Guest Author - J. Claire K. Niala

It is often images of historical moments that leave indelible memories on our minds. In the case of the Soweto uprising it is the image of a 12 year old boy, Hector Peterson shot dead by the police that lead to an international outrage and exposed the brutality of the South African Aparthied Government.

It is this image that was re-enacted as on 16th June 2006, 30 years later the current South African President Thabo Mbeki led marchers along the route that had been followed by Hector Peterson and his fellow students. A young South African boy was carried and handed over from marcher to marcher in memory of the young people who gave their lives for their countries freedom.

When Tsietsi Mashinini led his fellow students to protest against the fact that PW Botha the then Minister for Bantu Education had issued a diktat that all students would have to study in Afrikaans, he had only one thing in mind - that the protests must be peaceful and that nothing must be done to antagonise the police.

The students had reason to be angry. Afrikaans was viewed as the language of the oppressor. They lived in squalid conditions and were forced to watch their parents regularly being abused and humiliated with no recourse. They had no say over their future, their schools were over croweded and had little by the way of facilities while their white counterparts just a few kilometers away experienced no such difficulties.

Despite all the reasons they had to be angry, the students had every intention of protesting peacefully and were simply marching along carrying their placards when the South African police first barricaded the march and then opened fire. An eyewitness described what he saw "They opened fire. They did not give any warning. They simply opened fire. Just like that. Just like that. And small children, small defenseless children, dropped down to the ground like swatted flies. This is murder, cold-blooded murder." (Mathabane 260)

The melee that ensued was horrific. Children with nothing but dust bin lids and school bags to defend themselves continued to protest, children continued to be killed. A recent BBC documentary interviwing those who were at the uprising spoke to a South African policeman who was there - he spoke of his fear and terror when confronted with the young students. It only goes to emphasize the oppressiveness of the regime that he was unable to see them as children as the death toll rose.

Official figures at the time stated somehere between 25 - 100 deaths while those in Soweto knew that it was closer to 500. Over half of those were children under 16. Some died as they ran into bullets, others as they ran away from them, some were trampled to death in the crush, others might have lived if they were able to have been treated by medical staff.

The uprising proved to be the trigger that lead to the contiued struggle that eventually won freedom for South Africa in 1994 some 18 years later. In the years between 1976 and 1994 many South Africans continued to be brutalised, imprisoned, exiled and lose their lives. Nomkitha Mashinini (Tsietsi's mother) reflected in a recent BBC interview "We thought it would just be a few months of struggle - unfortunately it didn't work out like that."

30 years later the lives of South Africans have changed forever. The Soweto uprising stands as testament to the courage of the youth who joined hands against injustice and struggled to seek freedom for not just themselves but for their fellow man.

References:
Mathabane, Mark. Kaffir Boy. New York: Touchstone, 1986

BBC News Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5087694.stm