Johannesburg - The day apartheid police
opened fire on protesting black school children in Soweto on June 16, 1976 will
be commemorated in South Africa on Tuesday.
Observed as a public holiday, it recalls
the day police shot at children marching in Orlando West to protest over
Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in the then government's ''Bantu
education'' system.
Photographer Sam Nzima managed to capture
the photograph of 17-year-old Antoinette Sithole running next to Mbuyisa
Makhubu carrying Hector Pieterson, who, with Hastings Ndlovu, were among the
first to die as police cracked down on any resistance by black people to laws
which gave whites rights that other races were denied.
In 1996, Sithole testified at the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission on events of the day.
''When we arrived at Pafeneng there was
confusion. There were police. They threw us with tear gas. We ran away and we
hid ourselves,'' according to a transcript of her testimony.
''There was a gun sound. There was teargas
and there was confusion. I saw people hiding themselves and then I hid myself
too. While we were standing there I then - I was afraid because I didn't know
where Hector has gone to and people were holding something. And then I moved
forward and I could not see properly, and I saw Hector's shoe.''
They were helped to a clinic by
journalists, but Pieterson was already dead.
In the days that followed, government
buildings were torched, police were stoned, and many black school pupils and
political activists abandoned their lives and families in South Africa and left
the country to escape the police crackdown, and to build a resistance against
apartheid from neighbouring countries.
Wednesday's commemorations will include an
address by President Jacob Zuma at the Tshwane Events Centre, an Economic
Freedom Fighters rally at the University of Limpopo to be addressed by Julius
Malema, and a rally addressed by Inkatha Freedom Party president Mangosuthu
Buthelezi.
Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane
will be at the university in Nelson Mandela Bay for the party's rally.
