Bethulie Portraits

Still at 800km's...

As we drove out of Bethulie on our way to Philippolis I saw a new RDP  hosing project being built. I stopped to take a few photographs of the toilets....I remembered that this was a favourite subject of documentary photographers in the days of apartheid. I looked at them and wondered....






While I was doing this bit of daydreaming two guys walked past with a little shopping bag. I asked them if I could take their photograph. While I was busy with this one of their friends a distance away shouted and asked if he could join them. I waited for him to join the group and took a few more photographs and then another guy came running and joined the group...it was laughs and jokes throughout the whole ' group photo session '.

click on images to enlarge...

I had a chat with them and discovered that most of them are unemployed except one guy that had a job. When asked what they were doing here in Bethulie they said that here was less crime here than in Capetown....

Martino, Klaas, Russel and Seune are part of a group of people known as the 'so called coloureds' a name that is often used to describe them while we wait for an official name for this group.

I often wonder why we still have racial classifications here in my country so many many years after our 'liberation'......and does that dog also think his master is a 'so called coloured'....

regards, Ivan...