THERE’S a horrible feeling in my stomach every time I read about a missing journalist. It’s almost always a photojournalist who goes missing or gets maimed - or killed.
This time it’s Joburg-based Shiraaz Mohamed.
Last Tuesday he was abducted from a car carrying staff from the relief organisation Gift of the Givers on their way out of Syria to the Turkish border.
Despite the best efforts of well-connected people, nobody knows where he is. We don’t know if he’s alive. That’s the awful truth.
We went through the same horrid waiting game with former Saturday Star chief photographer Anton Hammerl when he went to Libya in April 2011 to cover the Libyan civil war.
He never came back.
Joao Silva returned from Afghanistan without his legs after he stood on a landmine and after a lifetime of covering conflicts.
Ken Oosterbroek never lived to see democracy, shot in the back of the head by a National Peacekeeping Force member in Thokoza - weeks after he pleaded with politicians to respect the work of photojournalists following the shooting of Abdul Sharif.
Kevin Carter killed himself because he couldn’t eradicate the memories of what he had recorded.
Those are just the photographers who come to mind; mostly because they’ve all spent time at The Star or The Saturday Star.
I have pictures on my office wall of three chief photographers I had the privilege of working with.
There’s Anton in a Libyan battlefield, hours before he disappeared. His remains have never been found.
There’s Cara Viereckl, wacky, brilliant and as tough as nails fighting off the attentions of two ANC Youth League members trying to steal her kit as she shot scenes outside our offices and Luthuli House during Julius Malema’s disciplinary hearing, also in 2011.
Her successor, Paballo Thekiso, just as brave and a clever and gifted journalist, is seen running for cover past a riot police Nyala with another press photographer as former colleague Antoine de Ras perches out of the line of fire atop a trailer of razor wire, shooting frames of the people bombarding them with anything they can get their hands on.
I keep those pictures on my wall in homage to people whom I respect and to the reality of their version of our craft versus my own.
I’m a writer, a reporter; I can describe things in words on site or off the TV. I don’t have to be there. Photographers and photojournalists don’t have that luxury. Too far away and they don’t get the frame, too close and they die.
That’s the binary reality they’re faced with every day.
People will tell you (I know, I’m one of them) that no picture is worth a human life.
The truth is great pictures are eternal. They are worth 1000 words and 1000 x 1000 words. The price, though, is often exacted in blood.
The problem is not all wounds are visible. Photojournalists don’t carry guns, but they often expose themselves to risks that would make even the most hardened infantrymen flinch.
They are the true heroes of our craft, an industry under threat, one that has devalued the currency of photojournalism in favour of cellphone imagery and 30-second videos, user-generated content - and post-truth consensus.
For the true photojournalist this has meant taking even more risks; financial, emotional, mental and physical, to tell stories they feel compelled to record - like going into hell holes like Syria to tell a world that really doesn’t care about something they ought to.
When they are captured they have no defence but our outrage, the pressure we can exert upon our government to make a difference and enforce the freedom of their nationals.
We need people like Mohamed. We need them in our world to force us to see what they see.
I pray he will be returned safely to his family. I pray, too, there will be others like him prepared to risk their lives to tell the truth.
Let’s get outraged, let’s shout from the rooftops and the street corners: bring Shiraaz Mohamed home.
Ritchie is Independent Media’s Gauteng regional editor. Michael Weeder’s column will return next week.