It’s not often I find myself driving past the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum in Orlando West, in Soweto, an urban township in Johannesburg.
But come June every year, I inevitably steer my car to the site, mentally revisiting the carnage that happened here in 1976; the student protest and the police firing that led to an iconic photograph the world came to associate with South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime.
Two years ago, one of my assignments with FORBES AFRICA was to pursue a story on the ‘Soweto Uprising’. Thankfully, the museum gave me three vital leads to reconstruct the events of June 16, a day etched in blood in South African history.
It was a Tuesday when I met my first contact, Oupa Moloto, who then was a student at the Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto where it all started.
“On the day of the event, the school started a little earlier; the mood was different, the students were excited but the teachers couldn’t pick it up,” recalled Moloto of the first stirrings of the protest against the mandatory use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in black secondary schools.
After the interview, I visited the school and walking around, could sense around me the nervous excitement of the students like it was 42 years ago. I could hear their voices, singing and chanting as we stood where the last assembly was held, before the shots were fired at them.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2018/06/04/soweto-burning-june-16-remembered/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Soweto Burning: June 16 Remembered</a>
I photographed Moloto at their then assembly point and his face was a picture of sorrow. The school has been renovated since but in the older building, are still some vestiges of that time – broken windows and furniture.
A few weeks later, I met with Barney Mokgatle at his home in Alexandra, another township. He was one of the students who went into exile after the tragic march.
“The police were hunting for us, we could not sleep in one place for two nights because there were people selling us out,” said Mokgatle.
Mokgatle was the right hand man to Tsietsi Mashinini who led the march and later died in exile. 
He talked me through every detail; he also said Pieterson was not the first student shot at the march.
Perhaps more intriguing was his recounting of their escape and journey to Botswana through the bushes without fear of the wilderness, with their other friend Selby Semela.
He started singing, the masculine man had a voice of the angels; it was remarkable. As soon as the humming started, I almost shed a tear, I could feel their struggle and strength as they dodged bullets and teargas in the Soweto streets wearing blazers and ties, some running with missing shoes.
But at that moment, they were crossing serene bushes unaware of the hungry beasts around them lurking in the dark all the way to the borders of Botswana.
A few days later, we met again for a shoot where a statue of his friend Mashinini was erected not far from the Morris Isaacson school. He didn’t come to Soweto often but when he saw the statue, he paused, staring at it. He finally turned and we continued walking to a wall where he showed me a collage of his two friends and himself.
The story wouldn’t be complete without speaking to the ‘girl’ in the iconic photograph of Pieterson taken by Sam Nzima. Antoinette Pieterson, the older sister, who is 58 today.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sometime-in-africa/2017/04/01/soweto-boy-afrikaner-haven/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: A Soweto Boy In An Afrikaner Haven</a>
“I saw Mbuyisa [Makhubu, the boy carrying Pieterson in the famous photograph] coming from nowhere; I didn’t know him at the time. He was running towards me, he passed me. I saw he was carrying a person and I could recognize Pieterson’s shoe, I ran with him,” she recounted.
Today, as I walk the streets of Orlando, I think of the privilege I enjoyed of choosing between either isiZulu or Afrikaans as a second language in school.
Thanks to the class of 1976, we had the freedom.

Barney-031

The Class Of 1976 – Soweto Uprising

<h1>From Schoolboy To Rebel In A Month</h1>
<h6>Oupa Moloto is a little heavier and a lot wiser than 40 years ago when he ran riot in the streets of Soweto as a slender 19-year-old.</h6>
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It was a day Oupa Moloto never thought would end in fire and tears. The children had prepared a peaceful protest; they were excited, as well as angry. Moloto was one of the thousands of unhappy students who didn’t want to be taught in Afrikaans, a language they felt was oppressive and merely the gateway to menial jobs.
Moloto was at Morris Isaacson High School, in Jabavu, Soweto. He was part of the South African Students’ Movement (SASM), which followed black consciousness – the philosophy that inspired young people to take pride in their race.
Through it, Moloto took the first step on a path that would see him locked up in 16 prisons and end up as a guerrilla fighter in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC).
On a winter morning, he met up with his schoolmates to plan the march. Members of SASM were pushing for tougher forms of protest, but the masses held sway. A peaceful march it was; they had never marched in their lives.
“It was going to be exciting,” laughs Moloto.
On Tuesday, June 15, 1976, SASM members spread the word around schools. That night they painted placards against the system and Afrikaans.
“On the day of the event, June 16, school started a little earlier, the mood was different, the students were excited but the teachers couldn’t pick it up,” he recalls.
Few teachers knew of the march. At Morris Isaacson, slim, light-skinned and bearded Tsietsi Mashinini, the SASM leader, spoke passionately for the march at the morning assembly. They prayed and marched singing: “Senzeni na? Senzeni na?” (What have we done? What have we done?).
Other schools had heard about the march and headed to Orlando West to meet up with the main body. Hector Pieterson was not meant to be part of the march, he saw his sister Antoinette and ran to join her. He was shot and bled to death; his image went around the world and epitomized the brutality of the day on which scores of schoolchildren died.
The police blocked the streets and released a snarling dog sending students running in panic. The girls screamed and the boys stoned the dog.
“I don’t know where the petrol came from, but it was poured on the dog to burn,” says Moloto.
With angry youths fighting and retreating, the students scattered; attacking government property and anything to do with the system. By this time, parents had joined in, says Moloto.
Amid the chaos, there were workers digging a trench for a cable, under the guard of a white boss with hands in pockets. When the angry teenage mob came, the man was thrown into the trench and made to dig, says Moloto. The terrified workers were made to stand and watch their white boss dig with their hands in their pockets.
The violence swept through Soweto and spread to the train stations, forcing drivers to avoid stopping. Soon there were no longer trains, says Moloto.
“In fact, I think hijackings started in 1976, if you come with a company car, you will be taken out the car and they will drive around and burn it.”
As the uprising raged, bystanders suffered. There was a welfare office, not far from Morris Isaacson High School, run by Dr Melville Edelstein, who was loved by the people.
“When we were marching, he was standing at the gate wearing a white dustcoat and was waving to students, they had a good relationship, but in the evening he was brutally killed because of the color of his skin. He was white,” says Moloto.
A white teacher at Morris Isaacson was luckier and airlifted to safety by police.
Moloto woke up the next day and walked to school. He saw petrol tanks burning; the looting was chaotic.
Then came the crackdown. Police arrested students and many went on the run.
“When we went back to school days after the violence, we were told most of the leadership was arrested,” he says.
The shattered schools of Soweto came together again for a peaceful protest in the heart of the economy, downtown Johannesburg, on August 2. It was the biggest protest by far, says Moloto, but no one was hurt.
“The demand was to release those that have been arrested,” he says.
The students changed strategy.
“We called for a national stay away, that we should be indoors, nobody will be shot,” says Moloto.
The students decided to hit back at the economy by stopping people from going to work. They blocked and burned buses. In a few short weeks, Moloto evolved from a high school child, in blazer and tie, to a rebel.
Today, Moloto owns taxis, and has shares in the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit System. He runs a butchery in Soweto and is also the project coordinator of the June 16 Foundation. After all, it was a day that changed his life.
<div id="attachment_4915" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4915" class="size-medium wp-image-4915" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-88415897-300x206.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="206" />Young rioters surround a burning bus during the Soweto Uprising in Johannesburg, 17th June 1976. The riots were a reaction against the government&#8217;s repressive apartheid policies. (Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images)</div>
<h1>“Light Show Me The Way, It’s Dark And The Road Is Far And Long”</h1>
<h6>Barney Mokgatle not only lost his innocence; 
he also lost his country.</h6>
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It was the very first shot that killed Hastings Ndlovu. That was when the wall of apartheid was cracked and it fell. If it wasn’t for that bullet, we wouldn’t have fought,” says Barney Mokgatle who was next to Ndlovu when he fell.
“Nobody can claim that Hector Pieterson was shot first.”
Mokgatle was the lieutenant to Tsietsi Mashinini who led the march in 1976. Mokgatle, looking younger than his peers, is now a senior member at church; he believes black consciousness is next to Godliness. He is also a member of the royal family at the Royal Bafokeng, near Rustenburg, in the North West province of South Africa.
Back in 1976 he was just another rebel in school uniform. When Ndlovu was killed, Mokgatle suggested the march be dispersed. Instead police descended on schools across Soweto looking for Mashinini; meanwhile Mokgatle was driving the wanted man around.
“Now the police were hunting us, we could not sleep in one place for two nights because there were people who were selling us out,” says Mokgatle.
Soweto activists Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, parents and principals pressurized Mashinini, Mokgatle and friend Selby Semela to leave the country. They argued that police wanted to kill them, rather than charge them, because in court they could attract public sympathy, he says. There was also a reward of R500 on their heads – a fortune in those days, enough to buy a new house.
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When they tried to leave, there were roadblocks everywhere on the way to Botswana, Mozambique and Swaziland. Mashinini and Mokgatle organized a second mass demonstration across the country that they believed could prove a diversion. The ruse worked.
“When they relaxed on the roads and borders, that’s when we slipped out. We went through the bushes at night and there was a song we sang on the way,” he recalls.
As Mokgatle sings, I could feel the emotion and see the anguish in his face 40 years on.
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“Sedi laka, mponesetse tsela
Ke tsamaye
Ho lefifi, hape ho sebaka
Ntsamaise…”
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In English: “Light show me the way,
It’s dark and the road is far and long,
But when I’m with you I’ve got power…”
When they slipped out of South Africa, they did not know the way to Botswana. Those who had organized their escape moved the rebellious youths from one village to another.
“It was a relay in that fashion, at night, through the bush,” he says. “We could hear the lions and elephants from a distance and we were not aware of the danger, we had no fear.”
They reached the Botswana border the following morning; as they stood on the border fence, about to jump, Mokgatle remembers saying “We shall return.”
In the capital, Gaborone, journalists awaited them.
“That’s how South African police knew that we had skipped the country because of what they had read in the media,” he says. There were attempts to kidnap them and bring them back to South Africa. They knew they couldn’t afford to stick around.
Through Tutu and the World Council of Churches, they organized tickets to fly to Holland. When they landed in Lusaka, Zambia, they did not have a visa for an overnight stay, so they switched to British Caledonian to fly straight on to Holland even though they had no travel documents when they landed in London en route.
“Because we didn’t have passports, that’s where the problems started, that’s where we had to change destination, we were arrested and detained at Gatwick airport,” he says.
Journalist Jon Blair, a South African living in England, helped by telling media houses that three Soweto uprising survivors were detained at Gatwick airport. Years later, Blair made the first British documentary about the 1976 uprising.
“The following morning it was like bees coming to the airport,” he says.
The African National Congress (ANC), the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Pan African Congress (PAC) were all there. The ANC took them under their wing because they were the most powerful. The trio refused to join the party because they had different political ideas. The ANC walked away, says Mokgatle.
“We had to fend for ourselves and that’s when the Nigerian embassy in Botswana contacted us. We went to meet Nigerian head of state Olusegun Obasanjo,” he says.
The military ruler told them Nigeria would support them if they were a national body rather than regional. Hence they changed from the Soweto Student Representative Council to the South African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO). From there, they were independent of the ANC, with Nigerian backing.
The Soweto schoolboys Mashinini, Mokgatle and Semela were sent to different countries. Mashinini to Nigeria; Mokgatle stayed in England; Semela to the United States.
Mokgatle’s role was to talk about divestment in South Africa, trying to tell the world why they were fighting the oppressive system, as well as raising funds for scholarships for those who didn’t want military training.
“We were conscientizing the world,” he says.
Mashinini and Semela did the same in their allocated countries.
“Our struggle helped the country, it made the ANC and PAC wake up, they had to fight rigorously. To be honest, the ANC and PAC were not active before June 16, it’s only when we fought and struggled and became independent in London that they realized that these guys are going to take the limelight from them, they had to wake up and do something,” he says.
<div id="attachment_4916" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4916" class="size-medium wp-image-4916" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-102096119-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" />Demonstrators in the streets during the Soweto uprising, South Africa, 21st June 1976. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
Mashinini died in Guinea where he was treated like a son by former president Ahmed Sékou Touré. He was introduced by Miriam Makeba – a South African singer and human rights campaigner nicknamed Mama Africa. Mokgatle suggests Mashinini was murdered.
“I still say to the comrades that there needs to be an investigation done, because what killed Tsietsi, nobody would say. Except for the gashing wounds behind the head, next to the eyes, we could tell he was beaten, who killed Tsietsi and who bought those people. He did not die a natural death,” he says.
Makeba, who was in Brussels, broke the news to Mokgatle in England.
“Miriam called me and said Barney your brother is dead, he passed on last night,” he recalls.
He asked her for a ticket to Guinea so they can arrange to take Mashinini back to South Africa. She refused and told him to go to Zimbabwe to meet the body.
He met the body in Zimbabwe in early 1990, by this time Nelson Mandela was released and exiles could go home.
Mokgatle came home in 1992; Semela still lives in the United States.
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Walking Into A Day Of Horror

This calm encounter on a spring morning in Sandton, Johannesburg, belies a man who forged his career amid fury. He cheated death at the hands of police to capture the Soweto school uprising, surely, one of the saddest stories ever told in Africa.
On June 16, 1976, Sam Nzima, a photojournalist at The World newspaper, in Johannesburg, took a picture of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying a 13-year-old dying Hector Pieterson from the Soweto massacre. He smuggled the film out in his sock and the picture hit the front pages of the world. The police wanted to destroy it – the image destroyed Nzima’s career.
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The picture changed the political landscape of South Africa; it made a fortune for the news agencies of the world, but he got nothing from it for 22 years.  The iconic image has been on everything from billboards to T-shirts.
“The picture of Hector Pieterson destroyed my future in journalism. I couldn’t continue as a journalist because of that picture and I would never put my life in danger, I was forced to leave everything behind,” says Nzima.
Harassment from police forced Nzima to become a small bottle store owner in the small village Lilydale, in Bushbuckridge, in Mpumalanga. It took him 22 years of struggle to get his copyright back.
“The copyright of the Hector Pieterson Photo was given to me on the November 16, 1998 by Independent Newspapers Holdings Limited and was registered with Webber Wentzel Bowens Attorneys Notaries &amp; Conveyancers intellectual property lawyers in Johannesburg on July 20, 2000,” he says.
The day he risked his life for the picture is as clear as yesterday.
“As early as 6AM in the morning of June 16, I was covering a student march in Naledi High in Soweto with a colleague Sophie Tema. We found the students busy writing placards opposing new Bantu education laws. This followed a circular sent to the schools that Afrikaans will be the medium of instruction,” says Nzima.
When the march reached Morris Isaacson High, a student leader Tsietsi Mashinini addressed students from the top of a tree saying the march was to be a peaceful, says Nzima. Shortly after, armed police arrived in armoured vehicles and instructed all to disperse. The children sang Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in defiance.
Nzima says the singing agitated a police commander who instructed his officers to open fire. The students ran and Nzima hid in a house.
“I got out from the house, the police had ceased firing, and I saw a little child falling down. There comes this tall boy Mbuyisa and picked him up. As Mbuyisa picked him up, I went with my camera. I was also shooting with my camera, under the shower of police bullets. Mbuyisa was running to the nearest car, the nearest press car was our Volkswagen Beetle. I managed to shoot six sequences of him carrying Hector. My colleague Sophie Tema opened the door and they put Hector inside. Hector was certified dead upon arriving in Phefeni Clinic,” says Nzima.
“I knew the police would come back for me, I wound the film and stashed it in my sock and then loaded another film. As I anticipated, the police came back and grabbed me after they ran away for some few minutes. They took my three cameras and exposed my films. When they thought they had destroyed the evidence, our driver Thomas Khoza rushed the film to The World office. The picture was published the next day.”
Nzima’s gallant work with his camera on that violent winter day in 1976 was to wreck his life. When police came knocking on his door, Nzima left his job in Johannesburg and ended up under house arrest in the remote town of Bushbuckridge, far from his family in Soweto.
“After two days I received a call from the station commander at John Vorster Square, he wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Percy Qoboza was my editor at The World. He advised me to stay away from the police if I don’t want to come back as corpse.”
Qoboza told the commander to invite him, the editor, for tea instead. This led to a police instruction to shoot Nzima if they found him photographing, a police insider told him at the time.
In April 2011, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma awarded Nzima with the Order of Ikhamanga for excellence in liberal art.
“If popularity was cash, I was going to tell you I am a millionaire or billionaire. Many people know this picture but some don’t know the man behind it. I was shocked in 2010 when I was invited in Berlin at a school called Hector Pieterson Schule. The school was renamed in celebration of the fall of The Berlin Wall. Germans compared their freedom to the South African independence.”
“Money was not that much, no rewards in cash but I had recognition from the state president. At the beginning I regretted [taking] this picture because this picture destroyed my journalistic career, I lost my job and my friends in Johannesburg. But now I am rejoicing because I am getting high publicity, I have become an icon in South Africa. Maybe one day I will reap a jackpot from some quarters.”
A Sam Nzima Foundation will be opened, including a school for photojournalists, in his hometown near Bushbuckridge. This is where Nzima has a makeshift darkroom that he uses to train school children in his village of Lilydale.
“After the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, I was brave enough to pick up my camera and continue where I left, but all these years I was afraid to do that. The original camera that captured Hector Pieterson is still intact; I have kept it safe in those years.”
When Hillary Clinton visited South Africa for the first time, in the 1990s, she wanted to see Nzima at the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. She offered to buy the camera, but Winnie Mandela advised Nzima against selling. She said it was the property of the state. Nzima also refused to donate his Pantex camera, with 50mm lens, to the ANC Women’s League.
“I was happy not to sell it, but if it was good money she was offering, I would have been happier to sell. It’s because it’s better enjoying my life when I can than keeping the camera. One day, I will show people of South Africa that this is a camera that brought their freedom. But the person who struggled for freedom gets nothing.”
“South Africans do not value me but I do get recognition from other countries. I remember in 2011 I was invited to exhibit my work in Belgium and address the parliament in Brussels. Parliamentarians showed interest in our history and the role I played in those days.”
Despite Nzima receiving lucrative offers from overseas for the camera, he says his conscience disapproves. It lives in his museum in Bushbuckridge.
“Now I cannot sell the camera, it has become the property of the state, it is our heritage. I have to consult with the politicians for a go-ahead; otherwise I will be frustrated again. If the government officials could learn that I had sold the camera overseas, they will ask me why I did it.”
Hector Pieterson was buried at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, and a museum in his memory was built near where he was shot, in 2002. His sister, Antoinette Sithole, the girl running alongside, is a curator at the museum and Makhubo was last traced in Nigeria. He went to exile after the photograph was published.
Every year on June 16, Nzima kneels and prays for the fallen schoolchildren of Soweto. He escaped with his life from the terrible day but his career didn’t.

Tag: 1976

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