Acclaimed photographer Alfred Kumalo helped to end apartheid through his art, the ANC said on Monday.

Kumalo’s work spoke volumes, providing the international community with evidence of the brutality of apartheid, spokesman Jackson Mthembu said in a statement.

As such, his work helped to mount international pressure against the apartheid regime.

On Sunday night it was reported that Kumalo, 82, died from renal failure at a Johannesburg hospital.

He was born in Alexandra, and made his name as a photographer for Drum Magazine.

Mthembu described Kumalo’s career as “industrious and illustrious” and “journalism in the highest form”.

“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.”

Mthembu extended the party’s condolences to Kumalo’s family and his colleagues in the media industry.

Kumalo, who matriculated at the Wilberforce Institute in Evaton, began his working career as a journalist and photographer for Bantu World in Johannesburg in 1951. In 1956 he took up a permanent position at the Golden City Post.

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