South Africa on Thursday marked 40 years since the Soweto uprising, when white police officers gunned down black students in a massacre that ignited a new era of anti-apartheid resistance.
The 1976 protests, and the government’s violent response, were a turning point in the struggle that eventually led to the fall of apartheid rule with Nelson Mandela’s election as president in 1994.
The anniversary commemorated the youthful, unarmed protesters who gathered in Soweto township to demonstrate against an order that schools could only teach in the Afrikaans language used by whites.
At least 170 people were killed, with some estimates putting the death toll at several hundred over the following months as the uprising spread nationwide.
“The apartheid ideology espoused that whites were by nature superior and that blacks were inherently inferior,” President Jacob Zuma said in a televised speech at a stadium in Soweto, south of Johannesburg.
“The struggle and sacrifices of the class of 1976 were not in vain.
“South Africa is indeed a much better place than it was when the students stood up and said ‘enough is enough’ in June 1976, but the struggle continues.”
Images of poor, young black students shot dead by the police also brought the injustices of white-minority rule to the world’s attention and spurred the global anti-apartheid movement.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday placed a wreath at the memorial to Hector Pieterson, 13, who was one of the first victims.

Source: Arab News