Soweto

My first stop in South Africa was Soweto on June 16, 2009. I passed the Soccer City Stadium which was under construction. Soweto is where black people live. The name came from the first two letters of the "South West of Town" from the time in 1886 when black people were forced to move into the marsh land to live in shacks and work as miners. I went straight to the open area, Freedom Square, in front of the Hector Pieterson Memorial Museum and the national heritage site intrinsically linked to the origins of the Soweto Uprising and its aftermath in 1976. The area and streets were packed with thousands of black people who were commemorating the Soweto Uprising of students on the same day in 1976. There were walls symbolizing the hardship with a photograph of a boy carrying a young boy, Hector Pieterson, who was shot by the police, and running to a hospital with his sister. I have never seen so many black students. I have never met so many students in perfect uniform in my life. School uniform showed their love for learning with choices. I was impressed by their pride. They were queuing up with their teachers in orderly manner to visit the museum in order to learn about where they came from and where they were going to. Education was a key. I saw posters that said, "Children needs roots and wings to grow". The museum was a symbol of hardship of the past and hope for the future. The picture is a newspaper article from The Star on June 17, 2009.