Peter Magubane, photographer who documented apartheid, dies aged 91

Peter Magubane, the renowned artist-photographer who shed light on the everyday struggles of black South Africans for decades under apartheid, died on Monday. He was 91.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said for most of his life Magubane had “created iconic visual records of our struggle for freedom and of the full range of life in our country.”

“On behalf of government and the nation, I offer my deep condolences to the Magubane family, our veteran’s friends and his countless associates around the country and globally,” Ramaphosa said on X, formerly known as Twitter.   

After joining Drum magazine in 1955, Magubane gained prominence as one of the few black photographers covering the repressive era.

One of his landmark images, taken a year later in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb, showed a white girl sitting on a bench with a sign reading “Europeans Only” while a black worker sat behind her combing her hair.

In the 1960s, amid a surge in anti-apartheid activism, he covered Nelson Mandela's arrest and the banning of the ANC. A decade on, he was winning international accolades with his coverage of the Soweto student uprising.

He was regularly harassed, assaulted, arrested and, starting in 1969, locked up for 586 days of solitary confinement. But Magubane kept taking photos and, in the 1990s, was appointed as newly-released Mandela's official photographer.

He was “someone who made very big sacrifices for the freedom that we enjoy today,” his granddaughter Ulungile Magubane told Reuters.

“Luckily he was alive to see the country change for the better,” she said.

Born in 1932 in the Johannesburg suburb of Vrededorp — now Pageview — Magubane grew up in Sophiatown, once a hub to famous black artists that was eventually destroyed under apartheid.

He died peacefully around midday, his daughter Fikile Magubane said. He would have turned 92 on January 18. 

The SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) lauded Magubane as a giant in the field of photojournalism who will forever be remembered as one of the courageous journalists who defiantly opposed the apartheid regime in SA.

“Throughout the oppressive years of apartheid, he faced harassment, beatings, buckshot wounds, and prolonged periods of interrogation and detention. Remarkably, he survived being shot 17 times at a student's funeral in Natalspruit, Gauteng.

“Magubane's resistance was not only evident in his actions but also in his creative methods of capturing the truth. He ingeniously hid his camera in a hollowed-out Bible, firing with a cable release from his pocket.

“On other occasions, he covertly took shots with his camera concealed beneath his jacket, inside a milk carton, or half a loaf of bread, pretending to eat while documenting crucial moments.”

Internationally, Magubane showcased his photographic talent in London during the early 1960s and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine between 1978 and 1980. In 1980, he temporarily left SA for New York. His contributions extended to major publications such as National Geographic, Life, New York Times, Washington Post, Paris Match, and Sports Illustrated, Sanef said.

Additionally, the UN benefited from his lens through commissions from the UN High Commission for Refugees and Unicef.

“After the dawn of democracy in SA,Magubane redirected his lens towards capturing the complexities of tribal and territorial conflicts, as well as the cultural traditions of post-democratic SA,” Sanef said.

Among his numerous honours, Magubane considered the South African Order of Meritorious Service Silver Class II, bestowed upon him by President Nelson Mandela, as his greatest. He received the American National Professional Photographers Association Humanistic Award for intervening to prevent violence and became the first black South African to win Press Photo of the Year in 1958.

Reuters and TimesLIVE