Thirty years ago...

It was on June 16, 1976, that The World newspaper photographer, Sam Nzima was assigned to a student march organised to show their anger at the enforcement of Afrikaans as the only medium of education instruction in all schools.

Nzima, now 72 years old recalls joining the students as they awaited the arrival of another group of students. While they waited, the police arrived — not simply for the purposes of monitoring, it would later seem.

"I just heard shouts, 'the police are coming!'," says Nzima, "Next thing I know they are telling the marchers from on top of their Casspir (armoured vehicle) that we had three minutes to disperse."

"I heard one of them say 'if you don't disperse in three minutes, I will shoot'."

State newspapers at the time reported one of the students hurling a bottle at one of the top police commissioners, Theuns Swanepool, known notoriously as "Rooi Rus" — the Red Russian. But Nzima remembers no show of violence from the school children.

"The crowd just started singing (the now-national anthem) Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika," Nzima recalls, "I think that is what provoked them."

Sacrifice

A shot rang out, the first student casualty, Hastings Ndlovu fell, and all hell broke loose.

A total of 23 children lost their lives that day. 23 children who would never know the gravity of their sacrifice.

"The call was given to fire at random into the crowd," says Nzima. "At the time, I was the only photographer on the scene, but as soon as the shots rang out, the photojournalists came running."

Among the first victims to fall on June 16, 1976 was Hector Pieterson, immortalised by the shot of his limp body being carried away from the killing field that was Orlando West.

"I saw this boy, with no threatening look at all, just panicked get shot down. Next thing, Mbuyiso Makhubo is carrying him, bleeding, in his arms with (Hector's) sister running next to him. They were going nowhere really. Just getting away."

"They must have been trying to get Hector to the Orlando Clinic. Mbuyiso got him there; but Hector never arrived."

A ruined career

The picture Nzima took as the three fleeing children rushed past him was distributed throughout the world and horrified people across the world.

"I never earned a cent off that picture then, but now I have to charge people to use it," Nzima laments. "That picture ruined my life."

Shortly after the picture was published, the special branch of the Security Police came looking for him.

"I was forced to leave Johannesburg," says Nzima, "I escaped them to Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, where I still live today."

"But they found me."

Nzima was placed under house arrest for 12 months, and made to sign a document of presence every Friday evening to ensure that he was at home.

"I couldn't work. I was ruined."

"No-one remembers Sam Nzima"

The picture had changed his life just as it had touched the hearts of millions of people around the globe. But while the picture turned the tide on apartheid and eventually helped lead to the downfall of the oppressive regime, it simultaneously buried the young photojournalist's career.

"The picture has gotten so much bigger than Sam Nzima," he says with a chuckle. "I think everyone knows the picture, they even know who's in the picture and the context it was taken in, but no-one remembers Sam Nzima."

"Yes the picture was to the nation's benefit and it helped a lot in changing the way the world saw our country, but at the same time it spelled the end of my life as a journalist.

Nzima will be celebrating Youth Day 2006, the 30th anniversary of the massacre, by joining a march from the infamous site of the shooting. Flanked by president Thabo Mbeki, marchers will walk from the intersection to the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto, where the president will lay a wreath at the marble memorial tablet bearing the names of the fallen students, before continuing on the the FNB Stadium.

Forgotten heroes

"There are different ways of experiencing days of remembrance," remarks Nzima. "You can either celebrate, or commemorate.

"The problem is, the youth of today will not necessarily understand why there is this public holiday. Friday (June 16) is not a day to get drunk in the forest, it is a day to remember what our forerunners have done for us. Lest they become forgotten heroes.

"This is a day of commemoration."

Nzima currently works with the rural children of Bushbuckridge, and is in the process of setting up the Sam Nzima Foundation for up-and-coming and aspirant photojournalists, with the help of the R20 000 pricetag that accompanies each use of the famous photograph.

"I want, in my own way, to help these kids understand the importance of that one shot that makes your life worthwhile. Even if you are forgotten in the process.

"Because photos are memories made public for everyone to see."

It's these memories, epitomised by the frozen horror of Makhubo and the limp body of Pieterson that symbolise not only the power of an image to mobilise opinion, but also the debt that the nation owes to the hundreds of schoolchildren who could not have known the impact they would have on history, that June day thirty years ago.