Humphrey Tyler, who has died at the age of 84, was the only reporter to witness the Sharpeville massacre on March 21 1960 in which 69 people were shot dead by the police during a peaceful protest against the pass laws.

He was working on Drum magazine at the time.After receiving a call to say there was "trouble" near Vereeniging, south of Johannesburg, he and Drum photographer Ian Berry set out in the editor's car, which, as luck would have it, looked like the cars used by the police Special Branch.When they got there they saw three Saracen armoured cars heading for the township and followed them in, helped by the fact that the police in the Saracens thought they were also police.They found a large crowd outside the police station at Sharpeville. The Saracens went through the gate while Tyler and Berry hung around in the crowd outside.Everybody seemed calm, even cheerful, he wrote subsequently. Except the police. By midday he thought nothing was going to happen and suggested to Berry that they leave.Just then, without warning, the shooting started."I was mesmerised," wrote Tyler. "People were running wildly. Children were jumping over the grass stalks like rabbits, some of them holding up the back of their shirt or coat collars against their heads - to protect themselves from bullets, I suppose."A young man and his girl trotted past. The young woman suddenly fell. The man went back. The woman was lying face down. The man tried to help her up. He turned her over. He looked at his hand, there was blood on it. The woman's chest was shot out. He said: 'My God, she's gone!'"A policeman on top of one of the Saracens was firing a machine gun of some kind, moving it slowly from side to side, like panning a movie camera. He was shooting as many people as he could. Gradually the shooting petered out."Tyler and Berry sped off with a Saracen in hot pursuit."Behind us in the field were dead people, shoes, parcels, bicycles. Many were sitting dazed in the dry grass. Sixty-nine people had been shot dead and 178 injured. Most were shot in the back."Tyler's office and flat were raided by the police that night, but he and Berry had hidden their account and pictures of the massacre in their lawyer's safe.Tyler's report, which appeared in Contact, a fortnightly newspaper, was banned immediately. By that time the story had gone around the world.The Anglican bishop of Johannesburg, Ambrose Reeves, who fled to Swaziland in the ensuing state of emergency, advised Tyler to get out as well.Tyler wrote a book about the events preceding and following the massacre,Life in the Time of Sharpeville. His story starts with his arrest while covering the signing of the Freedom Charter in Kliptown in 1955.Tyler was born in Johannesburg on May 6 1932. After matriculating at St John's College he studied fine art at the University of the Witwatersrand and then taught Latin and maths. He gave up teaching for journalism after a pupil in his Latin class suggested he would earn more in a circus.He became editor of Drum where he worked with writers Can Themba, Zeke Mphahlele, Casey Motsisi and Todd Matshikiza, and photographers such as Jürgen Schadeberg, Peter Magubane, Bob Gosani and Berry.He became editorial director of The World, the first national daily for Africans and forerunner of the Sowetan newspaper.The World was first with the story of Nelson Mandela's life sentence, in 1964.Tyler's reporter scooped the competition when he ran from the Pretoria courthouse to a greengrocer and phoned the judgment to The World's office in Johannesburg.Tyler later became the South African correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.He was an assistant editor at the Cape Argus and deputy editor of the Sunday Tribune.He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Pat, and daughter, Jo.1932- 2016..