The Cold Choice: Pictures of a South African Reality

The Cold Choice is the record of four years' travelling with Operation Hunger teams around South Africa. The flip side of the glossy tourist-view of the country, this book shows South Africa as it is experienced by the majority of its people: a succession of tumbledown relocation camps and overcrowded townships with bad road, no sewerage, minimal water reticulation and no street lighting.

     Yet, in this depressing squalor, Struan Robertson found something more rewarding than breathtaking tourist views. 'When I began this project I expected to record suffering and injustice. There was, indeed, plenty of both but what struck me most was the resilience of the human spirit. Even in the worst relocation camps such as Tentergate or Padstowe I found people who not only managed to survive by to find hope and meaning in their lives. I was humbled by them. They shamed my trivial discontents by their stoicism and humanity.'