all credits - USA Today
The marchers paused at 9 a.m. for a moment of silence to remember Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old killed by police who shot at the unarmed demonstrators. His death has come to symbolize the sacrifices of young people in the fight for South Africa's democracy and freedom.
More than 500 young people were estimated killed in the Soweto Uprising and its bloody aftermath. Thousands of others disappeared into detention or fled the country to join the guerrilla fight, forever changing the face of the anti-apartheid struggle.
The uprising started as a student protest against being taught in Afrikaans, the language of white oppressors, which few among the black majority could understand. Police responded with brutal force, and news of the killings and the riots they unleashed across the country awakened the world to the government's violence.
"Hector would be 42 now - he died for the nation, and today he is part of history."
Dorothy Molefi lost her son 30 years ago. He was Hector Peterson, shot by a police bullet on 16 June 1976, becoming the first victim of the student uprising against apartheid. On Friday morning, Mrs Molefi joined President Thabo Mbeki and other officials in laying wreaths at the monument in Orlando West, Soweto, to her son and others who died in the uprising.
"I'm so glad about what's happening today, 30 years later," she told the BBC News website. She reflected on the changes that have come about since the start of democracy in South Africa: "Single mothers are given houses - our children are mixed with whites in the schools."
'Celebrate'
For the younger people who gathered around the monument, part of the excitement of the moment was having a public holiday - Youth Day, as 16 June now is - all of their own. Nonkululeku Mnikati, 23, said she was there "to celebrate freedom - to celebrate being recognised as the youth of South Africa."
On the generation of 1976 she said: "We look up to them, what they did was great. But sometimes it's like looking at a movie, it's hard to believe what happened was real. "So it's good to see Hector Peterson's mother here, because that helps us to know it was real."
The day's events had begun in a frosty dawn several kilometres away, outside the Morris Isaacson High School, from where the first group of teenage demonstrators had set out 30 years ago, led by a student called Tsietsi Mashinini.
After the march, Tsietsi went into hiding and later died in mysterious circumstances in Guinea. His mother, Nomkitha, was there in a wheelchair to help unveil a monument in the middle of a newly created memorial park opposite the school.
"We thought it would just be a few months of struggle - unfortunately it didn't work out like that," she reflected.
Peanuts
At the monument, another veteran of '76 who had joined the ANC's liberation army explained its significance to a group of younger people. "I wanted to be a doctor, but I ended up carrying an AK-47 and now I work for the police. The struggle changed me." Gilo Maguma, 40, was also involved in the protests, and is now unemployed.
"We are not liberated yet - we are still confined to 13% of the country," he said in reference to the fact that white people still own most of South Africa's land. Black people earn peanuts."
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Other Articles:
Student heroes separated by time
(16th June 2006)
In Retrospect: A Look at the 1976 Soweto Uprising
(1st January 2004)
Hector: the famous child whose face is unknown
(14th June 2002)
