TRIBUTES have been paid to South African press photographer Peter Magubane, who fearlessly captured the violence and horror of the apartheid era, following his death at the age of 91.

The South African National Editors Forum described Mr Magubane, who died on Monday, as a “legendary photojournalist,” while the South African government said that he had “covered the most historic moments in the liberation struggle against apartheid.”

Mr Magubane photographed 40 years of apartheid South Africa, including the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, the 1964 trial of Nelson Mandela and others and the Soweto uprising of 1976, when thousands of black students protested against the apartheid government making the Afrikaans language compulsory in school.

After police opened fire on the young protesters, killing at least 176 of them, Mr Magubane’s award-winning photographs told the world about the killings.

He was imprisoned numerous times, had shotgun pellets fired at him on 17 occasions by apartheid police, who also beat him up for refusing to give up the photographs he took of the Soweto uprisings, and also received a five-year ban that prevented him from working or even leaving home without police permission.