SOUTH AFRICA: US PRESIDENT CLINTON VISITS SOWETO TOWNSHIP UPDATE:
A MyJHB.co.za selected Soweto Township video for you:
English/Nat
U-S President Bill Clinton attended a remembrance service in Soweto on Saturday for the victims of the 1976 uprising.
The uprising is widely considered to be the beginning of the movement that brought about the end of white rule.
Clinton paid tribute to the first boy who was killed in the uprising saying it was his death that shocked the world into a new recognition of the vast evil of apartheid.
The Clintons headed for the outskirts of Johannesburg on Saturday to visit the Soweto township.
It was here in 1976 that an uprising began that is widely credited with being the beginning of the movement that ended white rule in South Africa.
They visited an exhibition showing the events of 1976 and laid a wreath as well as planting a tree at the memorial to Hector Peterson – the first boy killed in the rioting.
The Soweto uprising began as a student demonstration against compulsory lessons in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority.
The students were marching to a stadium when police opened fire.
Peterson was the first of around 700 blacks, many of them children, who died in a 10-month insurgence.
A second uprising began in 1984 and continued, with the loss of more than ten thousand lives, until 1990, when Afrikaner reformist F.W. de Klerk freed Nelson Mandela from prison and legalised his African National Congress.
Clinton said it was the bravery of children like Hector that helped bring about the end of white rule.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
This solemn place commemorates forever the death of one young boy, a death that shocked the world into a new recognition of the vast evil of apartheid. Today as South Africa enjoys what our President Lincoln called a new birth of freedom, we remember the historic events of this decade and we remember that none of them could have been possible without the bravery of the young men and women of the townships.
SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, U-S President
After 1976, the anniversary of his death frequently sparked clashes with police and June the 16th was declared a national public holiday in 1994.
After his visit to the Soweto township, the Clintons went to Thokoza township to meet more children.
They said they wanted to talk to the next generation of South Africans who would be making the future of the country.
Also in Saturday in Johannesburg, thousands of Zulu nationalists, many carrying clubs and shields, marched into central Johannesburg to commemorate a similar demonstration that turned violent four years ago.
Unlike the 1994 march that protested upcoming elections, Saturday’s demonstration was peaceful and broke up after speeches by leaders calling for compensation for families of those killed four years earlier.
The 1994 march brought political violence mostly relegated to black townships into the heart of the nation’s commercial capital, with gunfire echoing off skyscrapers and bodies lying in the streets.
Nineteen people died in the downtown area, including eight killed by African National Congress security guards when a group of protesters approached the party’s headquarters.
Dozens more died in townships as protesters headed to town in the morning or returned home that night.
Hundreds of police watched over the march Saturday by more than five thousand demonstrators but it passed without incident.
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