The Enduring Relevance of the Iconic June 16 Photograph taken by Dr Sam Nzima

Keynote address delivered at the 6th Annual Dr Sam Nzima Memorial Lecture

Prof Nalini Moodley, Executive Dean, Faculty of Arts and Design. 2026 occupies a remarkable place in South Africa's historical calendar. It is a year in which several significant anniversaries converge, inviting us not only to remember the past but also to reflect critically on the journey that has brought us to the present.

This year marks seventy years since the Women's March of 1956, when twenty thousand women from across South Africa marched to the Union Buildings in one of the most powerful acts of collective resistance in our history. 2026 also marks thirty years since the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa was signed into law in December 1996, establishing a democratic framework founded upon human dignity, equality, and freedom. And 2026 marks fifty years since 16^th June 1976, when thousands of schoolchildren took to the streets of Soweto in protest against an education system designed to deny them both opportunity and humanity.

It is also worth noting that 2026 also marks the 200^th anniversary since the dawn of the art and science of Photography. In 1826 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced what is widely recognised as the first permanent photograph.  The photograph, one of modernity’s most ubiquitous visual forms, since then has pervaded our experience of the world.

These anniversaries collectively tell a larger story about South Africa, and about ordinary people confronting extraordinary injustice. They tell the story of women demanding recognition, of young people demanding educational freedom and asserting their agency, and of a nation seeking to build a democratic future from the ruins of apartheid.

But for those of us working within universities, the anniversary of June 16 holds particular significance primarily because it was an uprising about education. It was about who has the right to learn; who determines the language of learning; whose knowledge is valued, and ultimately, what kind of society education should serve.

The students who marched on that winter morning were bravely challenging an education system that sought to define the limits of their aspirations and in doing so, they fundamentally transformed the relationship between youth, education, and political agency in South Africa.

The image of Hector Peterson as captured by Dr Sam Nzima. Of all the anniversaries we mark in 2026, June 16^th occupies a unique place because much of how we remember it is mediated through a single photograph. Captured by Sam Nzima, the photograph of Hector Pieterson being carried through the streets of Soweto has become one of the most recognised images in South African history and 50 years later, it remains far more than a photograph. It is a document, a visual text and a memorial. It is a reminder of the profound power of images to shape how societies remember, understand, and respond to history.

This anniversary serves as a key marker of South African History, where more than 176 young people were lost to this country. Therefore this 50th anniversary invites us to pause and reflect on where we have come from, what we have learned, what we have achieved, and most importantly, what remains unfinished. It asks us to revisit one of the defining moments in South Africa's history and to consider its enduring significance for education, youth, democracy, and for the ways in which we re-member. Re-membering is not easy. When we re-member, we are collecting the scattered parts of our mind, experiences, or identity and reassembling them so we can be whole again. Therefore, in order for us as a country and a people to move forward as a whole, we must re-member. But in order to remember you need something on which to focus and this is the where the criticality of photography comes into play. The photograph gives us something of the past that is realised and manufactured for us in the present. While some photographs record history, and some help us understand it, a very rare few force us to change it.

The image of the dying 12 year old Hector Pieterson being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo while his sister Antoinette Sithole runs beside them in anguish, became one the defining visual texts of apartheid South Africa. While the apartheid state could censor speeches, imprison activists and ban organisations, it could not silence an image once the world has seen it. That is the power of an image.

This power serves not only to document but also to shape memory and make history.  In that singular moment of horror and urgency that history was unfolding before him, Nzima understood that what he was witnessing was larger than the immediate event. He recognised that this was not just simply an image of a child but an image of an entire political system collapsing under the weight of its own violence.

The political and emotional currency carried by a photograph is often what secures its iconic status. Indeed, C S Peirce, the founder of semiology, defines an icon as a sign that bears a resemblance to the reality it represents. In this sense, the Hector Pieterson photograph functions as far more than a documentary image but as a visual sign of a national trauma, and a defining chapter in South Africa's history.

As a photographer Dr Nzima occupied a deeply paradoxical position in society. Photographers are both present and absent, observers and participants, and witnesses and archivists. They have the unique privilege to stand inside history as it unfolds but they are also burdened by what they witness, for to witness suffering is in and of itself, a form of suffering.

Sam Nzima was more than a photographer. He was a visual historian who became a witness to history in the making; yet the privilege of witnessing is often accompanied by a profound burden. Photographers who work in moments of conflict, injustice, and human suffering carry responsibilities that extend far beyond the technical act of making an image. In such moments, the photographer bears witness not only for themselves but, in many respects, for humanity. The most enduring photographs are often those that remain with us long after we have encountered them. They become embedded in our collective consciousness because they compel us to confront realities that we might otherwise prefer not to see.

For scholars of visual culture, the significance of an image lies not only in what it depicts but in the difficult questions it raises about the act of looking. It reminds us that iconic photography often emerges from circumstances of profound human anguish where the photographer does more than simply record suffering from a distance. To witness such moments repeatedly is, in some measure, to absorb their emotional weight, leading to the photographer not simply capturing suffering, but absorbing it. 

In this way an iconic photograph compresses an entire political crisis into one emotionally accessible human moment, condensing the tragedy of history into a single arresting image. Iconic images strip away political abstraction and confront us with the consequence of human suffering which is undeniable in 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 point of view this photograph is a masterclass in visual storytelling with a powerful convergence of subject matter and composition.

The strong diagonal in the body of Hector Pieterson, who is in the centre of the composition immediately draws the viewer to him, creating a focal point around which the entire image is organised. He is both the physical centre and the emotional centre of the frame as everything radiates from his body. The photograph is structured powerfully in a triangular composition which is one of the most enduring compositional structures in Western art because it creates both balance and coherence.

Movement is another critical element of the composition. Mbuyisa is running. Antoinette is running. The urgency of their movement creates a sense of momentum that propels the viewer forward with them. We are not observing an event from a distance but the viewer is up close and drawn into the drama. The directionality of the image suggests a larger narrative unfolding outside the frame.

If we look at contrast and balance the body of Hector Pieterson is still, while the surrounding figures are in motion and full of expression. This juxtaposition between stillness and urgency of movement intensifies the emotional impact of the image with the tonal contrasts creating a stark relationship between light and dark that heightens the drama of the scene and directs attention toward the figures. It is theatrical!

One of the crucial aspects of the image’s power is what it excludes. The police or perpetrators are absent. The gun is absent. The act of violence itself is absent but the consequences dominate the image. The photograph does not show apartheid but its consequences. This is ultimately what distinguishes this iconic photograph from being merely an important one.

In addition to international presence one of the demands of an iconic photo is its continued and multiple usage. This image of the dying Hector Pieterson continues to circulate within South African public life and in so doing has moved beyond journalism and entered the realm of cultural memory. The image has been adapted and reinterpreted by successive generations of artists seeking to engage with questions of memory, trauma, justice, and nationhood.

In conclusion consider three reflections. The first is agency. Hector Pieterson did not choose to become a global symbol of resistance. Nor did his mother and sister choose to have the body of their loved one on the front pages of newspapers across the world. Mbuyisa Makhubu did not choose to become one of the most recognisable figures in South African history. Nor did Sam Nzima choose to have his life irrevocably transformed following the publication of his image.

While the photograph helped expose the brutality of apartheid to the world, it also reminds us that history often extracts a deeply personal cost from those who become its symbols. This raises an important question for our own time: what responsibilities do we carry toward those whose lives become the subjects of our daily lives, our narratives, and our collective memory?

A second reflection concerns the enduring power of images. For fifty years the image has been reproduced in textbooks, museums, memorials, exhibitions, documentaries, artworks, and public commemorations. Rather than diminishing its significance, this continual circulation has reinforced it. The photograph has become part of South Africa's visual consciousness and successive generations continue to encounter June 16th through Nzima's lens.

A final reflection concerns the future. Sam Nzima’s life, arts and suffering is ultimately a clarion call against complacency. The generation of 1976 challenged us to reconsider education, justice, and human dignity. Fifty years later, universities remain uniquely positioned to advance those conversations. We now inhabit a world transformed by artificial intelligence, algorithmic media, digital manipulation, and unprecedented volumes of image production. The questions facing us are therefore different, though no less urgent.

How do we protect the integrity of visual truth in an age when seeing is no longer believing? With digital manipulation rights of children and women are compromised and this has led to countries like Australia, Finland, China and France imposing restrictions on social media usage.

How can we ensure that creatives are not silenced but supported? Today artists create and work in a dangerous age of artistic censorship with brutal funding cuts creating  an unsustainable future for the arts. How then do we safeguard the intellectual property of artists and cultural practitioners whose work continues to shape public understanding while they too, like Nzima, are standing inside history? And perhaps most importantly, what images are being created today that future generations will use to understand our own historical moment?

These are not simply questions for photographers or artists alone. These are questions for universities and institutions of higher learning to grapple with. They are questions for governments and for the public at large. We have a collective responsibility to the artivists of this world. If one image could change the trajectory of this country, we must agree that without artists our future is in jeopardy.

Livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1W6BKH2bx8