SAM Nzima, the photographer who took the picture of the mortally wounded Hector Pieterson on June 16 1976 during the Soweto uprising, is flying to German on Tuesday, where he has been invited as a VIP to an international photo exhibition.

Nzima will be accompanied by other South African journalists who played a role during the riots in 1976 when the youth fought vigorously against apartheid.

He will be part of an exhibition that will also look at apartheid and at which Denis Goldberg will launch his autobiography The Mission at the South African embassy in Berlin.

Goldberg was active in the struggle and was imprisoned along with other key members of the liberation movements on Robben Island.

Nzima will share his own experiences of apartheid on the opening day of the event. Next Friday Nzima and other photographers will travel to Cologne for an interview with one of the country's leading broadcasters .

"On Thursday and Friday evenings and at the weekend we might arrange meetings with the youth organisation of the metal workers' union and with workers," said a letter Nzima received from one of the organisers. He was over the moon about the invitation when Sowetan spoke to him yesterday.

"I'm happy that the Germans are honouring me. This is one of my most important invitations after the one in which I met (then US president) Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary at the Hector Pieterson Museum in the early 1990s."