My husband, Paddy Donnelly, who has died aged 70, was a South African who moved in the early 1980s to London. There he worked for the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (IDAF), which funded the legal costs of people tried or imprisoned for anti-apartheid activity.
In addition to its legal work, the IDAF had a large archive of photographs relating to apartheid, and Paddy ran that side of the operation, processing and distributing photos of ongoing state violence to media outlets, campaigning groups and many other organisations. He was an accomplished photographer himself, and many of his photos were held in the archive.
He had begun by taking pictures of townships and displaced people’s camps, and when he came to the UK he photographed anti-apartheid political meetings as well as visiting or exiled South African singers, musicians and activists.
Paddy was born in Germiston, south-east of Johannesburg, to parents of Irish descent: John, a bottle store manager, and Peggy (nee Sheridan), a yoga teacher. After attending the Christian Brothers school in Boksburg, near Germiston, he did national service in the Defence Force, where he avoided any serious soldiering by becoming a photographer. Afterwards he studied journalism and music at Rhodes University, Eastern Cape, before moving on to teach photography at Mafikeng College (now Mahikeng City College) in North West Province.
In his early 20s, over a two-year period, his father, mother and sister Marge all died of cancer, and after their deaths he decided to emigrate to the British Isles, first to be a photographer in Dublin and then to London, where in 1983 he joined the IDAF. We met when I visited the IDAF to source some photos for the publications section of World University Service, where I worked, and after many years together we married in 2016.
After four years at the IDAF, Paddy moved to the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod) in London, where for more than a decade he was their media officer, also briefing photographers who were sent to record projects that the agency supported around the world. During his time with Cafod he was invited to photograph Nelson Mandela on his July 1996 visit to London as president of South Africa.
In 2006 Paddy returned to his homeland to join Africa Media Matrix, a training department for investigative journalists and documentary film-makers based at Rhodes University. He worked there until he retired in 2021, and then returned to the UK to live in York.
There he sung in the Yorkshire Bach Choir, having previously been a member of the Barts and Highbury chamber choirs in London and the Byrdsongs choir in the Eastern Cape.
He donated some of his photos and archival material to the Legacy Centre in London, a history and education hub located in the former offices of the African National Congress.
Paddy is survived by me.
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