In the article below, Lucille Davie recalls the tragedy of the Westdene Dam Disaster. The piece was originally published on the Brand South Africa website on 20 June 2013. Davie's story was sparked by a visit by then mayor Parks Tau to various sites commemorating the loss of children. Click here to view more of Davie's work.
Dewald van Dyk’s shoes lie in the murky depths of Westdene Dam in Johannesburg. They have been there since 1985, when he dived into the dark waters again and again to pull out children whose school bus went into the dam.
Van Dyk was a paramedic at the time, and he was part of the emergency services team that arrived at the dam 15 minutes after the accident happened. There were 76 schoolchildren on the bus that day; only 34 survived. They ranged in age between 13 and 17, and were catching the bus home from school on Wednesday, 27 March 1985.
This year, on Youth Day, 16 June, the executive mayor of Johannesburg, Parks Tau, visited several sites in the city to commemorate children who had died in various incidents. He visited Alexandra, where pupils marched on 18 June 1976, two days after Soweto exploded in student revolts. What started as a peaceful march was a protest against the imposition of Afrikaans in township schools.
Several hundred people were gunned down by police in Johannesburg on 16 June 1976, and as the riots spread across the country, the body count rose to over 560. A plaque...
