In stark dramatic images that have burnt themselves on to the public record, Ken Oosterbroek documented the violence, the heartache and the hope of South Africa's transitional years to the election in 1994. That he was killed - shot by friendly fire when members of the National Peace-Keeping Force panicked - just nine days before polling day is one of the bitter ironies of Oosterbroek's life. In so many ways the life he led, let alone the award winning pictures he took, can be read as a cautionary tale within the larger story of apartheid's demise. Whether Oosterbroek consciously realised this remains a tantalising question, but the pictures and the details of his life suggest he had an uncanny awareness of his own destiny. For not only did Oosterbroek leave a series of powerful images, he also left moving testimonies of the Namibian border war in the early eighties, and of his daily life, both personal and professional, in a number of journals. This book is simultaneously a tribute to that life and an exploration into the darker reaches of a nation's soul.
