South Africa mourns Alf Kumalo - apartheid photographer Published duration 22 October 2012

image copyright AP image caption Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced

South Africa is mourning the death of renowned photographer Alf Kumalo, who died of renal failure aged 82.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) party said Kumalo chronicled the brutality of apartheid since becoming a photographer in the 1950s.

Kumalo photographed Nelson Mandela's wedding to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in 1957, the Soweto uprising in 1976 and the state of emergency in the 1980s.

He taught photography after South Africa became a democracy in 1994.

'Tenacious'

image copyright AP image caption Alf Kumalo chronicled the brutality of apartheid, the ANC said

Kumalo died at a Johannesburg hospital on Sunday.

"The ANC and the people of South Africa are forever indebted to Alf Kumalo for being at their service and striving to expose a system that was inhuman," ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said.

Former President Thabo Mbeki said Kumalo was one of South Africa's "eminent historians".

"No-one could contradict the truth of what he captured so competently through the lens," Mr Mbeki said.

"Aware that the power of his narrative was unimpeachable, the apartheid regime subjected him to constant harassment in the hope that Kumalo, a humble and tenacious man of integrity, would abandon his work or sell his soul altogether. He did not," he added.