Hector Pieterson Museum

I visited the Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. In 1976 there was a student uprising in Soweto to protest the use of Afrikaans (a form of Dutch) in teaching, seeing it as one of the main symbols of white oppression. Violence broke out, and many students were killed during those protests. Hector Pieterson was the first casualty of the violence. Sadly, photographs were not allowed inside the museum.

I was with Trevor, a native of Soweto who had experienced some of the violence in Soweto as a child, and he related to me a lot of what the museum commemorated. Trevor was a little disappointed that the museum did not spend much, if any time, on the whites who supported the blacks. Just in the timbre of Trevor's voice, you could tell that this was a subject of great importance to him, and he was very interested in making sure that I understood all that happened.

One of the most surprising things was the use of torture and assassinations of prominent black leaders by the Apartheid government. It was an eye-opening and appalling truth that I had a hard time wrapping my head around. I briefly tried to relate some of the more prominent events that led to the end of segregation in America to Trevor, but even President Eisenhower sending National Guard troops to Little Rock did not seem to even compare in the immense gravity of what was happening in South Africa a couple decades later.

There was a portion of the museum located outside that consisted of bricks each labeled with the name of those killed in the student uprising suspended in a sea of gravel. Walking among the names was a sobering experience.

Outside the museum was also a memorial to the event. Here are a few pictures of that memorial.