From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

/ When Nelson Mandela stepped through the gates of Victor Verster Prison Farm last week, TIME's Peter Magubane was on hand to photograph the moment. The two men would not have the opportunity to embrace until two days later, however, when Magubane would be called to a secret location on Mandela's first day back in Johannesburg. "I wasn't taking pictures," Magubane says. "I said, 'You look quite good. You haven't changed.' It was a relief to see him out of prison." Two nights later, the two men, who have known each other nearly 40 years, shared a chicken curry dinner in Mandela's Soweto home.

Throughout his 35-year career, Magubane, 58, has been on hand for most of South Africa's historic moments. He photographed Mandela's Rivonia trial in 1964 and covered the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, which claimed the lives of 69 blacks. "I had never seen so many dead people," he recalls. Later, his editor would chide him for hanging back from the bloodshed and not taking any close-ups. "From that day," he says, "I decided I was not going to get emotionally involved, or at least not until after I have done my work."

In the course of his work, Magubane has frequently felt the brutality of the apartheid laws. He has been arrested several times, was once detained in solitary confinement for 586 days and was also banned for five years, which meant he was prohibited from being with more than one other person at a time and required to report to a police station once a week. From 1969 to 1975, Magubane was forced to quit journalism because of the restrictions imposed by the government.

Magubane's touching photograph of Mandela hugging a grandchild appears in this week's issue. But as far as Mandela is concerned, the most important picture Magubane took last week is a small black-and-white head shot. Informed that Mandela wanted to apply for a passport in case he was called to African National Congress headquarters in Zambia, Magubane obliged by shooting a roll of black-and-white film and having it developed overnight. The next day Mandela's lawyer showed up to take Magubane's photographs to the passport office in Johannesburg.