Photography is Babedi’s passion
Kuki’s weapon in Struggle years was his camera
In the dark days when Alexandra was known as Gomorrah, young men would pick up weapons and join gangs on the streets.
But Kuki Babedi, then 21 years old, picked up a “weapon” of a kind – his first camera – and he has never looked back.
Today, 64-year-old Babedi’s lab in Alex – Kuki’s Photo Studio – is celebrated by locals as their very own heritage site. He keeps a collection of over 100 cameras from the 1900s.
His passion for photography was whetted during the 1976 youth uprisings when he took his first pictures and secured his first job at Konika – a photo-processing company – as a film developer.
He later developed a passion for collecting cameras.
“I worked for Kodak as a lab operator and I had access to all their latest [camera] models.
“I would find people with older cameras and we would switch, and that’s how I ended up having so many old cameras,” Babedi told Sowetan.
In 2000, his manager at Kodak encouraged him to enter a competition because of his passion for photography. He entered a picture of young kids he mentored in Alex posing with their Kodak cameras and he won the first prize.
This image was shown in Times Square in New York City, where millions of people saw it. “I was not shocked that I won because by then I had trust in my ability,” he said.
Babedi said he was one of the freelance photographers who recorded what was happening in Alexandra during the 1976 youth uprisings.
“It is unfortunate that during that time, the paper that I was selling [pictures] to would not credit me for the pictures. They would pay me R10 for a picture and that would be it.”
Babedi said he was arrested for taking pictures and had some of his footage destroyed by the apartheid police. His family insisted that he find a more traditional career but he persisted because photography was his passion. “Everything that happened in Alex during that period, I was there. It was chaos,” he said.
Over the decades, Babedi has taken pictures of icons such as Prince Andrew, Nelson Mandela, Richard Branson, Linda Twala, Frikkie Conradie and of a teenage Tito Mboweni in torn shoes.
“Women loved me because I always had a camera with me. I was seen as very fashionable, they even loved my dress sense,” Babedi said.
He said his favourite camera to take pictures with has been
‘‘ They (newspaper) would pay me R10 for a picture and that would be it
his Nikon F4 which he has had since 2005.
“This camera has never disappointed me, it’s always given people who had voted for him to be a councillor turn on him.
“There was hatred that was channelled towards any black person who worked for the state because they were seen as sell-outs. It’s a difficult thing to witness because I lived in the same community as them, I experienced the same challenges they did and they voted us into the positions we held, but they decided to turn their backs on us,” Buthelezi said.
“Those were difficult times. They threw petrol bombs at my house in the middle of the night. They threw one in my children’s room and in the dining me the best pictures,” he said.
Kuki’s Photo Studio at corner 26 8th Avenue and Joe Nhlanhla Street is now the resident place in Alex where people can get their ID photos and other photography services. “People enjoy coming to me for pictures because I still use the old methods of developing pictures, which ensure good, quality picture,” he said.
Babedi said he opened the studio in 2005 after an extensive career working for companies such as Fuji Telron, Kodak and Konika. room.
“I woke up to find those rooms in flames. I took my children and ran out using the back door.”
That night, they sought refuge in a municipal office where they barely slept. At the time, no other township in SA experienced the tension that enveloped Soweto where hundreds of people believed to have been informants were put to death through necklacing.
Buthelezi served in the Greater Soweto City Council for 15 years between the 1970s and 1980s in various roles as a councillor and then later deputy mayor in the administration of the then Soweto mayor, Ephraim Tshabalala.
Sabelo Radebe, who has lived in Protea North for 30 years on the street named after Buthelezi, said he did not know where the street name originated from.
“I thought this street was named after the IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi and had no idea it was named after someone who lives in Soweto.
“I also thought it could be the name of an apartheid activist or someone who died during that era,” Radebe said.