Omar Badsha is an artist, writer, photographer and political activist. In 1999 he began work on a popular history project which seeded South African History Online (SAHO), a non-profit online history and heritage project which has become one of Africa’s largest history websites. In 2001 he published Imperial Ghetto, a study of life in the Grey Street complex of Durban, and edited With Our Own Hands (2002), a book focused on the government’s poverty relief programmes. His paintings and photographs have been exhibited locally and globally since 1965 and his works can be found in major public collections across South Africa and in leading galleries and institutions abroad. He is regarded by many as one of the leading and most influential anti-apartheid cultural activists, artists and documentary photographers in the country. He is the author and co-author of six books and since the mid-sixties curated numerous exhibitions. He is the recipient of a number of awards for painting and photography, including the Sir Basil Schonland Award, Arts South Africa Today 1965, the Sir Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Award, Arts South Africa Today 1969, the Natal Society Of Arts – Annual Award 1968, and “Images of Africa” First Prize at the African Arts Festival in Denmark, 1993. In December 2017 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch. In April 2018 President Cyril Ramaphosa awarded him the National Order of Ikhamanga (silver).
