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South Africans insist they will be ready
The girl, just several steps off the tour bus full of English rugby fans, can't be older than 15 or 16. She still is cradling her catered lunch in her hands when she is startled by the image.
"Oh, my God," she says.
Here, at the Hector Peterson Memorial in Soweto, is a larger-than-life-size replica of the photograph that galvanized public opinion around the world.
This memorial is sacred ground to black South Africans, commemorating the 13-year-old Peterson -- just one of many youths to die in Soweto in June 1976. Many of them were wearing school uniforms, defending themselves with trash can covers against police bullets. Tens of thousands of youngsters, many without informing their parents, had massed to march and protest the apartheid government's edict that they be instructed in Afrikaans, the language associated with the oppressive government at that time.
(continue)
The girl, just several steps off the tour bus full of English rugby fans, can't be older than 15 or 16. She still is cradling her catered lunch in her hands when she is startled by the image.
"Oh, my God," she says.
Here, at the Hector Peterson Memorial in Soweto, is a larger-than-life-size replica of the photograph that galvanized public opinion around the world.
This memorial is sacred ground to black South Africans, commemorating the 13-year-old Peterson -- just one of many youths to die in Soweto in June 1976. Many of them were wearing school uniforms, defending themselves with trash can covers against police bullets. Tens of thousands of youngsters, many without informing their parents, had massed to march and protest the apartheid government's edict that they be instructed in Afrikaans, the language associated with the oppressive government at that time.
(continue)