Photojournalist · South Africa
Ken Oosterbroek
Ken Oosterbroek (1962–1994) was a South African photojournalist, chief photographer of Johannesburg's The Star and one of the four members of the Bang-Bang Club. Twice named South Africa's press photographer of the year, he was shot dead in the township of Thokoza on 18 April 1994, nine days before the country's first democratic election.
Updated 3 min read
The Star
Ken Oosterbroek built his career at The Star, Johannesburg's largest daily newspaper, in the years when the end of apartheid was being fought out in the streets. He was named South African Press Photographer of the Year in 1989 and again in 1991, and in August 1991 he became the paper's chief photographer. In 1993 he won a second prize at the World Press Photo contest for a story of general news.
Colleagues remembered him as the most organised and ambitious of his group: a photographer who planned, who studied light and composition, and who pushed the people around him to work harder.
The 1993 prize was for a story, not a single picture: World Press Photo gave a second prize in its General News Stories category to a set of his photographs, and the pictures from that entry are in the contest's online collection.
The township war
From 1990 the townships east and south of Johannesburg were the centre of a conflict between supporters of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party, often stoked by elements of the security forces. Oosterbroek covered it day after day with Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich and João Silva — the group a magazine called the "Bang-Bang Club". Their story is told in our guide to the Bang-Bang Club.
Two kinds of picture
Oosterbroek is remembered for the township war, but a 2024 exhibition at Museum Africa in Johannesburg, Ken Oosterbroek Killed in Action, showed more. Curated by Dudu Madonsela of the Ben Susan Museum of Photography for the thirtieth anniversary of South Africa's democracy, it set the violent scenes of the early 1990s beside tender images of everyday life. When you look at his work, look for the second kind as well as the first: the people who lived beside the fighting and the ordinary scenes that surrounded it. It is worth setting beside the earlier South African press photography of Sam Nzima and Peter Magubane: that comparison is this site's own reading, not a claim about influence.
Thokoza, 18 April 1994
On the morning of 18 April 1994 the four photographers went to Thokoza, where Inkatha supporters in the hostels were exchanging fire with the National Peacekeeping Force, a unit created to keep order during the election. Oosterbroek was hit and killed; Marinovich was badly wounded in the same burst of fire. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which listed him among the journalists killed in 1994, recorded the suspected source of the fire as military officials, and named him as chief photographer of The Star.
His death, nine days before South Africans voted together for the first time, became one of the symbols of the price paid by those who documented the transition. The election went ahead on 27 April and Nelson Mandela became president the following month.
Legacy and where to see the work
Oosterbroek's photographs remain an essential record of the violence of the early 1990s, alongside those of his colleagues. He has been honoured with exhibitions: a legacy show at Freedom Park in Pretoria in 2014, and the 2024 show at Museum Africa in Johannesburg, which ran until September that year. The Ben Susan Museum of Photography is on the top floor of Museum Africa in Newtown; ask it what is on view now. The pictures from his 1993 World Press Photo prize can be seen in that contest's online collection. The Bang-Bang Club's story was told by Marinovich and Silva in their book The Bang-Bang Club (2000) and in the 2010 film of the same name. For the longer history, see African photography and our list of South African photographers.
