18 June 2004

Although South Africa's children are thrilled to get the day off school on 16 June, many of them don't know why.

The Apartheid Museum's education programme head, Emilia Potenza, was astonished to discover recently that, of a group of around 80 Grade 9 students who visited the museum recently, only one child knew anything about June 16.

"And all she knew was that Hector Pieterson had died on that day", says Potenza.

The day Hector Pieterson died "I saw a child fall down. Under a shower of bullets I rushed forward and went for the picture ... " These are the words of Sam Nzima, whose famous photograph of a dying Hector Pieterson encapsulated the anger and tragedy of a day that changed the course of SA history.

Now the Apartheid Museum has brought out an action-packed comic about 16 June 1976 entitled "Timeliners: Soweto in Flames", designed to talk to the younger visitors to the museum.

The comic, the first in a series, will help to make the content of the museum more accessible to young visitors and will also give them something to take home with them.

Although the Apartheid Museum boasts some powerful and emotive audio-visual and pictorial material documenting the struggle against apartheid, the bulk of the exhibitions are text-based and are pitched at a fairly high level.

The comic sees modern-day schoolboy Neo catapulted back through time into Soweto on that fateful day when scores of youths who protested against being forced to learn in Afrikaans were killed.

Neo gets embroiled in the action - and ends up saving his own mother's life. His interest is stirred, and he now wants to find out more about the turbulent history he once thought so irrelevant to his own life.

Suddenly Neo finds himself in Gaborone, Botswana in 1986, immersed in the struggle in exile, faced with the massive task of saving his friend in a cross-border raid by the apartheid government forces … and the reader has to wait for the next issue "to uncover more about South Africa's past with Neo".

"Kids are not interested in history", says Potenza. "You need to win them over, and the comic format does this."

Certainly the comic, created by Strika Entertainment, is a gripping read. It also contains a useful timeline documenting the history of formal schooling in the country, and offers suggested activities for learning more about the events of 16 June.

At the magazine's launch, where hundreds of school children were presented with the comic and treated to a drumming workshop at the Apartheid Museum, many of them were so busy reading their comics they were impervious to what speakers had to say.

And whether youths are interested or not in the history of apartheid, the turgid subject will soon become a core part of the history syllabus. All students wrote one national exam for the first time in 2003 and, also for the first time, the period spanning 1948- 976 was a compulsory section the matric history exam.

"In the past, this section was optional", says Potenza. "Students could spot and leave out apartheid altogether, and many did so."

Now that apartheid has become required learning, history students would be advised to get their hands on "Timeliners". The comic is available at the Apartheid Musuem, but plans are afoot to distribute it more widely to schools.

For more information, go to the Apartheid Museum website or call (011) 309-4700.

Source: City of Johannesburg website

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