Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum

On the morning of 16 June 1976, between 10,000 and 20,000 Soweto schoolchildren walked out of class in protest against a government decree that 50% of secondary subjects be taught in Afrikaans — for many of them, an unfamiliar language they associated with the police and the security state. The protest set off from several schools and converged on Orlando West with the intention of marching to a rally at Orlando Stadium.

Police met the marchers in the streets between Phefeni Junior Secondary and Orlando West High School and opened fire. Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old pupil at Orlando West Primary, was among the first to be killed. The photograph of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying him with his sister Antoinette Sithole running alongside, taken by photographer Sam Nzima, was published internationally within hours.

The official death toll for the day was 23; later estimates put it at 176 across the country. The uprising spread to townships across South Africa, triggered international sanctions, and is now commemorated as Youth Day on 16 June every year — a public holiday and the symbolic birth date of the militant generation that took over the anti-apartheid struggle in the late 1970s.

The memorial itself is a quiet, dignified plaza laid in 1992 with a granite memorial stone and a fountain on the spot where Hector fell. The adjacent museum, opened in 2002, walks visitors through the day in chronological order with photographs, testimony, original school uniforms and the famous Sam Nzima image. Antoinette Sithole herself is sometimes present and speaks to visitors when she is.

Practical info: the museum is open Monday to Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00 and Sunday from 10:00 to 16:30. Entry is around R45 per adult and R25 per child. The memorial is a 10-minute walk from Mandela House on Vilakazi Street and is the emotional centrepiece of every Wanderer Soweto Tour.