The famous Sam Nzima photograph in the Hector Pieterson Museum

RELATED LINKS: Student walkway to be unveiled on 16 June A WALKWAY, 10 kilometres long, tracing the route Soweto students marched along on 16 June, 1976, in protest against the use of Afrikaans in the classroom is to be unveiled on 16 June this year. Read more June 16, 1976 - Hastings Ndlovu's day too THE doctor interrupted his mid-morning tea break, rushed into the casualty section and was greeted by "a grisly scene". Lying on the stretcher was the body of a young boy dressed in school uniform, his head covered in blood, a gaping bullet wound exposing his brain. Read more Hector Pieterson gets his memorial "I SAW a child fall down. Under a shower of bullets I rushed forward and went for the picture. It had been a peaceful march, the children were told to disperse, they started singing Nkosi Sikelele. The police were ordered to shoot." Read more Hector: the famous child whose face is unknown THE Hector Pieterson Museum opens on Youth Day, 16 June, but don't expect to come away with an image of what Hector looked like - the family do not have a single snapshot of their famous son. Read more

Museum gathers memories of '76 MEMORIES fade and people pass on, but Ali Hlongwane is determined to record as many remembrances of 16 June 1976 as possible, before it is too late. June 9, 2005 By Lucille Davie PETER Magubane's pictures, footage from the BBC and German TV, guns and pistols, police uniforms, oral testimonies and metal dustbin lids ... these are just some of the items curator Ali Hlongwane is assembling in the archives of the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. However, the race is on to collect more. The first issue is to locate the relevant people, then to interview them or ask them to record their memories, before they pass away. Last year two significant parents died: Eliot Ndlovu, father of Hastings, who is believed to be the first child shot on 16 June 1976; and Nombulelo Makhubo, mother of Mbuyisa, the boy who picked up Hector Pieterson (who was shot by police) and ran with him, together with Hector's sister, Antoinette, towards Phefeni Clinic. That image was captured on camera by Sam Nzima, and has become the symbol of the day. A wall of the Hector Pieterson Memorial, immediately west of the museum Fortunately Hlongwane spoke to these two before they died, but there are many others, their whereabouts unknown, he would like to interview. His most recent interview was with Urbania Mothopeng, who worked as a nurse at the Phefeni Clinic when Hector was brought in. She was subsequently arrested, after the arrest of her husband, Zeth Mothopeng, a prominent member of the Pan Africanist Congress, in August 1976. In addition, Hlongwane says he has located Hector's teacher and will be interviewing her in the coming months. In the collection are oral testimonies of the exile and prison experiences of several people, as well as research narratives from Sifiso Ndlovu, a 1976 pupil and now a researcher, and Harry Mashabela, a former journalist, now retired. Hlongwane has recorded interviews from Antoinette Sithole, Hector's sister; Sophie Tema, the journalist who drove Hector to the clinic; and Fanyana Mazibuko, a teacher in Soweto at the time. His photographic collection consists of 50 images shot by well-known photographer Peter Magubane on 16 June 1976. There's also 165 black and white slides taken by the anti-apartheid body, the International Defence and Aid Fund. Newspaper clippings from several local papers - The World, the Rand Daily Mail, The Post, The Star and the Sunday Times - make up an important component of the archives. A recent acquisition is a collection of 30 photographs of people who disappeared between 1976 and the early 1990s, given to the Centre for the Study of Violence by their families, and now in the museum's archives. The museum is devoted to commemorating 16 June 1976, now honoured each year as Youth Day. It is estimated that more than 200 people died on that day in Soweto, and hundreds were injured. It was a day the government and the police of the time were caught off guard, when the simmering anger of school children over the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, finally exploded, releasing an intensity of emotion that was ruthlessly brought under control by the police. Permission to use web site material Publishers may use material from this site free of charge, as long as: Credit is given to either the "City of Johannesburg website (www.joburg.org.za)" or to "Johannesburg News Agency (www.joburg.org.za)"; If the article is used online, a link is provided to the original article on this website; The name of the article's author is acknowledged; The webmaster is informed of how and where the material is used (fill in this brief online form). Johannesburg News Agency is operated by BIG Media at 011-484-1400 Print this Page E-mail this article to a friend Help using Joburg.org.za