Pretoria - Four decades on, Antoinette Sithole still has memories of her bloodied brother Hector Pieterson being hurried into a car and off to a clinic, where he was declared dead on arrival.
The 56-year-old on Wednesday relived the horror of watching her little brother fighting for his life and losing the battle after being shot on June 16, 1976, during the Soweto Uprising.
Then 16, Sithole was among the 15 000 pupils who marched to Orlando Stadium to express their unhappiness with the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in township schools.
Sithole said she had the shock of her life when she saw her brother, aged 13, among the gathering crowd that fateful morning.
He was too young to understand what was going on, she thought to herself. “I saw Hector standing on the opposite side of the street and wanted to reach out to him. However, I couldn’t because police kept firing teargas to disperse the crowds,” she told the packed hall at Curro Roodeplaat Independent School in Pretoria.
“When the smoke from the teargas faded, I kept on looking across the street for Hector, but could not see him anymore.”
Not too far away from where she was standing, she saw a crowd huddled around a body on the corner of Moema and Vilakazi streets.
Sithole said she wanted to go and see what was going on, but was eager to remain where she was in case Hector looked for her.
“Finally, curiosity got the best of me and I walked towards the crowd.
“The first thing I saw was Hector’s shoes; my heart throbbed. I saw a man I did not know carry him. And then I saw a pool of blood. Immediately I knew something was wrong. I ran along with the man (now known as Mbuyisa Makhubu) towards a parked car.
“The driver identified herself as a journalist. We got inside the car and headed to nearby Phefeni clinic… I was hysterical and unfortunately when we got to the hospital Hector had died.”
The iconic image by Sam Nzima of Makhubu carrying Hector, with Sithole alongside them was published around the world and has become synonymous with the Soweto uprising. The journalist who drove the car was Sophie Tema.
Sithole said she was scared to go home and tell her family what had happened.
“Losing my brother was something else... It was painful. As emotional as it was, I still honour that day because it was the turning point of my life and will always be important,” she said.
Sithole said there were vital lessons young people of today should learn from the class of 1976 was the courage to fight for change. “The courage the youth of that era displayed proved to us that it was possible for young people to bring change in our country,” said Sithole.
“We need to come out of a mindset where youth wait for the government to do things for them. We need to liberate ourselves from our circumstances and take up opportunities that are available to us and build a better future for ourselves.”
Sithole said young people of today were not united compared to their 1976 counterparts.
“Back then, children supported one another; they had a sense of unity. Now young people do drugs and teenage pregnancy is rife.
“They don’t take a stand for what they believe in and are living in another world.”
However, she acknowledged the youth of today were not fighting the same struggle of the youth of 1976, singling out modern-day challenges such as unemployment, poverty and crime as their biggest struggles.
According to Sithole, young people needed to liberate themselves from these challenges.
Sithole said young South Africans remained a central part of the country’s success, growth and development.
She said the development of the youth was central to the transformation of the country and enhancement of the lives of all South Africans.
“Our country has come far in achieving the growth our youth enjoy today - we need to protect that because it didn’t come easy. We need to keep the knowledge of our history conscious in our youth in order to encourage them to be daring and face their challenges,” Sithole said
Curro Roodeplaat headboy, Lourenco Marques, said of Sithole: “When she told her story, it was like being in a time machine. I learnt a lot about the past.”
Grade 6 pupil Thomas Thobakgale said Sithole and her generation survived the uprisings for a reason - so they could be the voice that instilled changed in today’s youth.
Curro Roodeplaat had troubles of its own last year when it was hit by a racism scandal after a video of children seemingly being divided according to race during a field trip went viral.
Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi met the management, after which the school apologised and promised classes would be integrated.
Pretoria News