'A soldier on the front line of injustice': struggle photojournalist Peter Magubane laid to rest

It was a day of praise singing, sharing of memories and history at renowned anti-apartheid activist and photographer Peter Magubane's funeral in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

In his eulogy, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the funeral came at a time when South Africa is heading to the International Court of Justice in The Hague which will hear South Africa's case against Israel for alleged crimes against the Palestinians.

“Our opposition to the ongoing slaughter of the people of Gaza has driven us as a country to approach the ICJ.

“As a people who once tasted the bitter fruits of dispossession, discrimination, racism and state-sponsored violence we are clear that we will stand on the right side of history,” said Ramaphosa.

Magubane’s images, and those of his peers, overturned Hendrik Verwoerd’s “great lie that apartheid was benign benevolence, a system of separate but equal and so-called good neighbourliness”.

“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.

“For many years he [Magubane] was president [Nelson] Mandela’s official photographer. Some of the most enduring images we have of Madiba were taken by [Magubane]. He published several photography books, including 'Nelson Mandela: Man of the People', and 'Nelson Mandela: Life of Destiny'.

“He was at the many turning points in the struggle against apartheid and covered the various states of emergency during the mid-1980s,” Ramaphosa said.

Later, Magubane photographed heritage and culture.

“One of my favourite of his works, 'The Vanishing Cultures of South Africa'. It is an extraordinary collection that documents the lives, customs and cultures of our country’s ethnic groups.

“The images he began taking in the 1960s appeared in distinguished publications such as Drum magazine, Time magazine, the Rand Daily Mail and others,” said Ramaphosa.

Magubane's grandchildren also gave moving dedications and remembered him as a man of spirit and fire, witty and charming.

Granddaughter Lungile Magubane said he was a “soldier at the front line of injustice with a camera as his tool”.

“Social documentary of photography and photojournalism emerged at the forefront of the resistance efforts of apartheid in South Africa. Photography has moved people in ways that other art forms could not.

“Photography existed as a more accessible means of expression, a means of storytelling. It was not by mistake that it took precedent as an art form in challenging the system.”

She said he was more than a struggle photographer, also an artist who merged the personal with the political.

After joining Drum magazine in 1955, Magubane gained prominence as one of the few black photographers covering the repressive apartheid era, documenting the everyday struggles of black South Africans.

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.

Magubane died last Monday at the age of 91.

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