SOWETO, South Africa
South African President Thabo Mbeki led hundreds of South Africans on a march Friday honoring the sacrifice of children whose bloody uprising 30 years ago reshaped the struggle to end apartheid.
The fight then was against a racist regime that confined Black students to inferior schools and forced them to learn in a language they did not understand.
On Friday, Mbeki told tens of thousands of young people gathered in a Soweto soccer stadium that they must rise up against poverty, illiteracy, violence and AIDS.
“We remember the youth of 1976 because they have left us a lesson that it is possible for young people to stand up and confront the challenges facing them,” he said. “May the courage and vision displayed by our youth 30 years ago, on June 16, 1976, serve to inspire and motivate all of us as we strive to bring happiness to our youth and people during this, our age of hope.”
Linking arms, students, government leaders and veterans of the 1976 demonstration marched through Soweta, a Black township. The march paused at 9 a.m., the moment when police bullets felled their first and youngest victim, 13-year-old Hector Pieterson. His death in the arms of another protester, captured in an iconic photograph, rallied generations to the fight for South Africa’s democracy and freedom.
The brutality of the police response to the unarmed students sparked nationwide rioting in which more than 500 more youths are estimated to have been killed. Thousands of others were maimed, disappeared into detention or fled the country to join guerrilla groups.
