Photography, Apartheid, and "The Road to Reconciliation"

There is a large shadow that falls over the middle of the image and then a strange area of light, gravel I think, the texture of the tar. [...]these roads present us with a warning, a reminder that we do not see but read and that how and what we read is never neutral. The trope of "the road" as a description of South Africa's transition to democracy is so familiar that by 2002, when Edelstein's book appeared, photographs of roads could provide readily legible visual shorthand for the work of the TRC. According to the slogan of the TRC, it is Truth that carries us along this road, moving toward not so much a place but a state of being. [...]if so, what is this teleological force capable of mapping the future? I can think of a few options-the first is Nelson Mandela on his long walk to freedom, at first advancing toward us through the gates of Victor Verster Prison, then taking our hands and jiving with us as we are liberated from apartheid, then, in what can only be understood as a miraculous renewal of personal and political energy, leading us forward, bringing us together, and then striding beyond us toward an embrace of rugby and past jailers, to Zackie Achmat's house in an HIV-positive t-shirt, and even to tea in Orania with Betsie Verwoerd. Or the angel of history, who flew ahead even of him, perhaps this is our invisible cartographer, endlessly charting our catastrophic course.