A man prepares dead bodies to be carried by an ambulance to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital morgue during a joint search and rescue operation to recover victims of the mudslide at Manje informal settlement on the slopes of Soche Hill in Blantyre, Malawi, on March 17, 2023, during Cyclone Freddy. (Amos Gumulira/AFP)
It took mere minutes for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning feature photograph of a collapsed, frail, famine-starved child, hungrily eyed by a vulture, to elicit an outcry from the readers of The New York Times when it was first published on 26 March, 1993.
The horror was in response to a question of ethics on the part of the photographer, South African Kevin Carter. Questions raised included whether it was ethical for him to prioritise a picture over a child’s welfare. Whether he should have intervened, and helped the child, instead of taking the photograph.
This struck a chord with me while leading an intervention by Danish humanitarian NGO DanChurchAid with local and international journalists, capturing accounts of loss and damage caused by Cyclone Idai in eastern Zimbabwe, in 2009, and in southern Malawi devastated by Cyclone Freddy in February 2023.
The same went for the imagery from Cyclone Chido in December 2024, the floods in Tanzania that resulted in 150 deaths in April 2024, as well as the heavy rains which devastated parts of Kenya, Somalia and other countries.
It brought to mind images of Amélia, the woman who gave birth in a mango tree during the floods that killed 700 people in Mozambique in February and March 2000. Ironically, that image of her baby, wrapped in dirty cloth and being rescued by a helicopter, helped raise millions of dollars for affected people.
The implication is that journalists and journalism can be catalysts for good, elevating the plight of the otherwise voiceless, in the remotest parts of the continent and the world, onto the global stage, soliciting assistance and raising awareness.
But critics say that although Carter’s photo increased awareness by highlighting the consequences of famine on children, it rendered animal life superior to the weakest in society, our children.
It later became known that the child was trying to reach a United Nations feeding centre a kilometre away in Ayod, in what is now South Sudan, and survived. Carter took his own life, at the age of 33, prompted by mental anguish according to his suicide letter, four short months after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography award in 1994.
Photojournalists have an obligation to tell the visual story; that is their job. But nobody hears their stories, the stories of the personal cost of their jobs to their consciences and their souls. While social media might have numbed us to human suffering, the journalists whose job it is to tell the story, must still tell the story.
Thoko Chikondi, an award-winning photojournalist from Malawi, reflected: “I have many questions about this job. Do we really help people? You see the suffering but you cannot help. Even if I have 10 000 Malawi kwacha in my pocket the rules of the job say I cannot give it to them.”
Over the years, Chikondi has covered health disasters, including cholera outbreaks and Covid-19, where the risks to her own health have been high. But that is the price the silent witness must pay to tell the world the story.
She has seen a hospital — the only hospital for miles around — filled with sand, deposited by Cyclone Freddy, and medical staff scrambling to assist as patients died.
She has heard the anguish of mothers searching for their children during mudslides. Felt the plight of those left homeless, having lost every single one of their worldly possessions in a flash. She has witnessed mass burials and the torment of grief on those left behind.
Chikondi recounted being drenched in torrential rain, carrying her camera on her head tightly wrapped in a plastic bag, while wading through chest-deep “angry” flood waters, unsure of her next step, on a cold, dark night. And young men lifting her on their shoulders to take the pictures that graced the covers of newspapers around the world, bringing news of the devastating effect of Cyclone Freddy.
“I don’t know if you can say they did it because they understood that my job, and those pictures, would help them, or if it was just human kindness. These crises seem to bring out the humanity in people,” she said.
It’s been 30 years since the iconic image that triggered The Vulture and the Little Girl controversy. Where does the world stand today on photographic and journalistic ethics? Where is the outcry over the visual stories of today’s injustices and of climate change horrors?
It is clear that there is no global assistance coming to help address not only the socio-economic devastation, but the accompanying mental anguish of those affected by them.
Africa’s overdependence on aid is a story for another day but the fact that November’s COP29 failed the continent in such dramatic fashion, when the world has seen the images of death and destruction amounting to billions, predominantly affecting the world’s poorest, makes it clear it is time for us to rally together and focus on implementing the African Union climate strategy towards achieving the long-awaited African solution.
For now, this unaddressed issue simply means that the silent witnesses must continue to cover the continent’s pain at whatever personal cost.
Patience Ukama is a governance and communications specialist who heads communications for DanChurchAid Zimbabwe, the lead partner of the Utariri integrated biodiversity, climate change and livelihoods programme across the Zambezi Valley.
Discussion about this post