Another sad birthday, Soweto Day

Tomorrow is the 30 year commemoration of the Soweto Uprisings.

I am moved by this for several reasons:

• The personal connection: I was 8 days old when it started. Luckily my family was in Cape Town which is roughly as far from Soweto as London is from Belgrade!
  
• The injustice of forcing Afrikaans as a tuition medium resonates strangely with Afrikaans-speaking people like me. A mere 70 years before Soweto, the Brits tried to squeeze Afrikaans by forcing English as the only tuition medium.
  
• The indiscriminate and lethal violence on 16 June '76 was directed against children and teenagers; twenty three fatalities on the day, 500 in the following months.
  

I choose to believe that South Africa was then and is now peopled by good people of all races. How did this happen? I sense that is a rhetorical question that I will never reach a final answer to.

Regardless of the futility of the gesture I have an urge to apologise for the injustices committed by my forebears. Perhaps this is misplaced specie shame or perhaps the wise man (Joshua Mentz's dad!) was right when he said we carry the shadow of previous generations. It fixes nothing but I am deeply sorry for injustices perpetrated supposedly to guard my generation's future and I honour Hector Pieterson and the 100s of others who died in the ensuing riots for what is now my freedom too.

More background on this which may explain my emotional state:

• An account of the events from an unusual perspective - inspirational.
• If this audio slide-show doesn't stir, check for a pulse.
• Max Du Preez, veteran Afrikaans journalist, on the Soweto Day commemoration.
• Stander, probably the best film out of SA, starts with an arresting reconstruction of Soweto Day from the perspective of Andre Stander, a then cop who went bad (or not?) following the experience. He became the leader of the Stander Gang, the notoriously brazen bank robbers of the early 80s.
  
• The Soweto Riots wikipedia page.
  

PS. I know it is easy for me to be high minded sitting in London. That is not something I will apologise for. One of the freedoms their blood afforded is international travel.