Earlier in the semester, when I first learned about these
two places in class, I didn’t think they were much more than places where some
violent riots had occurred. But visiting
the sites was extremely powerful and made me feel lots of confusion and anger.
In 1976 in Southwestern Township, Soweto, students started to peacefully march in protest
of the Bantu Education system, which forced native speakers to take their
classes in Afrikaans. As they were marching, the Afrikaaner policemen started
to open fire on the students, killing and injuring many. The Hector Pieterson museum, in memory of
Hector Pieterson, a 13 year old boy who was defenselessly killed, told the
story in detail, but I am still left with a bunch of questions. The first is that I don’t know how people
could just kill innocent children—they must have had some other reason besides
that they were black and protesting apartheid…I don’t know how those policemen
could live with themselves after what they did. Also, I find it interesting that (classified) coloured
people, especially the majority in the Western Cape, were supporting the blacks
protesting Afrikaans because for coloureds, their first language is Afrikaans. But from what I was explained, the forced
requirement to learn in Afrikaans was simply a metaphor for oppression during
apartheid.
On March 21st, 1960 in Sharpeville, a township outside of
Johannesburg, 69 people (as young as 12 years old) were killed and 180 were
injured after they protested the local polices station for having to carry
their passbooks. This day is now
celebrated nationally as Human Rights Day.
Seeing the police station and the cemetery gave me yet another reminder
of the inhuman suffering people endured under apartheid. Why couldn’t the police, who rightfully were
afraid of the masses of people burning a piece of paper, use rubber bullets—why
did they have to use armored tanks? No one would think that the police would
try to wipe everyone out—even the protesters who were told by a black policeman
that they would be killed by the white policemen didn’t think the police were
capable of doing something like this.
Just like many human injustices have happened around the
world, we can never forget what happened and we need to understand why it
happened so that this can never happen again.
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