Hastings Ndlovu

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the history behind this landmark day. The piece was first published on the City of Joburg's website on the 24 May 2007. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

It is a day violently etched on the South African collective conscience. Known these days as Youth Day, it commemorates the deaths of about 200 school children in Soweto, on 16 June, 1976.
 
Lest we forget the significance of the day, a museum exists to keep the memories fresh. The Hector Pieterson Museum, in Orlando West in Soweto, is just a few blocks from where students and police met in a violent confrontation.

Sign for the Hector Pieterson Museum (The Heritage Portal)

The sahistory.org.za website puts the number of dead at 200, in contrast with the official figure conservatively given as 23, according to Philip Bonner and Lauren Segal in Soweto, A History.
 
On that day the government and the police were caught off guard, when the simmering bubble of anger of school children finally burst, releasing an intensity of emotion that the police controlled in the only manner they knew how: with ruthless aggression.
 
Bantu education was introduced by the National Party in 1954. Prior to this blacks either didn't...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie tells the emotional story of the death of Hastings Ndlovu. Ndlovu is believed to be the first person killed during the Soweto uprising that began on 16 June 1976. The piece was originally published on the City of Johannesburg's website on 10 January 2005. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

The doctor interrupted his mid-morning tea break, rushed into the casualty section and was greeted by "a grisly scene". Lying on the stretcher was the body of a young boy dressed in school uniform, his head covered in blood, a gaping bullet wound exposing his brain.
 
The doctor describes what he saw: ". . . a bullet wound to one side of his head, blood and brains spilling out of a large exit wound on the other side, the gurgle of death in his throat. Only later would I learn his name: Hastings Ndlovu".
 
The doctor was Malcolm Klein, now an anaesthetist living and working in Tampa, Florida. The boy, 15-year-old* Hastings Ndlovu, was believed to be the first child to be shot in Orlando West in confrontations with the police on 16 June, 1976, the day Soweto exploded in violent uprisings against the apartheid government.
 
Another boy, 12-year-old Hector Pieterson, has come to symbolise the day. "The World" newspaper photographer Sam Nzima was on hand to capture the unconscious Pieterson being carried by pupil Mbuyisa Makhubo, with Antoinette Sithole, Pieterson's sister, running alongside, after Pieterson was shot by the...