Human Rights Violation Hearings — Soweto — 1996-07-22

MR LEWIN: Please just tell us about '85.

PETER MAGUBANE: I will tell you briefly about just before '76 then I will deal with '85.  Before '76 my banning orders had just been lifted, in fact not lifted by expired.  I had been detained prior to my banning orders for 586 days in solitary confinement and I was banned for five years, which meant for 7 years I was not a photographer.  I did not earn a living as a photographer.  When '76 came I was hungry for pictures. I was hungry to get back to my community and this
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is why I did not think of my life first.  I was more concerned about what was happening to the students and to our people.  
 In 1985 I was covering a funeral in Katlehong when the police opened fire and shot me with buckshot 17 times below my waist.  But I survived because of the community in Katlehong.  The very school children who were there to bury their colleague came to my rescue.  They pulled me into the house when the police had left me for dead.  I am grateful to those people.  Had it not been for them I would not be alive to show you the history....

MR LEWIN: Take your time.

PETER MAGUBANE: I know that there are people that have paid a price for what they believe in.  And I know that there are people in other countries that have worse lives than some of us in this country but apartheid, to have lived under apartheid was worse than to live any other type of life that is led by people who are free.  We have tried not to use any violence whatsoever.
 Our children have been told that they are not supposed to study above standard 2 for there will be no need for them to know mathematics, to know history and geography for they will not be going to Europe.  The only language that they will understand is the master/servant relationship language.  And our children refused and said, yes you may have done it to our parents but we are not prepared to take it.  You can come with the might of your guns we will fight with our stones.  Our children did not use any guns then, all they used were stones, fighting guns with stones.  When you tried to talk to the policemen and you say what is it that you are doing, the answer you get, you have asked for it.  Some of 
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these children left their homes at a tender age and went to strange countries in Africa to become refugees.  Left their mothers, their fathers behind and did not have the motherly care, whilst the White people of South Africa had our mothers and they had the very children's mothers who had fled the country at a very tender age, to bring up their children. 
 I will never, never forget 1976.  I had never seen such brutality.  Yes I have seen the Sharpeville massacre. It happened one day.  The next day everybody went to work as if nothing has happened.  But June 16 you kill one you kill all.  Thank you.

MR LEWIN: Peter thanks very much indeed.  I just have one brief question to ask because you have given us a litany of places from Soweto to Katlehong, Duduza, all around the country and as an observer doing your job as you say, at some stage you must to have come to the answer of a question why?  Can you give us any beginnings of that answer?
(Tape ends....)

PETER MAGUBANE: I did not do my work as I was supposed to do.  I took pictures from a distance, did not concentrate that much because I got emotionally involved, but my editor Tom Hopkinson said to me you have pictures but they are not the type of pictures that I am looking for.  They are not the type of pictures that would make me want to buy a newspaper or a magazine.  They are not the type of pictures that people can look at and remember 20 years after.  If I didn't think that you had the potential of being a photographer one day I would fire you right away.  I urge you not to get emotionally involved again.  This is why I went from one place to the other to make sure that I have documented this
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event properly.  What I had in the back of my mind was history, and did not bother about myself and my children.  I said if other people can sacrifice why can I not sacrifice.  There are people out there who have sacrificed their lives and who am I to say I am afraid I am going to die.  When I went out with my camera that particular day I said to myself whatever happens and how difficult it may be I will come back with pictures.  Even if I had died during the course of my duty I know my children would have been looked after by other people.  At least I shall have got one or two pictures that would make history.

MR LEWIN: You have certainly done that.  Thanks very much.  Could I hand over back to the Chair.

THOMAS MANTHATA: I know it will sound absurd, there is this body that you found charred in Mafulo, was there a way later to have found out who that person was, either through the firm that he was driving for?

PETER MAGUBANE: No.  There was no name left on the truck, the truck was totally burnt out with this man underneath the truck.  So there was no way that we could have found out.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Did you think at that time that the Rand Daily Mail management was sympathetic to the reporters, you included?

PETER MAGUBANE: Yes the Rand Daily Mail was sympathetic.  They had two issues.  There was a town issue and then there was the Soweto Rand Daily Mail.  I was working for the town Rand Daily Mail, other people were doing the Soweto Rand Daily Mail.  They were very sympathetic.  It was the Rand Daily Mail, Die Beeld that did the best coverage of the Soweto uprising, and The World.  The Sunday Times, the Sunday Express did very, very little as far as the uprising
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was concerned.  The only time they had a report was when there was a White person that was injured in Soweto or in any areas where there was the uprising.  If a policeman was injured or whatever happened to policemen they would cover that.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Then there was this meeting that was held in Mzimhlophe where Dr Buthelezi was present, did you take photos of that?  I haven't looked.

PETER MAGUBANE: Yes I did take pictures of that.  There is a picture there that shows the impis with their sticks next to the houses in Mzimhlophe.  They were going from house to house looking for young men and young girls, and if they didn't find any they would smash the windows, smash the doors and take whatever is inside that they can carry along with them to the hostels.

THOMAS MANTHATA: You said that the people who were attacking Mzimhlophe, people who were later driven out by the people, my question was didn't the photos that you took of these people influence Dr Buthelezi to call for restraint, you know from the people who were attacking the Mzimhlophe residents?

PETER MAGUBANE: Dr Buthelezi that day of the Mbizo told the hostel dwellers that they should stop what they were doing.  But knowing hostel dwellers, that they don't take, they don't listen for they still on days where there were stayaways that were called, stay away from work, they would go to work and what would happen when they came back they would then be attacked by the youngsters in Mzimhlophe.  They in turn would attack the residents in the evening when the residents are asleep they would then be attacked.  But after that Mbizo it was easy for the community to get
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together and drive these people out of the hostels.

THOMAS MANTHATA: Thank you.

YASMINE SOOKA: Mr Magubane I would simply like to ask you one question please.  In a sense for the Truth Commission many of the profession are under scrutiny and also the different trades that people ply, in your opinion what opinion would you render on the newspaper industry, or rather should I say the media industry at that particular time in the way they effectively covered June the 16th?