Riots of Soweto

the riots of Soweto were a Manifestation of Adolescent S blacks in South Africa the June 16th 1976, protesting against the imposition of the exclusive Enseignement in Langue Afrikaans and which degenerated when the police force opened fire.

These riots take place whereas the country lives under the mode of the Apartheid. Soweto (SOuth WEst TOwnship) is black suburbs located at 24 km in the south-west of Johannesburg in the province of then of the Transvaal (located today in the Gauteng).

The June 16th 1976, with the support of the movement of the black Conscience, the schoolboys and the black students gather to protest against the obligation which is made to them follow their teaching in Afrikaans, the language of the principal community white of the country and identified with apartheid.

At nine hours and half of the morning, these young people start to meet around streamers. The purpose of they are to protest and to express their opinions and it peacefully is agreed that any confrontation with the police force doint to be avoided.

But the police force had received the instruction of the Minister of Interior Department, Jimmy Kruger, “ to restore the order at all costs and to use of all the means for this purpose” ".

After the summations asking crowd to disperse, it opened fire without distinction on disarmed crowd.

The assessment officially of 23 died and 220 wounded, but the real assessment is not really known. One speaks about several hundreds of deaths, and one advances sometimes 575 dead including 570 Blacks. Number of them were touched balls in the back. One of first died, Hector Pietersen, young a 12 year old boy, became the symbol of the blind repression of the mode.

The photograph to which it is related by his brother made the round the world tour later. Riots were propagated in all the townships country and their repercussion in the international opinion was such as it obliged in 1977 UNO to issue a Embargo on the sales of weapons bound for South Africa.

The repression of the government is severe and the chiefs of the black parties like that of the black Conscience, Steve Biko, are stopped. (He dies the September 12th 1977. Its autopsy will reveal violent one blows carried to the head.)

The riots of Soweto were put in scene at the end of the film the Cry of freedom of Richard Attenborough.

Since 1991, the Journée of the African child is organized each year on June 16th, in remembering the massacre of the children with Soweto.