The University of Pretoria (UP) has conferred an honorary doctorate in visual arts on legendary photographer Peter Magubane in recognition of a body of work that has made him one of South Africa’s most renowned photojournalists.

“Dr Magubane is an inspiration to all of us here at the University of Pretoria, and we are proud to honour him with this well-deserved honorary doctorate,” said Professor Tawana Kupe, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UP. “His work has not only captured the spirit of the anti-apartheid struggle, but also serves as a testament to the power of photography in telling important stories that need to be heard.” 

Dr Magubane faced police torture and 586 days of solitary confinement for his work in documenting the truth about the social injustices that transpired during South Africa’s apartheid era.

UP is simultaneously celebrating Dr Magubane’s work by exhibiting his photography at the UP Student Gallery for the duration of May 2023.

His granddaughter, Ulungile Magubane, read his acceptance in his absence. “Fellow graduates, what a beautiful day for me to graduate at the University of Pretoria with all you students,” he wrote. “How lucky I am to be 91 of age and be graduating. How wonderful and blessed I feel to experience this honour with all the young people today, and to have my family here to celebrate this day with me. I write these words so humbled to receive this honour.”

He said that he had dedicated his life to documenting South African history, culture, and social issues through photography. “I have used images rather than words to show the world what was going on in our country. I always understood that history needed not only to be written by the vanguard, but also by the vanquished. I dedicated my life and my eyes to the cause of the truth-teller.”

Peter Magubane on location documenting The BaNtwane for his book ‘The BaNtwane: Africa's Undiscovered People’. (Image: David Meyer-Gollan)

The ceremony was attended by dignitaries, academics, friends, family, and members of the media, who all came to witness the occasion and experience the exhibition of some of the work that made Dr Magubane the first black photographer to win a photographic prize in 1958, when the first and third prizes were awarded to him for the year’s best press pictures.

Genre Pretorius, Gallery Manager at UP’s Student Gallery, said the University of Pretoria is proud to have put together an exhibition featuring 140 images spanning over 60 years of pivotal moments in South African history. “The exhibition also serves as a collaborative space for the School of the Arts, engaging students from the Fine Arts, Visual Studies, and Drama programmes. We are honoured to be part of Dr Magubane’s legacy, which continues to inspire young people across the country to be passionate, hardworking, and optimistic for a better future,” she said.

The exhibition, titled Magubane’s South Africa, is a retrospective of work curated by Dr Magubane's friend and colleague of 20 years, David Meyer-Gollan.

‘Magubane’s South Africa’ features 140 images spanning over 60 years of pivotal moments in South African history. (Installation image: Lerato Ntili)

In the opening line to his Exhibition Statement, Meyer-Gollan writes, “Today, looking back to when a schoolboy who was born on 18 January 1932 in Vrededorp (now Pageview) and started experimenting with a Kodak Brownie camera that was bought for him by his father, nobody could imagine that one day that child would say, ‘I am holding history in my hands.’”

He goes on to tell the story of Dr Magubane’s quest to report the truth to the world.

It was no easy mission – he defied censorship and found himself subject to police torture, and ultimately 586 days of solitary confinement for photographing protesters outside the prison where Winnie Mandela and 21 other political activists were being detained in 1969. This punishment was coupled with a five-year banning order, which forced him to resign from his job at the Rand Daily Mail. Still, despite being rearrested in 1971 and having his house destroyed by fire in 1976, his determination to document the truth went undimmed.

Dr Magubane was prolific in the post-apartheid years, producing visual histories of South African communities published in several books, including Vanishing Cultures of South Africa, Changing Customs in a Changing World, African Renaissance, and The BaNtwane: Africa’s Undiscovered People.

“I did not have a traditional education like many of you achievers here in this room,” he wrote in his acceptance speech. “My education has been the university of life: The township streets, the rural areas, the farms, the homesteads, prison cells, detention halls, false arrests, solitary confinements, and police beatings. Everything I have come to learn in my life I have learned on the go. All I had in those dark days of apartheid was my work, and a very rough sense of hope that God could not allow my people to suffer forever. I hoped that my images would move someone somewhere to do something.”

* To find out more about the exhibition, email Genre Pretorius, Gallery Manager at the UP Student Gallery, at [email protected]