Remember the children of June 16
5 000 marched peacefully – a single shot changed history
YOU may struggle to find 12year-old Hector Pieterson’s grave in the Avalon Cemetery in Soweto, but it’s there, topped by a simple headstone.
It’s not as though he has been forgotten – the Hector Pieterson Museum in Orlando West is dedicated to him and other youngsters who died on June 16, 1976.
Other children, like the less wellknown Hastings Ndlovu, have a more elaborate headstone. And others, like Tsietsi Mashinini, who died much later, are in the Heroes’ Acre section of the cemetery.
Hector’s sister, Antoinette Sithole, was 17 when her brother died.
“On the day I was hiding in the second house next to my school, Phefeni High. There were younger children at the march who shouldn’t have been there. I don’t know why they were there – Hector was one of them. There were random shots, we were not familiar with tear gas shots. I was confused, those first shots could have been tear gas.
“I came out of hiding and saw Hector, and I called him to me. He was looking around as I called his name, trying to see who was calling him. I waved at him, he saw me and came over to me. I asked him what he was doing here, we looked around, there was a shot, and I ran back to my hiding place. When I looked out I could not see Hector, I waited, I was afraid, where was he?
“Then I saw a group of boys struggling. This gentleman came from nowhere, lifted a body, and I saw the front part of the shoe which I recognised as Hector’s. This man started to run with the body, I ran alongside, and said to him: ‘Who are you, this is my brother?’”
Those moments with the three of them, with Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the dying Hector, were captured by The World photographer Sam Nzima. The photograph went global and Hector became a symbol of the struggle against apartheid.
Hector had been staying with his grandmother, and his mother, Dorothy Sithole, was not told of the events. When he did not come home, she went the next day, June 17, to the police, who told her to go to the mortuary the following day. It was there that she discovered her son’s death. “He was in the first row. I took off the plastic and looked. He had been shot on the left side of the neck. I put back the plastic.”
She didn’t cry then, but wept at the funeral three weeks later.
Her great sadness is that she has no photograph of Hector – after he died, journalists requested photos of him, but they were not returned.
In 2002 the Hector Pieterson Museum opened and Sithole became a guide. She has taken overseas visitors through the museum and finds that they cry when they hear the story. “They say I am brave, that they couldn’t talk about it. But I am not angry, I have learnt forgiveness.”
Although Hector was the first child to die on June 16, he was not the first shot by the police. The first, Hastings Ndlovu, died after Hector.
Hastings, 15, was crossing the bridge with other children to join the marchers in Orlando West when he was shot. He was taken to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, where the doctor on duty, Malcolm Klein, rushed into the casualty section, to be greeted by “a grisly scene”. He saw “a bullet wound to one side of his head, blood and brains spilling out of a large exit wound on the other side, the gurgle of death in his throat. Only later would I learn his name: Hastings Ndlovu.”
Hastings’s father, Eliot, got home from work that day at 7.30pm and noticed that the fire hadn’t been made, a task his son was assigned. His neighbour told him that a newspaper report indicated that someone called Leslie Ndlovu had died. Eliot was confused because he had also heard Leslie had been seen driving.
Eliot and his neighbour went to the mortuary and they were shown a body. They rolled it over – it was Hastings. The mortuary officials had made a mistake – Hastings had a dry-cleaning slip in his pocket with Leslie’s name on it. Leslie had asked Hastings to fetch his parcel.
Hastings lies buried alongside his mother, who died in 1982. The epitaph reads: “You go look for a child, thinking you will find him alive. You are told to go to the mortuary to identify his body. Oh Lord, help me forget these things. Teach me to forgive. Let me not bear a grudge against anybody.”
Not far from his grave is the Heroes’ Acre where former Soweto pupil leader Mashinini lies buried. In 1990, when exiles were coming home to joyous reunions with their families, Mashinini came home to his family in a coffin. He died in Guinea in circumstances that have not been established.
His mother, Nomkhitha, said in 2006: “I am sorry he died when many people were coming home.” She had received only one letter from him and had had no other contact.
She was upset when she saw his body: one eye was missing, his body was bruised, and he had a large wound behind one ear. She has not found out what happened.
Mashinini was a handsome and charismatic 19-year-old in his matric year in 1976. His teachers told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he was smart and talented, particularly at drama.
On June 13, he and other pupil leaders called a meeting to discuss being taught some subjects in Afrikaans, a rule imposed since January 1976. Pupils were concerned as mid-year exams were approaching.
Mashinini stood up to address 400 fellow pupils. He proposed staging a march on June 16 to the Orlando West Secondary School in Vilakazi Street, and from there to the Orlando Stadium, where they would compile a list of grievances.
By 10.30am about 5 000 pupils had reached Vilakazi Street. They didn’t get to the stadium – the police formed a wall, telling them to disperse. A running, taunting exchange ensued. Then the first shot was fired, straight into the crowd, without warning. Then more. Soweto exploded. By the end of the day thick, dark clouds hung over the township. Streets were littered with rocks and upturned vehicles.
About 200 people died that day in Soweto. By the end of 1976, about 575 people had died across the country, most of them killed by the police.
To avoid arrest, Mashinini went into exile. He lived in several African countries, married a Liberian woman, and had two children before he was divorced.
His younger brother, Dee, then 15, who joined him in exile the follow- ing year, said in 2006 that his brother had not been happy. “Tsietsi was isolated, but healthy. He was not coping. His situation had turned for the worst.” At one time, said Dee, his brother studied town planning at a university in Nigeria. A third brother, Ronald, also went into exile and returned with Dee in the 1990s.