Omar Badsha was born in Durban in 1945. His father, Ebrahim Badsha, was a pioneering artist and a major influence on his son’s artistic and political activities.
In 1965 he submitted a small wood-cut to the Arts South Africa Today exhibition and was awarded the Sir Basil Schonland Prize. Over the next eight years he exhibited extensively, winning a number of prizes for his works. It was during this period that he met and developed a very close friendship with renowned artist Dumile Feni.
In 1970 Badsha worked alongside Rick Turner, Eli and Mewa Ramgobin and other activists on trade union and political issues. Together with Rick Turner and Laurie Schlemmer, he established the Education Reform Association, and later the Institute of Industrial Education. The revival of the Natal Indian Congress and the re-emergence of the trade union movement saw him working alongside Harriet Bolton, David Hempson, Halton Cheadle, and Harold Nxasana. They transformed the General Factory Workers Benefit Fund into an integral part of the independent, non-racial trade union movement. Badsha served on the board of the Labour Bulletin, a publication dedicated to the development of the trade union movement. Early in 1974 he played a key role in the establishment of the Chemical Workers Industrial Union and became its first secretary.
Badsha took up photography in 1976 and three years later, together with Fatima Meer, published his first book of photographic essays, Letter to Farzanah, which was immediately banned. He began working as a documentary photographer and political activist in the Inanda area of Durban and in 1984, his groundbreaking book Imijondolo (the Zulu word for shack) documenting life in the massive, informal settlements of Inanda, was published by Afrapix, an independent photographic agency and collective he helped establish in 1982. The collective played a leading role in shaping the tradition of social documentary photography and in documenting the popular struggles of the 1980s.
In 1982 he also became the head of the photography unit of the Second Carnegie Commission on Poverty and Development. In 1984 he edited and exhibited a collection of photographs titled South Africa: The Cordoned Heart. A book of the same title was published in 1985 and was critically acclaimed internationally. Despite a great deal of international pressure on the government, Badsha was not granted a passport to travel to the opening held at the ICP gallery in New York.
In 1987 Badsha moved to Cape Town to establish the Centre for Documentary Photography at the University of Cape Town. He became a leading artist and cultural activist in the United Democratic Front (UDF) and was one of the founding members and chairperson of the Cultural Workers Congress.
In 1990 Badsha was made head of the ANC’s Western Cape branch, spearheading the formation of FOSACO and participating in the formulation of the ANC’s cultural policies. He worked fulltime as a volunteer and head convener of the Mass Democratic Movement. Badsha also served on the political committee of the ANC’s Western Cape election campaign.
After 1994, Badsha was active in grassroots work among the youth and cultural workers. He was instrumental in establishing the Ikapa Arts Trust, which organised the annual Cape Town Festival.
In 1997 he moved with his family to Pretoria and in 1999 established South African History Online, a non-profit online history project which has become one of the largest history websites in Africa.
In 1995 he was the recipient of a grant by the Danish Government to document life in Denmark. Badsha travelled to India in 1996 at the request of the Indian Government and started a project to document life in his grandparents’ ancestral village in Gujarat.