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Madoda Mkhobeni
Johannesburg Trolley Pullers
This is a long-term project I have been working on since 2005. These photographs focus on migrants to the city who live in abandoned and empty spaces around Newtown and who survive by collecting recyclable material. All of the people I met had one aim: to send money home. It took a long time for me to win their trust – I would spend time with them, bring them copies of the photographs that I took, and gradually they accepted me into their world. These were not homeless people who just crashed in an open space and tried to make money with the recycling material, getting drunk or doing all sorts of bad things in town. These were responsible people, people who had families, people who wrote letters, people who were concerned with their lives in Johannesburg, people who were forward-looking.
They divided themselves into groups: South Africans, Mozambicans and Zimbabweans, and tended to live and work in these groups. When the Newtown Flats and Newtown Mall developments started they had to move from one place to another, pushed out by the building work.
Some of the men would ask me to photograph them in a space that they found interesting, often to create a fictional image as they didn’t want their families to know how they were living. Others didn’t mind making a photograph in any space to show their families how they were actually surviving in the city.
As the years went by, many of the people passed away – few made it back home alive or lived very long.
I am writing this text days after the streets were filled with anti-immigrant marchers and busloads of people had to return to their homes across Africa. It fills me with great sadness and makes me see this work differently. People just like those I photographed have been demonized and their lives have been vandalised and destroyed. I had hoped that my work could humanize people who are now seen as so dangerous. Now I am lost.
July 2026
About Madoda Mkhobeni
Madoda Mkhobeni (b. Soweto, Gauteng) completed the Market Photography Workshop (MPW) Foundation Course in 2008 and the Photojournalism and Documentary Course in 2009. He previously worked as an editor, journalist and photographer for Homeless Talk, Kitso and other community publications. He currently works as a commercial photographer and documentarian.
He describes himself as a street photographer, which simplifies the depth of his practice. While most street photographers capture ephemeral moments and then move on, Madoda is the opposite – he immerses himself deeply in the lives of the people he finds on the streets, and he has built a unique contemporary archive of Johannesburg.