Kevin Carter was born in South Africa in 1960, the same year that Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress was outlawed. The son of pro-apartheid Catholics, Carter was opposed to the racist mainstream, frequently arguing with his father. His rebellious nature led to him dropping out of university, which resulted in him being forced to join the South African Defence Force. He detested being part of an organisation which upheld the apartheid system and on one occasion defended a black waiter and ended up being beaten up by Afrikaner soldiers who branded him a Kaffir-Boetie (“Negro lover”).

After being injured during a bomb attack, Carter left the SADF and got a job at a camera supply shop, This led him into photo-journalism, first in sports photography before moving to to the Johannesburg Star where he worked with other journalists who wanted to expose the brutality of apartheid. By 1990 Carter was working with Ken Oosterbroek, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, “The Bang-Bang Club” who together travelled the townships photographing the horrific violence.

Kevin Carter, photographed by Ken Oosterbroek.

The AK-47 mentioned in the song is a Russian assault rifle designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov and first manufactured in 1947. A cheap, efficient weapon, over ninety million have been made worldwide since then. It even appears in silhouette on the national flag of Mozambique. The Manics mention it during Kevin Carter as it was widely used by rebels in the townships of South Africa.

During 1993, Carter went to Sudan, to photograph the war and famine there. One day as he took a break from, he heard a tiny girl crying, trying to crawl after food. As he went to take a photograph, a vulture landed beside her. He admitted later that he waited about twenty minutes, trying to catch the bird spreading its wings. It didn’t, so he took the photos, chased the vulture away and let the girl continue her struggle. Then he went away to sit under a tree and cried.

His photograph became the defining image of the horror of the Sudanese war. In April 1994, received a phone call telling him he had won the Pulitzer Prize. The glory of winning was soon tainted as he found himself on the receiving end of extremely critical, deeply moral questions. His photo of the little girl and vulture was criticised as a fluke; others suggested it had been staged. Most troublingly for Carter, people questioned his morals, saying that he was just another vulture, exploiting the girl’s suffering for the sake of his own career. Others simply asked why he hadn’t tried to help the girl.

The quality of his work and his reliability declined and Carter was heard talking openly about suicide. On July 27 1994, he drove to a small river where he used to play as a child, attached a hose to the exhaust of his van and gassed himself in the front seat. He died, aged 33, of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. His suicide note spoke of his vivid wartime memories and the way that the pain in his life had destroyed his ability to experience joy.

The elephant in the lyric is a metaphor for Carter’s ‘shell shock’ – which would probably be recognised and treated now as PTSD. “In his memoirs the elephant represented the fear that came upon him whenever he thought about Rwanda”. James, 1996.

SINGLE

Released 30 September 1996

Camouflage sleeve in blue and grey (CD1) and green and brown (CD2) with photos of the band on the inner sleeve.

The release was a surprise to some, who expected the more straightforward “Enola Alone” or “Further Away” to be released. It worked well though, showing those who hadn’t bought the album yet that it had a lot more to it than the epic rock of the first two singles. The sleeve design was in the same style as the previous two, using a camouflage design with the usual text inside a rectangular box.

The band have won several of these awards from the NME. In 1995 they won the award for Best Session (on Radio One’s Evening Session show) and in 1997 they won four – best album, single, live act and a special award from DJ’s Mark Radcliffe and Lard for best song with the name Kevin in the title.

SLEEVE QUOTES

CD one – “Words themselves – the very material of our discourse increasingly take on masks or disguises” – Dennis Potter (also quoted on the sleeve of Forever Delayed and National Treasures`).

CD two – “When I was a kid I used to get fun out of my horrors” – Eugene O’Neil

VIDEO

Directed by John Hillcoat, the video shows the band sitting behind a table at a mock press conference, the clicking of the camera shutter slowly destroying them.

The quote spoken at the beginning of the video is taken from the poem “Expostulation And Reply” by William Wordsworth.

“The eye – it cannot choose but see.”

The French philosopher Paul Virillio is quoted at the end of the video.