Soweto

On June 16, 1976, the worlds most shocking, breathtaking, brutal and powerful event took place. That event began with a protest for South African students not to learn in the Afrikaans language. The children in South Africa took their education very seriously. There was only one problem. The children were being forced to learn in Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch. So that’s when the children decided to organize a protest.
 * by Kaiya, Grade 6**

The protest started out very peaceful, but when the cops saw the students, they started to throw tear gas and shoot at them for no reason. Then that’s when the protest turned into a huge riot.

The protest had 20,000 children involved. 23 of those children died the first day. One of the children’s name was Hector Peterson. He was only twelve years old when he got shot and died for fighting for his freedom to speak his own language.

When the world heard about what happened in Soweto they were shocked at how police officers could do so much harm to children that age. Many people around the world were so shocked that they started to protest, march and boycott against apartheid.

Soweto was a very meaningful and shocking event. Even though the protest became violent, the children didn’t stop. Because of the protest, students in South Africa get to speak their own language in school, and aren’t ruled over by white people anymore. The day of the protest is now a national holiday, and everybody in South Africa celebrates the uprising that happened n South Africa.