South Africa marks Soweto uprising anniversary

By Afp, Soweto
South African President Thabo Mbeki led commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, a watershed in the anti-apartheid struggle, when hundreds of children protesting at the forced teaching of Afrikaans died in a brutal police crackdown.

Mbeki, accompanied by dignitaries including Nelson Mandela's former wife Winnie, led a march of hundreds from Soweto's Morris Isaacson School -- one of the key points of the 1976 uprising -- to a memorial to arguably its most famous victim.

Hundreds of children, veterans of the "Class of 76", council workers and civil servants took part in the five-kilometre trek to the Hector Pieterson Memorial.

They stopped briefly to observe a minute's silence to honour the memory of Pietersen and the hundreds of other people killed by police over the next year.