Documentary Photographer William Matlala and the Quiet Power of Everyday Blackness in Apartheid South Africa

"This image was taken in Thokoza on the 14th of February 1990. The residents were marching to the councillor's office. At this point in my career, my mission was to photograph any activity that shows workers' conditions beyond the workplace, so we could expose how the thread of oppression stretches from the factory into their homes. With low wages, they were still expected to pay high rates for services," Matlala tells OkayAfrica.

Matlala was not always a political photographer. Perhaps his politics were subtle, rooted in self-identity beyond the fog of apartheid's definition of what is black and how it should behave. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when South Africa was in turmoil and the world's cameras were fixated on clashes, blood, and grief, he turned his lens elsewhere. He saw what many ignored — workers clocking in at dawn, communities organizing after hours, small joys cracking through the cement of oppression.

His photographs tell the story of black life in full spectrum: not just the violence of the state, but the dignity of resistance, the poetry of survival, the everyday humanity apartheid tried to erase.

Born in 1957 in Dithabaneng, Leboakgomo, Limpopo, a then-rural homeland in northeastern South Africa, Matlala, like many young men from rural areas, moved to Johannesburg in search of work. In 1973, he settled in Katlehong, a township in the southeastern part of the city, and worked in several industrial factories before finding a stable job at Trimpak in Germiston.

In 1980, he discovered a Pallux 100x camera among his late father's memorabilia and brought it to Trimpak.

"This photo is of a colleague of mine at Trimpak in the early '80s. I started by photographing a few close colleagues until the film ran out. I developed the photographs and came back with them. I used these photos to market myself to other colleagues so they could be my clients. At first, they were skeptical, but our year-end function changed everything. I used about ten rolls of film, photographing everyone having a great time. In January, I gave them their photos — made a lot of money."

"This was my colleague at Trimpak. On Fridays, the ladies always dressed well. It was payday, and some bought new clothes. I knew new clothes meant pictures because they always wanted me to photograph them. The photograph was taken in 1985."

At this point, Matlala had become a vehicle for people to self-identify, to immortalize that identity, and to mirror how they saw themselves — a micro-defiance in a world that reduced them to subhuman, to "non-white," an identity handed down by apartheid.

His work soon pulled him deeper. Trailing the workers beyond factory gates, down narrow streets, into the dim corridors of single-sex hostels, into small rooms where families survived on pennies stretched thin. He saw them rise at dawn, return at dusk, and carve moments of laughter, pride, and defiance out of the grind.

Matlala didn't just photograph labor; he photographed life itself — the quiet dignity, the stubborn joy, the invisible threads of resistance that ran through every home, every handshake, and every shared meal. In his lens, the everyday became monumental. The ordinary became a witness to a world that refused to be erased.

"Before the ANC and Inkatha war erupted, the hostels were culturally integrated, and the relationship between township residents and hostel dwellers was strong. I also stayed at Mnisi Hostel and Kwesini Hostel, so I was part of and lived among the working class. I began documenting my roommates and neighbors at their request. This image was of one of my neighbors, taken in 1985."

In 1989, William's photography style evolved when he landed a job as COSATU's photographer, but his narrative remained the same.

"In July 1988, Trimpak workers went on strike, fighting for a wage increase. Within two weeks, the company was liquidated, leaving us jobless. I had been elected shop steward with COSATU, so I frequently visited the union office to address my coworkers' grievances. I always took pictures of union members in meetings, rallies, and gatherings. COSATU had its in-house photographer, Maxwell Chikampu, who unfortunately passed away in a car accident in 1989, and some members advised me to apply for the position."

This opportunity opened up a new world to Matlala across South Africa's industries. He witnessed conditions firsthand — the marches, the boardroom battles, the daily grind. Through his lens, future generations can now peep into that world to see what work and the lives of the working class under apartheid truly looked like.

"My technical approach changed dramatically when I began working for COSATU. I was no longer photographing people posing or curating how they wanted to be depicted. My skills as a photographer needed to show up. Luckily, the Department of Manpower gave me a scholarship to study photography. I learned darkroom development and black-and-white photography, which fascinated me. One time, while at COSATU's lab, I lost track of time developing black-and-white frames and ended up sleeping in the darkroom," he jokes.

"I shot this image in Thokoza in 1990, the two men in front are the late Sam Ntuli, a trade union leader and political activist, and Enoch Godongwana, who is now South Africa's minister of finance."

Matlala's work isn't loud — it doesn't scream. It hums. It's closer to a symphony than to the rigid photojournalism of his peers. Each frame feels improvised, responsive, alive in the moment. Taken together, his archive is less a record of events and more a score of lived experience, riffing off themes of labor, love, faith, and defiance.