Remembering Soweto: thinking of Nigeria
It's thirty three years today since Hastings Ndlovu, Hector Pieterson and twenty one other children were mowed down by the hat-filled bullets of the apartheid state machine, in the South Western Township (Soweto) of Orlando, which had produced the Mandelas, and Sisulus then in prison. Their crime was refusing to be taught with what Desmond Tutu described as "the oppressors language" in line with the Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974. Over 500 persons were to be shot dead or never to be seen again from the violence that rocked the apartheid enclave for days after this. It was actually the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime as within and outside the country the visible "fire in Soweto, burning all my people" (as Okosun rightly sang) became a clarion for action Sam Nzima's picture of 12-year old Hector carried in the arms of his cousin, with his sister running along distraught by trauma, became a prick on the conscience of humanity (although of course w...