Youth Day: Understanding the history behind it
Youth Day, as it is popularly known, is a day in which South Africans honour the youth that was ambushed by the apartheid regime police in Soweto on 16 June 1976. On the day, over 500 young people, including school students, were killed.On the morning of 16 June 1976, thousands of black students from Soweto in the then Transvaal, now Gauteng, went on a protest rally from their schools to Orlando Stadium.
The rally was a peaceful protest intended to urge the government not to make Afrikaans compulsory in schools. The Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum was later opened in Soweto near the place where he was shot in Orlando West, on 16 June 2002. This was done in the honour of Hector and those who died around the country in the 1976 uprising.Although the media reports named Hector as the first child to die on 16 June 1976, Hastings Ndlovu was in fact the first child to be shot according to police records.
The horrific events of 16 June resulted in Mashinini becoming the most wanted man in the country. The police offered a R500 reward for anyone with information that would lead to his arrest. In August 1976, Mashinini left South Africa for Botswana and later proceeded to the West Coast of Africa. He finally settled in Liberia, where he passed away in 1990.
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