Hector Pieterson
Hector Pieterson was twelve years old on the morning of 16 June 1976 when he followed the older children of Soweto out of school to march against the order that half their subjects be taught in Afrikaans, and was shot by the police near the Orlando West school; the photograph of his body being carried by Mbuyisa Makhubo with his sister Antoinette running alongside went round the world that evening, and the museum, the square and the national holiday carry his name. He was born in 1963 in Soweto, the son of a family that had come from the Cape and spelled its name Pitso until an official changed it, and was in the sixth grade at a primary school that had not yet been ordered to switch. The decree of 1974 required mathematics and social studies to be taught in Afrikaans in the higher grades from 1976, the language of the government and of nobody's home in the township; the pupils of the secondary schools organised through the South African Students' Movement, and on the morning of the 16th some ten or fifteen thousand marched towards Orlando stadium with placards. The police blocked the road at Vilakazi Street, fired tear gas, and then, without an order anyone later admitted giving, fired into the crowd. The first child killed was Hastings Ndlovu, and Hector fell minutes later. Sam Nzima of The World took six frames as the older boy picked him up and ran for the clinic, and the paper printed the one that has been reprinted ever since. He was dead on arrival. The rising spread through the townships and the country over the following months and killed at least a hundred and seventy-six people by the government's count and perhaps seven hundred by others. It ended the Afrikaans order, sent a generation into exile and the armed struggle, and began the last fifteen years of apartheid. His sister Antoinette opened the museum in Orlando West in 2002; the boy who carried him fled the country and was never found.
- Lived: 1963 CE – 1976 CE
- Nationality: South African
- Roles: student
