Forty-four years ago on this day, bullets tore through a peaceful school protest in South Africa ending in bloody riots and an uprising that got the world’s attention. Two of the students from the time shudder as they reflect on that cold, dark morning in June.



Forty-four years ago on this day, ‘Soweto Uprising’, South Africa’s famed student protest, led to bullets, fire and tears and an iconic photograph the world came to associate with the country’s brutal apartheid regime.



On June 16, 1976, a day etched in blood in South African history, 13-year-old school student, Hector Pieterson, was shot dead in the police firing that ensued, a moment captured for posterity by photographer Sam Nzima.



Even today, there are those who distinctly remember the coldness of that dark day, when all that the students protested was being taught in Afrikaans, a language they felt was oppressive.



Oupa Moloto, now 63, who was then a student at the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto where it all started and who was thrown into prison after that horrific day, recalls it vividly. He thought it was going to be a peaceful protest, but it turned out to be a day filled with bullets, police dogs, burning tyres and angry students. &nbsp;



Moloto had first spoken to FORBES AFRICA in 2016 when he had shared all the details. The memories of that day will never fade away.



“Finding ourselves singing in the streets as young people, challenging the government of the day, it was just excitement. The sadness that is going to remain with us and going to be indelible in our lives is when the police started shooting at young people, that is the one incident that one will never forget for as long as I live,” he tells FORBES AFRICA.



The protests started in Soweto and quickly moved to other townships in South Africa such as Alexandra and Tembisa. Towards the end of the week, the whole country was standing up against the government and everybody got involved; even adults and children in Bulwer, a small town in the KwaZulu-Natal region where Duduzile Dlamini-Ndubane was a student at Pholela High School.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="576" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-576x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-46130" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-576x1024.jpeg 576w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-300x533.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-600x1067.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-169x300.jpeg 169w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-768x1365.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01-864x1536.jpeg 864w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Dlamini-01.jpeg 900w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 576px) 100vw, 576px" /><figcaption>Duduzile Dlamini-Ndubane in KwaZulu-Natal</figcaption></figure>



She says they were told not to go to class by a group of male students on that Wednesday morning, and she was not too sure how they had received the information on the nationwide protest against teaching in the Afrikaans language.



“We made our way to the school grounds, we started singing, some students didn&#8217;t even know what was happening but nonetheless stayed with the group. We were then chased out of the school grounds and told to go back home. It was a noisy protest but no police came and there were no injuries,” remembers Dlamini-Ndubane.



Today, she is a professional nurse based in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa and Youth Day to her is a constant reminder that unity is key.



“When we unite behind a great cause, we change not only the current situation, but we make history. Youth need to unite and fight the right causes to change the world for the greater good,” she says.



Back in Soweto, Moloto says the struggle of today is an economic one for young people.



“Students are looking for economic freedom, hence #FeesMustFall; they want to get into the institute of learning without being in debt because they believe education can help them to be part of the economy of the country,” he says.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“When Hector died in 1976, he belonged to no party, he was just a student who died for all political affiliations of the time.&#8221;</blockquote>



However, going back to the Soweto Uprising, Moloto disagrees on how the commemoration of it has changed from then to now.



“In 1977, when we were commemorating, it was more of a unity, all political parties would gather at Regina Mundi to celebrate, today, the fight is no longer in a unified fashion. The municipalities and organizations have their own way of commemorating like AZAPO visits the Tsietsi Mashinini grave and the City of Johannesburg visits the Hector Pieterson Museum. That lack of unity is what concerns me. As long as we are not united when we commemorate, this day does not have an impact,” he says.



“When Hector died in 1976, he belonged to no party, he was just a student who died for all political affiliations of the time; we need to unify.”



After that eventful day, the liberation movements benefited because thousands of students joined political parties inside and outside of the country. June 16 was a catalyst in South Africa’s struggle for democracy, and scripted by the students in the nation’s history books.

Oupa Moloto 027

From The Singing To The Shooting: ‘Will Never Forget For As Long As I live’

It’s not often I find myself driving past the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum in Orlando West, in Soweto, an urban township in Johannesburg.
But come June every year, I inevitably steer my car to the site, mentally revisiting the carnage that happened here in 1976; the student protest and the police firing that led to an iconic photograph the world came to associate with South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime.
Two years ago, one of my assignments with FORBES AFRICA was to pursue a story on the ‘Soweto Uprising’. Thankfully, the museum gave me three vital leads to reconstruct the events of June 16, a day etched in blood in South African history.
It was a Tuesday when I met my first contact, Oupa Moloto, who then was a student at the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto where it all started.
“On the day of the event, the school started a little earlier; the mood was different, the students were excited but the teachers couldn’t pick it up,” recalled Moloto of the first stirrings of the protest against the mandatory use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in black secondary schools.
After the interview, I visited the school and walking around, could sense around me the nervous excitement of the students like it was 42 years ago. I could hear their voices, singing and chanting as we stood where the last assembly was held, before the shots were fired at them.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2018/06/04/soweto-burning-june-16-remembered/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Soweto Burning: June 16 Remembered</a>
I photographed Moloto at their then assembly point and his face was a picture of sorrow. The school has been renovated since but in the older building, are still some vestiges of that time – broken windows and furniture.
A few weeks later, I met with Barney Mokgatle at his home in Alexandra, another township. He was one of the students who went into exile after the tragic march.
“The police were hunting for us, we could not sleep in one place for two nights because there were people selling us out,” said Mokgatle.
Mokgatle was the right hand man to Tsietsi Mashinini who led the march and later died in exile. 
He talked me through every detail; he also said Pieterson was not the first student shot at the march.
Perhaps more intriguing was his recounting of their escape and journey to Botswana through the bushes without fear of the wilderness, with their other friend Selby Semela.
He started singing, the masculine man had a voice of the angels; it was remarkable. As soon as the humming started, I almost shed a tear, I could feel their struggle and strength as they dodged bullets and teargas in the Soweto streets wearing blazers and ties, some running with missing shoes.
But at that moment, they were crossing serene bushes unaware of the hungry beasts around them lurking in the dark all the way to the borders of Botswana.
A few days later, we met again for a shoot where a statue of his friend Mashinini was erected not far from the Morris Isaacson school. He didn’t come to Soweto often but when he saw the statue, he paused, staring at it. He finally turned and we continued walking to a wall where he showed me a collage of his two friends and himself.
The story wouldn’t be complete without speaking to the ‘girl’ in the iconic photograph of Pieterson taken by Sam Nzima. Antoinette Pieterson, the older sister, who is 58 today.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sometime-in-africa/2017/04/01/soweto-boy-afrikaner-haven/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: A Soweto Boy In An Afrikaner Haven</a>
“I saw Mbuyisa [Makhubu, the boy carrying Pieterson in the famous photograph] coming from nowhere; I didn’t know him at the time. He was running towards me, he passed me. I saw he was carrying a person and I could recognize Pieterson’s shoe, I ran with him,” she recounted.
Today, as I walk the streets of Orlando, I think of the privilege I enjoyed of choosing between either isiZulu or Afrikaans as a second language in school.
Thanks to the class of 1976, we had the freedom.

Barney-031

The Class Of 1976 – Soweto Uprising

This calm encounter on a spring morning in Sandton, Johannesburg, belies a man who forged his career amid fury. He cheated death at the hands of police to capture the Soweto school uprising, surely, one of the saddest stories ever told in Africa.
On June 16, 1976, Sam Nzima, a photojournalist at The World newspaper, in Johannesburg, took a picture of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying a 13-year-old dying Hector Pieterson from the Soweto massacre. He smuggled the film out in his sock and the picture hit the front pages of the world. The police wanted to destroy it – the image destroyed Nzima’s career.
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The picture changed the political landscape of South Africa; it made a fortune for the news agencies of the world, but he got nothing from it for 22 years.  The iconic image has been on everything from billboards to T-shirts.
“The picture of Hector Pieterson destroyed my future in journalism. I couldn’t continue as a journalist because of that picture and I would never put my life in danger, I was forced to leave everything behind,” says Nzima.
Harassment from police forced Nzima to become a small bottle store owner in the small village Lilydale, in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga. It took him 22 years of struggle to get his copyright back.
“The copyright of the Hector Pieterson Photo was given to me on the November 16, 1998 by Independent Newspapers Holdings Limited and was registered with Webber Wentzel Bowens Attorneys Notaries &amp; Conveyancers intellectual property lawyers in Johannesburg on July 20, 2000,” he says.
The day he risked his life for the picture is as clear as yesterday.
“As early as 6AM in the morning of June 16, I was covering a student march in Naledi High in Soweto with a colleague Sophie Tema. We found the students busy writing placards opposing new Bantu education laws. This followed a circular sent to the schools that Afrikaans will be the medium of instruction,” says Nzima.
When the march reached Morris Isaacson High, a student leader Tsietsi Mashinini addressed students from the top of a tree saying the march was to be a peaceful, says Nzima. Shortly after, armed police arrived in armoured vehicles and instructed all to disperse. The children sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in defiance.
Nzima says the singing agitated a police commander who instructed his officers to open fire. The students ran and Nzima hid in a house.
“I got out from the house, the police had ceased firing, and I saw a little child falling down. There comes this tall boy Mbuyisa and picked him up. As Mbuyisa picked him up, I went with my camera. I was also shooting with my camera, under the shower of police bullets. Mbuyisa was running to the nearest car, the nearest press car was our Volkswagen Beetle. I managed to shoot six sequences of him carrying Hector. My colleague Sophie Tema opened the door and they put Hector inside. Hector was certified dead upon arriving in Phefeni Clinic,” says Nzima.
“I knew the police would come back for me, I wound the film and stashed it in my sock and then loaded another film. As I anticipated, the police came back and grabbed me after they ran away for some few minutes. They took my three cameras and exposed my films. When they thought they had destroyed the evidence, our driver Thomas Khoza rushed the film to The World office. The picture was published the next day.”
Nzima’s gallant work with his camera on that violent winter day in 1976 was to wreck his life. When police came knocking on his door, Nzima left his job in Johannesburg and ended up under house arrest in the remote town of Bushbuckridge, far from his family in Soweto.
“After two days I received a call from the station commander at John Vorster Square, he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Percy Qoboza was my editor at The World. He advised me to stay away from the police if I don’t want to come back as corpse.”
Qoboza told the commander to invite him, the editor, for tea instead. This led to a police instruction to shoot Nzima if they found him photographing, a police insider told him at the time.
In April 2011, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma awarded Nzima with the Order of Ikhamanga for excellence in liberal art.
“If popularity was cash, I was going to tell you I am a millionaire or billionaire. Many people know this picture but some don’t know the man behind it. I was shocked in 2010 when I was invited in Berlin at a school called Hector Pieterson Schule. The school was renamed in celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall. Germans compared their freedom to the South African independence.”
“Money was not that much, no rewards in cash but I had recognition from the state president. At the beginning I regretted [taking] this picture because this picture destroyed my journalistic career, I lost my job and my friends in Johannesburg. But now I am rejoicing because I am getting high publicity, I have become an icon in South Africa. Maybe one day I will reap a jackpot from some quarters.”
A Sam Nzima Foundation will be opened, including a school for photojournalists, in his hometown near Bushbuckridge. This is where Nzima has a makeshift darkroom that he uses to train school children in his village of Lilydale.
“After the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, I was brave enough to pick up my camera and continue where I left, but all these years I was afraid to do that. The original camera that captured Hector Pieterson is still intact; I have kept it safe in those years.”
When Hillary Clinton visited South Africa for the first time, in the 1990s, she wanted to see Nzima at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. She offered to buy the camera, but Winnie Mandela advised Nzima against selling. She said it was the property of the state. Nzima also refused to donate his Pantex camera, with 50mm lens, to the ANC Women’s League.
“I was happy not to sell it, but if it was good money she was offering, I would have been happier to sell. It’s because it’s better enjoying my life when I can than keeping the camera. One day, I will show people of South Africa that this is a camera that brought their freedom. But the person who struggled for freedom gets nothing.”
“South Africans do not value me but I do get recognition from other countries. I remember in 2011 I was invited to exhibit my work in Belgium and address the parliament in Brussels. Parliamentarians showed interest in our history and the role I played in those days.”
Despite Nzima receiving lucrative offers from overseas for the camera, he says his conscience disapproves. It lives in his museum in Bushbuckridge.
“Now I cannot sell the camera, it has become the property of the state, it is our heritage. I have to consult with the politicians for a go-ahead; otherwise I will be frustrated again. If the government officials could learn that I had sold the camera overseas, they will ask me why I did it.”
Hector Pieterson was buried at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, and a museum in his memory was built near where he was shot, in 2002. His sister, Antoinette Sithole, the girl running alongside, is a curator at the museum and Makhubo was last traced in Nigeria. He went to exile after the photograph was published.
Every year on June 16, Nzima kneels and prays for the fallen schoolchildren of Soweto. He escaped with his life from the terrible day but his career didn’t.

Tag: Sam Nzima

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