had his first solo exhibition at the age of 79 in 2004 – a retrospective at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg titled A Life Behind The Lens.  In the same year he self-published a book titled The Struggle, 60 Years in Focus: Ranjith Kally but it is impossible to find. Ten years later, at the age of 88, his first proper dedicated anthology of photographs was published, titled Memory Against Forgetting. 

Aside from Meer’s book, some images of his were included in the books The Finest Photos in Old Drum (1987) and Sof’town Blues: Images from the Black ‘50s (1994) – both by photographer Jürgen Schadeberg; From Canefields to Freedom: A Documentary on Indian South African Life (2000) by Uma Duphelia-Mesthrie and The Indian in DRUM magazine in the 1950s by Riason Naidoo (2008). 

Exhibitions which used some of Kally’s images were Margins to Mainstream: Lost South African Photographers’ at the Mayibuye Centre in Cape Town curated by Gordon Metz (1996) and In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (1996). His work also featured in Birmingham, Barcelona, Vienna and Reunion Island.  Kally was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Literature by University of Kwazulu-Natal as well as the Living Legend Award by the eThekwini municipality in 2013. He passed away at the age of 91 in 2017. 

Memory Against Forgetting

This book sits alongside the best collections of photography in South African history. It was produced by Kalim Rajab who grew up knowing Kally as a family friend. In his opening essay Rajab writes, “Ranjith’s journey, in many ways, reflects the hardships of the Indian working class. Largely self-taught and often harnessing the power of only rudimentary cameras, he worked his way up from a shoe factory to a part-time photographer in Plowright Lane in the Durban Casbah, to finally taking up the profession full-time but never enjoying the benefits of permanent employment. Yet despite the nature of his climb, his work never suffered from over-cynicism or darkness.”

Rajab grew up knowing the elder photographer from a young age and the pair developed a wonderful friendship. His granduncle A.K Rajab ran the family’s cinema, the grand Shah Jehan in Durban, and was good friends with Kally. “We had a darkroom in the cinema and Ranjith would come and work with AK in the darkroom and develop photographs together. Then my mother later on did a book with him, and then I came along.”

Image of Ranjith Kally with his book, supplied by Kalim Rajab 

Describing Kally as a kind of ‘father figure’ he says he was inspired to create the collection due to his extensive documenting of the Natal Indian community, from journalistic work to ordinary life, Kally captured it all. He would go to weddings and would be asked to shoot the occasion, so his work became a chronicle of community. 

Another reason was that “he was not given the due recognition he deserved, certainly in the South African sense, he isn't nearly as well-known as he should be. I felt that many people used him. They reproduced his work without giving him acknowledgement and often would just not pay him for work that he had done. It was important for me to give him recognition for the works that he had done.” 

Rajab is referring to the misattribution of Mkhumbane – an iconic image of a couple dancing which was attributed to G.R.Naidoo. It’s been used several times to sell everything from CD covers to albums and even a tin-fish brand. The image is from a play by Alan Paton with music by Todd Matshikiza that premiered in Durban in March 1960. 

“I know that it was his because he was able to tell me vividly ‘I remember taking the photograph. This is where I stood. This is where G.R stood. G.R was with me, but he didn't take this photograph. I remember how I took the photograph’.”

This was one of several of Kally’s works that was misattributed in the archives and many of those works have been sold. “The book was important to acknowledge his work,” Rajab says. 

“G.R Naidoo was a great journalist who dabbled in photography. They would have both been at the event as Drum would have sent them on the story. It was the day after the State of Emergency was declared in 1960, just after the Sharpeville massacre happened. No one knew what would happen. The play is done in heightened political circumstances, so it's unsurprising that Drum sends two people, a writer and a photographer, to cover it. It was misattributed to G.R years before my book came out and before those photographs were printed and then sold by Bailey's African History Archives, and then those images have a life of their own.”

For the book, Kally allowed him to sift through his boxes of archives and select images. He assembled them inspired by the method of the legendary Yousef Karsh’s books, with images set alongside anecdotes by the photographer, something which is so useful today. 

A scene from Alan Paton's play Mkhumbane from 1960. 

“I knew these photographs and these stories, so writing it up wasn't that difficult. Ranjith was wonderful. He had a laser sharp memory. I would say, Well, take me there. Let's just go and check that your memory is correct. We'd go and find the places in the photographs. We even went to Groutville. He showed me exactly where the house is – now a museum. He would show me exactly, ‘This side of the road was the main entrance. Everyone would come through there, but I wouldn't come this way because the Security Branch would be parked there. So I would come the other way around’.”

The book was well received. It sold many copies and was supported greatly by businesses in the Indian community. Kally loved the book and Rajab says,“It gave him a new lease on life.  It came from the recognition that it gave him and he loved meeting new people all over the country.” Kally was 88 years old at the time and the pair flew to all the major cities in South Africa to promote the book.

Rajab describes him as “an incredibly warm and friendly person” which was evident in his images. “The word I use is lyricism. There is a warmth to lots of the subject matter. I think that's because of him. He had hardships in his life. His son died very young, and that really hurt him. It continued to hurt him right up until the end. There was the financial impact, where he was not given the financial rewards that he was deserving of. But despite all of that, he was incredibly warm and would always go around, even to the end walking around in Durban, always with his camera and his cane, taking photos.”

Leaving a legacy

Legendary photographer and historian Omar Badsha says that Kally was a household name in Natal when he worked for Drum and the Golden City Post. His uncle Moosa Badsha was a peer of Kally’s and they were members of the International Photography Club, formed in the 1950s by activist Cassim Amra – a banned member of the Communist Party who was very passionate about photography. 

Badsha says, “There were very few outlets for Indians journalists and photographers in the mainstream. Ranjith worked under Jim Bailey in Drum. He had the flare and the energy and the know-how and he had that Drum background which allowed him to move all over the place. It opened a lot of doors for him.”

Omar had also inherited Kally’s darkroom, located on the first floor at the Goodhope Centre in Queens Street in Durban. There is a beautiful lineage of generations of black photographers tied to that darkroom, that being Kally’s then Badsha’s and then used when he formed Afrapix – created to mentor young photographers on how to shoot, process and publish photographs and document what was happening in the townships. Among these mentored were great contemporary photographers like Rafs Mayet and Cedric Nunn. 

Mayet has many stories to share about Kally and recalls seeing him on different jobs and they used to buy the same chemicals and paper from a shop called Modisons. The pair had met in the early 80s and worked together on a book about Curries Fountain – ‘the mecca of non-racial sport’ – a stadium in Durban known for sports and political events. 

 “Ranjith was a very tall, elegant character. He spoke a lot about photography,” Mayet says. Not living far from him, Mayet started visiting Kally in the 90s. “I'd go there and he was just sitting alone at home with all his memories. The TV would be on top of the filing cabinets and always be tuned to horse racing.”

He described how Kally kept all his negatives in a filing cabinet with three draws in his room. “He used to stay at the back of his daughter's house. He had a little spot there with a room and a shower and then next to it was the garage and the main thing was it had a cupboard. He had all pretty much the history of Durban in the 50s, 60s and 70s. He kept all of that. He had a huge collection of work, and so he could select them, and he could tell you about them, because he remembered all those articles. It's an incredible archive, and I wish someone would actually go out and digitize it.”

Miriam Makeba, Dolly Rathebe and Dorothy Masuka at the Durban City Hall. 

“In the 60s, there were very few photographers around, so everyone knew them. There were household names back then, because there weren't many people doing photography. It was very expensive; a hobby of the rich.” He names other photographers like M.S. Roy, Morris Reddy, Mickey Padyachee, Moosa Badsha and Ralph Johns. 

“These guys were pioneers in the community. Ranjith did a correspondence course with a London School of Photography and he followed the concepts of that. He had a classical way of composing and he adhered to the rule of thirds and all those different kinds of rules. That's how he structured his work.” Another striking image is of Shana ‘Sonny’ Pillay and Mariam Makeba just after they got married, sitting in a flat and looking at a King Kong record. Mayet says, “It's a beautiful picture. That was Ranjith's signature, taking pictures in a classical way. He took composition very seriously and used it effectively.”

Many of Kally’s images have been published in newspapers, documentaries and books but often without permission or royalties, Rajab notes, “As such, there was a very real risk of us remembering the image, but forgetting the man.”  We have yet to dig deeper into the world of Ranjith Kally and remember him for the significant work he left all of us with.