"Sister’s tear-streaked face,
Brother carried through the smoke,
Youth's voice silenced here."
— h/t ChatGPT
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| From 2023 10 23 South Africa - Part 2 |
Today's photo-of-the-day is from Soweto, a township of the City of Johannesburg, South Africa. Soweto "experienced civil unrest during the Apartheid regime. There were serious riots in 1976, sparked by a ruling that Afrikaans be used in African schools there; the riots were violently suppressed, with 176 striking students killed and more than 1,000 injured."
When we toured the Apartheid Museum in Soweto, we met Antoinette Peterson, a guide working at the museum. Her story is after the jump.
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Hector Pieterson "(19 August 1963 — 16 June 1976) was a South African schoolboy who was shot and killed at the age of 12 during the Soweto uprising in 1976, when the police opened fire on black students protesting the enforcement of teaching in Afrikaans, mostly spoken by the white and coloured population in South Africa, as the medium of instruction for all school subjects. The students wanted to learn in their native languages, Xhosa and Zulu. A news photograph by Sam Nzima of the mortally wounded Pieterson being carried by another Soweto resident while his sister ran next to them was published around the world. The anniversary of his death is the designated Youth Day in South Africa."
Antoinette was 17 at the time of the tragic events. She described for us her experience that day, how her family had warned the children not to leave school to take part in the protest march. She described the officers opening fire on the school children who protested anyway. Ten people died that day alone. The photograph galvanized the world against apartheid. To this day, Antoinette Peterson acts as witness to the tragedies of that time.
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