On April 18, 2015, Oatway was on assignment for the Sunday Times covering Xenophobic violence in Alexandra Township in Johannesburg when he photographed a group of South African men beating and stabbing Emmanuel Sithole, a Mozambican trader.
Oatway and his colleague, reporter Beauregard Tromp, took Sithole to a nearby clinic but were told that no doctors were on duty.
[16] The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) was deployed to Alexandra the next day in an attempt to quell the violence.
By looking at the photos we were forced to share his pain, as he laid in the mud begging for mercy,"[20] James Oatway was heavily criticized for not having intervened to save Emmanuel Sithole's life.
Oatway told TIME “I don’t have any regrets about taking the pictures,” adding: "I think my presence there distracted them and did discourage them.
[2] Greg Marinovich, the Pulitzer prize winning photographer and author of The Bang-Bang Club defended Oatway's actions.
[37] In 2015 he was on the panel of judges for the News Division of the Pictures of the Year International Awards held at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism.