Dr. Peter Magubane, a 91-year-old renowned veteran photographer and anti-apartheid campaigner, passed away.
HowSouth has been informed by Magubane’s family that he passed away quietly at home on Monday afternoon.
After Nelson Mandela was released from prison in the early 1990s, the struggle veteran became his official photographer. He also documented the 1976 Soweto uprising.
Fikile Magubane, his daughter, stated that her father was ill prior to his demise.
“He would have been 92 on 18 January. He was an old person, but also he wasn’t well, let’s put it that way. He wasn’t well but age also.”
The SACEF journalists’ group stated that “he passed on today peacefully surrounded by his family” but did not provide a cause of death.
Before going behind the camera, Magubane worked in the photography lab of the black urban culture magazine Drum. He soon turned his attention to capturing important moments in the fight for equality as well as the brutal reality of apartheid.
While covering demonstrations in front of the jail housing Winnie Mandela and other activists in 1969, he was taken into custody.
After being imprisoned and kept in solitary confinement for 586 days, he was told to cease taking pictures for five years after his release.
In 1971, Magubane was caught once more and detained for a few months. He then resumed his work while attempting to avoid being observed by the authorities.
In 1976, he became well-known for capturing some of the most dramatic photos of the student rebellion in Soweto.
“South Africa has lost a freedom fighter, a masterful storyteller and lensman… Peter Magubane fearlessly documented apartheid’s injustices,” Culture Minister Zizi Kodwa wrote on social media.
