Hector Pieterson

After our tour of Soweto, we traveled to the Hector Pieterson Museum. Hector Pieterson, age 13, was the first student to be killed during the 1976 Student Uprising in Soweto. He has since become a symbol of the youth resistance to apartheid. The famous Soweto uprising started as a peaceful protest march organized by school students in Soweto against the Bantu education system. Imagine- school students protesting against the inequity of their education- that is how important education is to Africans! One of the main grievances was that Afrikaans, regarded as the language of the oppressor, had to be taught in 50% of the classes and the other 50% had to be taught in English.


Hundreds of students joined the protest march planned by the South African Student Movement (SASM), to the Orlando Stadium East where they intended to meet with the authorities to voice their grievances. They carried placards with slogans – ‘Away with Afrikaans’, ‘Amandla Awehtu’ (Power to the People), ‘Free Azania’ (Free South Africa) and sang ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’ (God bless Africa), now the national anthem of South Africa.

Refilwe, our guide, is explaining the famous photograph of Hector Pieterson being carried after he was shot when police confronted the marchers and ordered them to disperse. Despite the peaceful nature of the march, the confrontation turned violent and a number of students, including Hector Pieterson, were shot and killed. What was a student march, quickly erupted into an uprising, which spread to many other parts of the country. The photograph shows a young man, Mbuyiswa, carrying Hector Pieterson in his arms, and captured the attention of people throughout the world, highlighting the injustices of apartheid. The park also has a plaque honoring Mbuyiswa.

Although we didn't spend a lot of time at the museum since lunch ran so late, we had enough time to read much of the exhibits and learn so much that we did not know about the Soweto riots. For example, many of us knew it was a riot against Apartheid but we had no idea it started as an organized, peaceful march by school children!