Peter Magubane, a South African photojournalist who chronicled decades of violence during the country’s apartheid era including the Soweto student uprising of 1976, died Monday aged 91.
Magubane also became the official photographer of Nelson Mandela when the anti-apartheid leader was released from prison in 1990 and until he became president four years later, according to AFP.
The SACEF journalists’ association said “he passed on today (Monday) peacefully surrounded by his family.”
“He was very passionate about his work, everything else would stop when it comes to his work,” his daughter Fikile told SABC television.

 

 

“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 X.
One of his most iconic images, from 1956, captured a young white girl sitting on a bench marked “Europeans Only”, her black maid sitting behind her on the other side of the bench.
He focused on documenting the harsh reality of apartheid and key moments in the struggle for equality.
In 1969, he was arrested while covering protests in front of the prison where Winnie Mandela was being held. He was imprisoned and spent 586 days in solitary confinement, and upon release ordered to stop his photography activities for five years. Magubane was again arrested in 1971 and held for several months.
During the Soweto uprising of 1976, he captured some of the most striking images and gained widespread notoriety.
Magubane published about 15 books, some of which were banned under the apartheid regime that ruled South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s.