Omar Badsha: placing the collective above the individual

Abstract

Photographer and cultural activist Omar Badsha is known for his deep passion for placing the collective above the individual in the many different activities he has undertaken in his life. Above all else, Badsha has used photography to document the history of the liberation struggle in South Africa as well as the different forms of oppression and exploitation and their consequences to educate and mobilise others to participate in the struggle. An activist of note during the apartheid era, he continues to educate others about the history of the struggle to prompt mobilisation in areas in which he sees lapses in the quest for social justice or threats to the young democracy. Badsha was born in Durban in 1945 into a Gujarati Muslim family who arrived in South Africa from India in the late 1890s. His father, Ebrahim Badsha, was a self-taught pioneer artist and a founding member of the Bantu, Indian and Coloured Arts Group, the first such arts group in Durban. His uncle, Moosa Badsha, was a photo-journalist who worked for a number of local publications. Both his father and his paternal uncle were early influences that would shape his future interests. The political interests he developed also came from his family, which was part of a larger community of Communist Party members in Durban whose heroes were the Indian nationalist leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi.