JURGEN SCHADEBERG

I stepped off a Union Castle passenger liner in Cape Town in 1950, a young photojournalist in my early 20's, leaving the after-effects of Nazi Germany, and the devastated city of Berlin, my birth place, behind me. . . Thirty-six hours later, that crisp, dry winter morning, I stood on the platform at the Johannesburg Station, having come to the end of the world, baffled. Amazed to find that although 60 million people had just died in a bloody war fought by the forces of the entire free world, racial-hatred philosophies were still flourishing in South Africa. There were no jobs to be had on newspapers in Johannesburg, but eventually in 1951 I was told by a Star photographer that there was a job on "a magazine . . . you know, you wouldn't really like to work there,"because it was for "Natives". . . I jumped at the chance. The magazine was called The African Drum. Robert Crisp, the editor, interviewed me and I was taken on immediately and became the fourth member of the Drum staff. Henry Nxumalo and I worked as a team for several years . . . Anthony Sampson, the new young editor from England, joined us on many of the stories.

- Jurgen Schaderberg, "Foreword",in The Fifties People of South Africa (1987).