The famous South African photographer and artist, Peter Magubane, breathed his last, after the age of more than 91 years and the decades he lived to draw the world’s attention through the lenses of his camera to the daily suffering of dark-skinned people in South Africa under the apartheid policy.
Magubane gained fame after joining Drum magazine in 1955 as one of the few dark-skinned photographers covering the era of repression.
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South African photographer Peter Magubane
A year later, a historic photo, taken in an affluent neighborhood in the city of Johannesburg, showed a white girl sitting on a long bench labeled “For Europeans Only,” while a girl sat behind her, combing the child’s hair.
In the 1960s, in the midst of the rise of the anti-apartheid movement, his lenses recorded the arrest of the great freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and the banning of the now ruling African National Congress party.
A decade later, he won international awards for his coverage of the student uprising in Soweto.
Magubane has long been subjected to harassment, attacks and arrests. Starting in 1969, he was thrown into solitary confinement for 586 days.
But Magubane continued taking pictures until he was appointed Mandela's official photographer in the 1990s.
“He was someone who made very great sacrifices for the freedom we enjoy today,” said his granddaughter, Olongile Magubane.
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A visitor views an exhibition by photographer Peter Magubane
She added, “He was lucky and lived to see the country change for the better.”
Magubane was born in 1932 in the suburb of Vrededorp, now called Bedgview, in Johannesburg, and grew up in Sophiatown, which was once a center for famous dark-skinned artists and was eventually destroyed during the apartheid regime.
His daughter, Fikile Magubane, said he died peacefully around midday. He would have turned 92 years old on January 18.
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