<figure class="wp-block-gallery columns-3 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex"><ul class="blocks-gallery-grid"><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-2-of-13-1024x683.jpg" alt="" data-id="51362" data-full-url="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-2-of-13-scaled.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=51362" class="wp-image-51362" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-2-of-13-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-2-of-13-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-2-of-13-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-2-of-13-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, 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data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=51369" class="wp-image-51369" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-9-of-13-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-9-of-13-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-9-of-13-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-9-of-13-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-9-of-13-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-1024x683.jpg" alt="" data-id="51370" data-full-url="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-scaled.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=51370" class="wp-image-51370" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-10-of-13-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="blocks-gallery-item__caption"> </figcaption></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-1024x683.jpg" alt="" data-id="51371" data-full-url="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-scaled.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=51371" class="wp-image-51371" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-11-of-13-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="blocks-gallery-item__caption"> </figcaption></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-1024x683.jpg" alt="" data-id="51372" data-full-url="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-scaled.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=51372" class="wp-image-51372" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-12-of-13-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><figure><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-1024x683.jpg" alt="" data-id="51373" data-full-url="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-scaled.jpg" data-link="https://www.forbesafrica.com/?attachment_id=51373" class="wp-image-51373" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Fight-With-Insight-13-of-13-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></li></ul><figcaption class="blocks-gallery-caption">Young boxers participate in activities at a new Fight With Insight boxing gym, launched on Youth Day at Hillbrow in Johannesburg, South Africa, with founder Luke Lamprecht, the gyms assist in training and feeding inner-city youth in Johannesburg; photographs by Yeshiel Panchia</figcaption></figure>



Today marks 45 years of the Soweto Uprising in South Africa, when thousands of unhappy schoolchildren challenging an apartheid regime fearlessly took to the streets protesting being taught in Afrikaans. June 16 1976 ended in fire, fear and tears. Commemorated as Youth Day in South Africa, FORBES AFRICA captures the rousing emotions of today, but in a boxing ring in inner city Johannesburg, where the youth now bond over sport as part of a broader upliftment program.



June 16 is a hallowed day in South African history, observed as Youth Day commemorating the student uprising of 1976 in Soweto which saw students lead demonstrations against an education system that would eventually lead to menial jobs. Some 20,000 students partook in what was to be a peaceful protest, but when the day was over, at least 176 had been killed by the bullets and brutality of apartheid. The children laid down their lives but it marked a new chapter in South Africa’s liberation struggle.



Across South Africa today are events marking the memory of that fateful day, and FORBES AFRICA joined one such occasion of hope and healing in Hillbrow, a residential neighborhood in Johannesburg, for the opening of a third gym for inner-city youth by Fight With Insight, a youth empowerment initiative directed by Luke Lamprecht, a child protection and development specialist.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Children have had dreams put on hold or broken altogether; schooling has been disrupted; families separated; and food and social security systems taken away from them.”</blockquote>



Lamprecht founded the first such gym in Johannesburg in 2006, and chose Youth Day this year to mark the opening of his latest outlet, offering daily training to aspiring boxers as also supplying healthy meals to them. “2020 has been a bad year to be a child,” says Lamprecht to FORBES AFRICA, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic that put the brakes on the social and psychological development of young children, and dried up the support networks and sustenance that many of them depended on to lead normal lives.



“Children have had dreams put on hold or broken altogether; schooling has been disrupted; families separated; and food and social security systems taken away from them.”



His initiative aims to meet some of these deficiencies, offering camaraderie, exercise, food and above all, belief and purpose to children in need. The advocacy aspect is not new to the personnel at Fight With Insight, as they have provided training and food even within Covid-19 lockdown restrictions all of last year. At their height, they served 1.4 tonnes of food a day. However, this June 16 marks an easier time than the last, with children ending training before their meal by breaking a paper chain – symbolizing breaking free of the challenges and restrictions that hold them back.



Many of the urban youth at the center say they find both their physical and emotional sustenance inside the ring. They are in it to win this perennial fight called life.

Fight With Insight (2 of 13)

Youth Day Photo Essay: Gloves On For The Big Fight Called Life

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’

His face contorts slightly as he, slowly, but painfully, returns through the murky mist of 42 years. His hands tremble with emotion as he relives horrific images lodged in the corners of his mind. The birds singing in the blue sky over the idyllic garden of his family home in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, contrasting with the moody, mean, streets of Soweto of yore.
Eightythree-year-old Enoch Duma lived the slaughter of scores of schoolchildren on that fateful winter’s day in Soweto in 1976. It was his job to be there as a reporter for a Johannesburg newspaper and he had his own car. He knew serious trouble was building. Many of the schoolchildren involved used to call him “Bra E” and held him in high esteem.
“I just knew the previous night the people were uneasy as if something was going to happen, some people didn’t go to work. You had people like Tsietsi Mashinini, Seth Mazibuko and other student leaders coming to your house. I was always ahead of what was happening,” recalls Duma.
On the morning of June 16, Duma was out driving through the tense streets of Soweto and saw a big crowd approaching.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2013/12/01/rose-soweto-rose/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: How The Rose Of Soweto Rose</a>
“They ran to my car. Tsietse said ‘hey! Soweto is burning – it is bad, it is very bad, just stay ahead of things. Hide if you can hide because there is going to be trouble tonight. If the police shoot we are going to answer with petrol bombs’. This was something new in Soweto.”
The mood turned ugly when news filtered through the crowd in Orlando that police had shot dead a young student, Hector Pieterson – a bloody killing captured for eternity by the famous photograph by Sam Nzima that he smuggled out through police lines to make the front pages everywhere from New York to Sydney the next day.
“When people heard it was Hector they were very angry. They armed themselves with Molotov Cocktails and started throwing these petrol bombs recklessly. They were just mad,” says Duma.
The birds outside tweet, incongruously, as Duma’s face darkens with the deepening story.
“I can still see the madness in their faces and their anger. They didn’t know what to do,” he says.
“I saw a burning body thrown into a dustbin. I couldn’t stand it I had to drive through. There were moments when I thought I wasn’t going to make it. It was difficult to see where the students were coming from. They were coming out of buildings with Molotov Cocktails and some carried dustbin lids as shields. Among the leaders were very young people. The real fighters were the little girls – they were ready to die.”
Among them, Susan Shabangu who spent months on the run in the clampdown that followed; like many of the survivors, she escaped into exile to fight the struggle and ended up as her country’s mining and social development minister.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/06/01/walking-day-horror/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Walking Into A Day Of Horror</a>
It was a horrific chapter of a rich career that saw Duma, the son of a Baptist minister, born in Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, work his way from reporting the courts in his hometown to working on a national newspaper. He joined The Post in Durban through a friend, who was a reporter on the paper, called Duke Ncobo.
“The newspaper wanted a young cub reporter and suggested I should write two stories for the editor. He read them and looked at me and read them and looked at me and said ‘did you write this or did someone write this for you?’ I said ‘no’. He said ‘go to Mr Ncobo’, who said ‘I think the editor likes you’!”
His first arrest came in bizarre fashion. Ncobo invited the young Duma to a party in a block of flats in downtown Durban belonging to the leading lights of the African National Congress including Fatima Meer and journalist GR Naidoo.
An elderly woman living below called the police complaining of the noise; the police, who suspected the party was a front for a political meeting among people of color, encouraged her to press charge. They arrested 27 partygoers including Duma and threw them in the cells.
The court case turned into farce. The elderly lady, in her 70s, complained that the partygoers had banged the floor above her as they danced. In court, the judge asked the lady to demonstrate the dance. There were titters in court as ushers cleared the chairs away and the lady did a high-stepping dance. The judge ruled she hadn’t made sufficient noise to convince him, yet Duma and his colleagues were held to have been a public nuisance.
Duma secured a job on the City Post, amid the bright lights and jazz of 1950s Johannesburg and arrived at Park Station with nothing but a suitcase. A van from the newspaper picked him up to take him to the newsroom buzzing with young journalists.
“You must pretend to be one of them, otherwise they will give you a hard time,” chirped the driver.
These were colorful and chaotic times for young black journalists at the City Post. A regular caller with stories was a young and vivacious social worker called Winnie Mandela.
“Winnie Mandela, she was very young used to come to the office and was very friendly with reporters. The gangsters respected Winnie,” says Duma.
Gangsters and guns were another part of newsroom life at the City Post. Gangs ruled many of the Johannesburg streets in the 1950s – the Spoilers, the Americans and the Msomi gang.
Their leaders used to waltz in off the street with wide-brimmed hats and long fine coats looking more Chicago than sub-Saharan Africa. Often, they carried small “baby brown” pistols, sometimes concealed in a bandage, to intimidate journalists for a number of sins. 
It could be to force them to stay away from their girlfriends or stop writing about them or start writing about them. Often a gun up the nose proved mightier than the pen, until one day.
“One day, they came and they found the deputy editor having a meeting with the reporters. The gangsters introduced themselves and the deputy editor Henk Margolis, an American brought in to work on the paper, says: ‘Gentlemen, can I help you?’
“They pointed a gun at him, Henk noticed this and was not scared. ‘If you think you can intimidate me you are wrong, I was born in Chicago, so I have not time for small fry’. That day we thought there was going to be a showdown. Henk grabbed hold of the leader and pushed him outside. That was the last time the gangs came to the office,” says Duma with a smile.
It turned out that gangsters with police uniforms on proved to be Duma’s downfall. He was arrested numerous times and ended up spending nine months in prison. He went into exile in the United States (US) and with his wife of 56 years, Kitty, he was a prime mover in the divestment campaign – encouraging US firms to pull out of South Africa – that helped usher in the end of apartheid.
A system that stoked the fiery horror of June 16 that people who were there will never forget.

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Soweto Burning: June 16 Remembered

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: Soweto Uprising

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