A campaign to record the names and burial places of all those killed on June 16 1976 was launched on Saturday in Soweto at the memorial of Hector Petersen, one of the first children to die in the uprising.
Ali Hlongwane, chief curator at the adjacent Hector Petersen Memorial, said the project, a collaboration between the museum and the South African Heritage Resources Foundation, hopes to identify about 575 people and provide information on how, where and when they lost their lives.
”We need to know more about who they were,” said Hlongwane. ”While it is important for a nation to choose symbols representative of a historic event, it is equally important to hear their voices so that we can enrich our understanding of the stories of this country.”
City Press newspaper was expected to carry an advertisement on Sunday with further details of the campaign.
Among guests at the ceremony on Saturday were Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo, with Petersen’s sister Antoinette Sithole and other family members laying a wreath.
Petersen’s mother did not attend as she was unwell, Hlongwane said.
On June 16 1976, thousands of schoolchildren participated in a march in Soweto in opposition to Bantu education and being taught in Afrikaans. Though the focus of the march was on education policy, it also brought to a head opposition to apartheid.
Police fired at the crowd, and although an exact number is not known, hundreds of people are believed to have died on that day and during the days following the clashes. — Sapa