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South Africa: President Pays Tribute to Renowned Photographer Magubane

todayJanuary 11, 2024 2

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President Cyril Ramaphosa has paid tribute to globally renowned photographer, Dr Peter Magubane, for fearlessly using his camera to capture the atrocities of apartheid while putting his life in danger.

“Despite all attempts to break his spirit and to take him away from his craft, he would not put his camera down. His work documenting apartheid helped shift global opinion against the regime. We have heard of how he would smuggle his cameras into hollowed out bread, milk cartons and I am told even the Bible, to take pictures without the notice of the authorities,” the President said on Wednesday.

Delivering the eulogy at Magubane’s Provincial Official Funeral in Johannesburg, President Ramaphosa said the apartheid regime did not care much for the lives it was extinguishing, but it cared a great deal about its image, especially about how it was portrayed to the rest of the world.

“Peter Magubane’s images, and those of his peers, upended Hendrik Verwoerd’s great lie that apartheid was benign benevolence, a system of the separate but equal, and so-called good neighbourliness. He used his camera to record the experiences and struggles of black South Africans during apartheid. These images reached the world’s media and revealed to the international community the injustices that characterised South Africa at that time.

“As The New York Times obituary put it, Peter Magubane’s images documenting the cruelties and violence of apartheid drew global acclaim but punishment at home, including beatings, imprisonment and 586 consecutive days of solitary confinement,” he said.

Magubane passed away on 01 January 2024 at the age of 91. His photographic career began in 1955 after he joined Drum magazine as a driver and messenger.

He soon became a darkroom assistant where his major assignment was covering the African National Congress 1955 convention. He used his camera to record the experiences and struggles of black South Africans during apartheid.

“His archive testifies to an extraordinary range. For many years, he was President Mandela’s official photographer. Some of the most enduring images we have of Madiba were taken by his lens.

“He was there at the many turning points in the struggle against apartheid, and covered the various states of emergency during the mid 1980’s. There are his stark images that documented the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, the 1976 Soweto Uprising, and the many other acts of violence unleashed by the regime.