When we learned about the
Sharpeville Massacre and the Soweto Uprising in class and read about them in
our nonfiction books, it was easy to see that they were heartbreaking tragedies
that should have never happened. As skeptical as I am about the necessity of
traveling to understand historical events, visiting Sharpeville and Soweto made
me understand just how recent these tragedies were. The visits also made me
think about the way in which we remember victims/revolutionaries. This quote
from Hector Pieterson’s sister, Antoinette Sithole, was displayed in Soweto’s
Hector Pieterson Museum: “When my brother was killed in the June 16 student
uprising, he was just a 13 year old schoolboy. But this does not justify the
heroism around him as a martyr.” When parents and family members were denied
the ability to hold a mass funeral for all of the people who were killed in the
violent aftermath of the Soweto Uprising, they chose one child’s funeral to be
a symbolic funeral for all the others. Hector Pieterson seemed like a
reasonable choice as the image of his dead body had gained the most media
attraction for this particular uprising. It’s a sad fact of many of these
movements that a child’s body must become a symbol for the media and for
outsiders to cling on to. Children’s bodies are especially potent because of
their inherent innocence. The following media narrative is similar to what we
would see today: Hector was just a 13-year-old boy who wanted to be educated in
his own language, and he didn’t deserve to die. There is nothing false about
this statement, but the language in “he didn’t deserve to die” implies that
others did deserve to die. Perhaps I’m reading into this tragedy with too
modern a lens, but it’s difficult to see the videos and hear the testimonies from
the Soweto Uprising and not draw comparisons with today’s Black Lives Matter
movement. It’s disgusting to see that in the sixties and seventies, white
people were more concerned about the safety of their possessions than with
black lives, but the exact same comments can be heard from white people on CNN,
FOX, or MSNBC positioned next to rolling clips of riots and looting.
I was disappointed that we didn’t
spend more time in the downtown area of Johannesburg, and I really hope that
I’ll be in a position to visit the city again in the future. I’ve been thinking
a lot about bucket lists and things that I need to do before I leave South
Africa, and visiting Soweto made me stop and realize what a privilege it is to
have a bucket list, or to think that I might return somewhere in the future.
Seeing the cemetery and the tombstones of all those fighters who died under the
age of 21 reminded me that every second I have on earth is a privilege, and
that I’ve already seen more and been to more places in my lifetime that others
see in several lifetimes.
I had a surprisingly good time at
the Boys and Girls Club in Soweto, considering that I don’t see myself as a
“kid person.” The kids were pretty easy going and fun to play with, but I’m not
really the type of person who has their life changed by spending a few hours
with a group of kids I’ve just met. For this reason, it was a little surprising
to me to see a lot of co-educators taking so many pictures with the kids, or
having their pictures taken with the kids. I fully understand that some of us
may have really bonded with the kids and want to keep memories of the few hours
that we spent with them, but it’s hard for me to picture the same photoshoots
happening if we had spent those hours at a daycare center with mostly white
children.
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