The Sad Story of the June 16 Photographer

Aside: The June 16 Connection

I recently ran the Great East Marathon in rural Mpumalanga. Whilst walking to the start line, I got chatting to race director Musa Khumalo. I asked if there was anyone famous who hailed from the area and he mentioned ‘The June 16 Photographer’. I made a mental note to investigate this after the marathon. Whilst writing the race report for the Great East Marathon, I did some research and was intrigued by the photographer’s story – here it is.

In the 1940s a young man called Sam Nzima, from Kildares’ neighbouring village of Lilydale, was inspired by the beauty and animals of the Kruger National Park to start taking photos. In another time and different circumstances he would have received fame, accolades and awards but today few people recognise his name – and it was only recently that he received any credit at all for a photograph that shaped South Africa’s history.

Whilst the photo is internationally acclaimed (Time Magazine selected it as one of the 100 most influential photos of all time*) and is instantly recognisable to South Africans, it brought the man who captured it nothing but misery and frustration.

* It is the only South African photo on the list although the ‘Starving Child with Vulture’ picture that the much more celebrated and famous Pulitzer Prize Winning South African photographer, Kevin Carter, took in Ayod, Sudan is also on the list.

Masana Samuel “Sam” Nzima was born on 8 August 1934 in the village of Lillydale. Young Sam wanted to stay in school but there was a system on the local farm where boys who came of age needed to earn their keep by working on the farm. So, instead of starting high school, Sam was pressed into farm labour, which he hated. After a few months working the fields, he fled to Johannesburg. Here he found work as a gardener and managed to complete his high school education. He then found work as a waiter at the Savoy Hotel and was able to refine his photography skills after being mentored by a photographer he befriended at the hotel.

His photographic skills earned him some freelance work and eventually a full-time photojournalist position at The World (a black daily Johannesburg newspaper formerly known as The Bantu World).

It was in this capacity as a photojournalist that he found himself in Vilakazi Street, Soweto, covering the student uprisings to protest the decision that all mathematics and science school lessons would henceforth only be taught in Afrikaans. The date was of course June 16, 1976 and the image that Sam Nzima captured was that of a fatally wounded 13-year old boy, Hector Pieterson, carried by a distraught Mbuyisa Makhubu and flanked by Hector’s devastated sister Antoinette. Mbuyisa was fleeing the gunfire and took Hector to the closest vehicle he could find, which happened to be that of the press core. Hector Pieterson had been shot in the head by a policeman’s bullet and was pronounce dead on arrival at the Phefeni Clinic.

Sam knew he had captured a significant image and hid the spool of film in his sock. All his other rolls of film where confiscated by the police shortly thereafter. The next day the photo appeared on the front page of The World and shortly thereafter in the foreign (especially British) press. The photo is credited in opening the apathetic eyes of the international community to the horrors and brutality of Apartheid.

Sam received a R100 bonus for the picture. It was the last piece of photojournalism he would ever do. The security police started targeting students, journalists and photographers who had been at the June 16 uprising. Mbuyisa Makhubu disappeared without a trace a few months later. When Sam received a tip-off from a police informant that his life was in danger, he resigned from the paper, uprooted his family and fled back to Lilydale. His hopes of living a quiet life were in vain as a member of the local Nelspruit security police confronted him with, “We know what you did.” Sam was placed under house arrest for 18 months and was continually harassed and threatened.

Sam struggled for years to get the copyright to the picture which belonged to The Argus (who owned The World). He finally received the rights to his picture in 1998 after the Independent Newspapers Group bought the Argus Group. However, this still brought him very little recognition, fame or financial gain. When the Hector Pieterson Museum was opened in Soweto in 2002 it prominently featured his photos but Sam’s name was missing from any credits or acknowledgements. As recently as 2006, a Mail and Guardian article commemorating the June 16 uprising credited the photo to another (much better known) photographer, Peter Magubane.

Sam Nzima outside the liquor store he owned in Lilyvale holding the Pentax camera he used to capture the June 16 uprising photos (photo from The Citizen).

Sam Nzima eventually received some recognition for his contribution to photojournalism when he was awarded the bronze National Order of Ikhamanga from the presidency on Freedom Day in 2011 (17-years after South Africa achieved democracy).

Although Sam’s house arrest officially ended in 1979, he never left Lilydale nor took another professional photo. Masana Samuel “Sam” Nzima collapsed at home in May 2018 and died shortly there afterwards at the age of 83.