Legendary photographer Sam Nzima was “at the right spot at the right time” when he took the iconic June 16 picture of a dying Hector Pieterson in the arms of a distraught Mbuyisa Makhubu, with the 13-year-old’s sister, Antoinette, running along in school uniform, according to veteran photographer Dan Makate (Tleketle).
It was that image, syndicated about two hours after it was captured, that alerted the world to the atrocities committed by the South African apartheid regime - responding with guns and live ammunition, to children’s protests against their policy of enforcing Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools.
Makate was Nzima’s boss as chief photographer at The World newspaper. A year later, in 1977, in what was called a Black Wednesday, The World and its weekend edition were banned by apartheid justice minister Jimmy Kruger. The editor, Percy Qoboza, together with some journalists, were detained without trial for almost a year.
At the time of the student march, The World journalists had been tipped off by a colleague Duma Ndlovu - now a producer of a popular television soapie - to the planned march by Soweto secondary and high school pupils.
Makate says he and a group of journalists, including the late Sophie Tema, the late Moffat Zungu, Shadrack Khumalo and Nzima were dispatched to Naledi High School where the march had begun early on the morning of June 16.
They followed the peaceful protest as children hoisted placards and sang on the streets all the way to Orlando West High School.
The photographers’ brief was not to take pictures of faces of the marchers as the children feared those would be used by the security police to track them down, says Makate, adding that children from primary schools, like Hector, were not included but followed the marchers out of curiosity.
“Although the march was meant to be a secret, we knew all along because youngsters such as Duma Ndlovu and Gabu Tugwana at the Rand Daily Mail had been in touch with the students and had tipped us off that they were going to march.
“We walked with these kids all the way until Phefeni. Then along Vilakazi Street, next to Orlando West High and Orlando West Zulu Junior Secondary, where the first signs of trouble started after other pupils had joined their counterparts on the streets.
“The police arrived in a convoy and parked a few metres away from the children.
“Then a Sergeant Botha from Orlando police station, who was sent by the headquarters in Protea, told the kids to disperse. When they didn’t budge, he set two dogs on the children.
“Normally people run away from police dogs, and this is probably what the police expected the children to do. But they dealt with the dogs, they killed them and then placed a placard with ‘away with Afrikaans’ on their carcasses.
“During apartheid days, if you killed a police dog, you were as good as dead because you would have killed a policeman. The police were fuming and went for their guns and were ready to shoot.
“But Moffat Zungu got in between the kids and police and screamed ‘Don’t shoot’. There is a picture of this scene where Moffat has his hands up.
“After defusing the situation, we went down following the marchers all the way to where the Hector Pieterson Memorial is standing today, and up until then there were no other violent scenes, just a march against Afrikaans.
“When we got to Uncle Tom’s Hall, Pieterson’s sister (Antoinette) had a container with petrol plus a newspaper and, coincidentally, the paper was The World. She and a few others were going towards a police car parked next to the traffic lights.
“The middle-aged white policeman and his colleague were standing next to the car. But when they saw this group advance, the one opened the boot of his car, pulled out a rifle and started shooting.
“I don’t think his intention was to shoot the advancing pupils, but tragically, because he used live ammunition, the bullet struck Hector who was following his sister like all the younger children from primary schools.
“When Hector got shot, Antoinette dropped the canister and ran towards her brother. It was at that moment that Nzima got the historical shot. It was just one shot at the right angle. We all had pictures like that, but none of us captured anything like what Sam had. Sam was able to capture the right moment, in time. Sam was closest to the real thing,” says Makate.
According to Makate, the bullet that killed Hector was the one that brought on the outrage of the students who at that moment went “berserk”, throwing stones at every car in sight. As photographers, they had their hands full trying to protect two white nuns who were caught in the mayhem.
“When that shot was fired, that’s when hell broke loose. Even as reporters, we couldn’t intervene and convince the pupils to stop. We found ourselves just clicking and clicking, no longer protecting faces. Alf Kumalo lost a lens when the kids beat him up and he fell, breaking it.”
As chief photographer, Makate’s task was to choose the main front-page picture for the paper that would best capture the historical moment of the Soweto riots. Among all the pictures taken that day, he decided that Nzima’s was the one. It is said Nzima hid the film in his sock so that the police wouldn’t confisticate it.
“I had to take Sam’s film, go to the office and process it and choose the right one. Sam’s picture was the best, but there was resistance in the newsroom with some white subs who felt that using such a picture would cause a war. But Qoboza intervened and backed my decision to go with Sam’s picture. Then, within two hours, the whole world knew what was happening in South Africa.
“Sam was at the right time and right place and he clicked. He never took any other picture like that ever again...”