2026 | The Enduring Relevance of the Iconic June 16 {Photograph} taken by Dr Sam Nzima

Keynote handle delivered on the sixth Annual Dr Sam Nzima Memorial Lecture

Prof Nalini Moodley, Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts and Design.
2026 occupies a exceptional place in South Africa’s historic calendar. It is a yr during which a number of important anniversaries converge, inviting us not solely to recollect the previous but in addition to replicate critically on the journey that has introduced us to the current.

This yr marks seventy years for the reason that Women’s March of 1956, when twenty thousand girls from throughout South Africa marched to the Union Buildings in one of the vital highly effective acts of collective resistance in our historical past. 2026 additionally marks thirty years for the reason that Constitution of the Republic of South Africa was signed into legislation in December 1996, establishing a democratic framework based upon human dignity, equality, and freedom. And 2026 marks fifty years since 16^th June 1976, when 1000’s of schoolchildren took to the streets of Soweto in protest in opposition to an schooling system designed to disclaim them each alternative and humanity.

It can also be value noting that 2026 additionally marks the 200^th anniversary for the reason that daybreak of the artwork and science of Photography. In 1826 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced what’s extensively recognised as the primary everlasting {photograph}.  The {photograph}, one in all modernity’s most ubiquitous visible varieties, since then has pervaded our expertise of the world.

These anniversaries collectively inform a bigger story about South Africa, and about bizarre folks confronting extraordinary injustice. They inform the story of ladies demanding recognition, of younger folks demanding instructional freedom and asserting their company, and of a nation looking for to construct a democratic future from the ruins of apartheid.

But for these of us working inside universities, the anniversary of June 16 holds specific significance primarily as a result of it was an rebellion about schooling. It was about who has the precise to be taught; who determines the language of studying; whose data is valued, and finally, what sort of society schooling ought to serve.

The college students who marched on that winter morning had been bravely difficult an schooling system that sought to outline the boundaries of their aspirations and in doing so, they essentially remodeled the connection between youth, schooling, and political company in South Africa.

The picture of Hector Peterson as captured by Dr Sam Nzima.
Of all of the anniversaries we mark in 2026, June 16^th occupies a novel place as a result of a lot of how we keep in mind it’s mediated via a single {photograph}. Captured by Sam Nzima, the {photograph} of Hector Pieterson being carried via the streets of Soweto has grow to be one of the vital recognised photographs in South African historical past and 50 years later, it stays way over {a photograph}. It is a doc, a visible textual content and a memorial. It is a reminder of the profound energy of photographs to form how societies keep in mind, perceive, and reply to historical past.

This anniversary serves as a key marker of South African History, the place greater than 176 younger folks had been misplaced to this nation. Therefore this fiftieth anniversary invitations us to pause and replicate on the place we’ve got come from, what we’ve got discovered, what we’ve got achieved, and most significantly, what stays unfinished. It asks us to revisit one of many defining moments in South Africa’s historical past and to think about its enduring significance for schooling, youth, democracy, and for the methods during which we re-member. Re-membering is just not simple. When we re-member, we’re accumulating the scattered components of our thoughts, experiences, or id and reassembling them so we might be complete once more. Therefore, to ensure that us as a rustic and a folks to maneuver ahead as a complete, we should re-member. But with a purpose to keep in mind you want one thing on which to focus and that is the the place the criticality of images comes into play. The {photograph} offers us one thing of the previous that’s realised and manufactured for us within the current. While some images document historical past, and a few assist us perceive it, a really uncommon few drive us to alter it.

The picture of the dying 12 yr outdated Hector Pieterson being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo whereas his sister Antoinette Sithole runs beside them in anguish, grew to become one the defining visible texts of apartheid South Africa. While the apartheid state may censor speeches, imprison activists and ban organisations, it couldn’t silence a picture as soon as the world has seen it. That is the facility of a picture.

This energy serves not solely to doc but in addition to form reminiscence and make historical past.  In that singular second of horror and urgency that historical past was unfolding earlier than him, Nzima understood that what he was witnessing was bigger than the speedy occasion. He recognised that this was not simply merely a picture of a kid however a picture of a complete political system collapsing underneath the load of its personal violence.

The political and emotional foreign money carried by {a photograph} is commonly what secures its iconic standing. Indeed, C S Peirce, the founding father of semiology, defines an icon as an indication that bears a resemblance to the truth it represents. In this sense, the Hector Pieterson {photograph} features as way over a documentary picture however as a visible signal of a nationwide trauma, and a defining chapter in South Africa’s historical past.

As a photographer Dr Nzima occupied a deeply paradoxical place in society. Photographers are each current and absent, observers and contributors, and witnesses and archivists. They have the distinctive privilege to face inside historical past because it unfolds however they’re additionally burdened by what they witness, for to witness struggling is in and of itself, a type of struggling.

Sam Nzima was greater than a photographer. He was a visible historian who grew to become a witness to historical past within the making; but the privilege of witnessing is commonly accompanied by a profound burden. Photographers who work in moments of battle, injustice, and human struggling carry tasks that stretch far past the technical act of creating a picture. In such moments, the photographer bears witness not just for themselves however, in lots of respects, for humanity. The most enduring images are sometimes those who stay with us lengthy after we’ve got encountered them. They grow to be embedded in our collective consciousness as a result of they compel us to confront realities that we would in any other case want to not see.

For students of visible tradition, the importance of a picture lies not solely in what it depicts however within the tough questions it raises in regards to the act of trying. It reminds us that iconic images usually emerges from circumstances of profound human anguish the place the photographer does greater than merely document affected by a distance. To witness such moments repeatedly is, in some measure, to soak up their emotional weight, resulting in the photographer not merely capturing struggling, however absorbing it. 

In this manner an iconic {photograph} compresses a complete political disaster into one emotionally accessible human second, condensing the tragedy of historical past right into a single arresting picture. Iconic photographs strip away political abstraction and confront us with the consequence of human struggling which is plain within the expressions of Antoinette and Mbuyisa.

From Left: Mr Thulani Nzima (Sam Nzima Foundation); Prof Nalini and the TUT Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof Tinyiko Maluleke.
From an analytical standpoint this {photograph} is a masterclass in visible storytelling with a robust convergence of material and composition.

The sturdy diagonal within the physique of Hector Pieterson, who’s within the centre of the composition instantly attracts the viewer to him, creating a focus round which all the picture is organised. He is each the bodily centre and the emotional centre of the body as every thing radiates from his physique. The {photograph} is structured powerfully in a triangular composition which is without doubt one of the most enduring compositional buildings in Western artwork as a result of it creates each steadiness and coherence.

Movement is one other vital factor of the composition. Mbuyisa is operating. Antoinette is operating. The urgency of their motion creates a way of momentum that propels the viewer ahead with them. We usually are not observing an occasion from a distance however the viewer is up shut and drawn into the drama. The directionality of the picture suggests a bigger narrative unfolding outdoors the body.

If we have a look at distinction and steadiness the physique of Hector Pieterson remains to be, whereas the encircling figures are in movement and filled with expression. This juxtaposition between stillness and urgency of motion intensifies the emotional influence of the picture with the tonal contrasts making a stark relationship between gentle and darkish that heightens the drama of the scene and directs consideration towards the figures. It is theatrical!

One of the essential points of the picture’s energy is what it excludes. The police or perpetrators are absent. The gun is absent. The act of violence itself is absent however the penalties dominate the picture. The {photograph} doesn’t present apartheid however its penalties. This is finally what distinguishes this iconic {photograph} from being merely an necessary one.

In addition to worldwide presence one of many calls for of an iconic picture is its continued and a number of utilization. This picture of the dying Hector Pieterson continues to flow into inside South African public life and in so doing has moved past journalism and entered the realm of cultural reminiscence. The picture has been tailored and reinterpreted by successive generations of artists looking for to have interaction with questions of reminiscence, trauma, justice, and nationhood.

In conclusion take into account three reflections. The first is company. Hector Pieterson didn’t select to grow to be a worldwide image of resistance. Nor did his mom and sister select to have the physique of their cherished one on the entrance pages of newspapers the world over. Mbuyisa Makhubu didn’t select to grow to be one of the vital recognisable figures in South African historical past. Nor did Sam Nzima select to have his life irrevocably remodeled following the publication of his picture.

While the {photograph} helped expose the brutality of apartheid to the world, it additionally reminds us that historical past usually extracts a deeply private price from those that grow to be its symbols. This raises an necessary query for our personal time: what tasks do we stock towards these whose lives grow to be the topics of our each day lives, our narratives, and our collective reminiscence?

A second reflection considerations the enduring energy of photographs. For fifty years the picture has been reproduced in textbooks, museums, memorials, exhibitions, documentaries, artworks, and public commemorations. Rather than diminishing its significance, this continuous circulation has strengthened it. The {photograph} has grow to be a part of South Africa’s visible consciousness and successive generations proceed to come across June sixteenth via Nzima’s lens.

A last reflection considerations the long run. Sam Nzima’s life, arts and struggling is finally a clarion name in opposition to complacency. The technology of 1976 challenged us to rethink schooling, justice, and human dignity. Fifty years later, universities stay uniquely positioned to advance these conversations. We now inhabit a world remodeled by synthetic intelligence, algorithmic media, digital manipulation, and unprecedented volumes of picture manufacturing. The questions dealing with us are subsequently completely different, although no much less pressing.

How will we defend the integrity of visible reality in an age when seeing is not believing? With digital manipulation rights of kids and girls are compromised and this has led to international locations like Australia, Finland, China and France imposing restrictions on social media utilization.

How can we be certain that creatives usually are not silenced however supported? Today artists create and work in a harmful age of creative censorship with brutal funding cuts creating  an unsustainable future for the humanities. How then will we safeguard the mental property of artists and cultural practitioners whose work continues to form public understanding whereas they too, like Nzima, are standing inside historical past? And maybe most significantly, what photographs are being created immediately that future generations will use to know our personal historic second?

These usually are not merely questions for photographers or artists alone. These are questions for universities and establishments of upper studying to grapple with. They are questions for governments and for the general public at massive. We have a collective duty to the artivists of this world. If one picture may change the trajectory of this nation, we should agree that with out artists our future is in jeopardy.

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