Muted march in honour of Soweto uprising

Published on Saturday 17 June 2006 01:39

SOUTH Africa yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising with hundreds of political and community leaders retracing the footsteps of the black student protesters whose deaths at the hands of the police and army was a turning point in the fight against apartheid.

Thabo Mbeki, the president, led a re-creation of the march that began, after weeks of unease, on 16 June, 1976, when thousands of black students and children took to the streets of the township outside Johannesburg to object to being taught in Afrikaans, the language of the Afrikaner white rulers.

The march paused to remember Hector Pieterson, 13, who died when police, panicked by the scale of the demonstration, opened fire.

He was the first of 23 children to be shot that day. Some 500 more people died in subsequent days as unrest spread throughout South Africa.

A photograph of Hector dying in a friend's arms, which is frequently reproduced, became the defining image of the uprising. Much of South Africa's contemporary history flowed from that day, leading to the release from imprisonment in 1990 of Nelson Mandela and, in 1994, to the first all-race election and Mr Mandela's presidency.

But celebrations during yesterday's public holiday were muted, with the country beset by AIDS, 40 per cent unemployment and poverty.

Nomasento Radebe, 34, whose brother, Buti, died in the uprising, said: "I cannot get a job. We were promised by the new government that they would give us a better life."