Youth Day on 16 June is a public holiday in South Africa and commemorates a protest which resulted in a wave of protests across the country known as the Soweto uprising of 1976. It came in response to multiple issues with the Bantu Education Act and the government edict in 1974 that Afrikaans be used as medium of instruction for certain subjects in black schools. The iconic picture of Hector Pieterson, a black schoolchild shot by the police, brought home to many people within and outside of South Africa the brutality of the Apartheid government.
Our friends church celebrates it with a soccer tournament for the youth of surrounding churches and we were lucky enough to join them for the day. It was true soccer, kids playing in whatever clothes & shoes they were wearing for the day, one kid had only one shoe on? Another you could see the soles of his shoes flapping when he ran. They had great spirit and big smiles and didn't do too much arguing with at least one ref-Greg!
Here is Greg doing the coin toss to start the game- a Five Rand Coin of course!
The entire group assembled to start the day!
Kelly and Katie are to the far left, they both played well, especially since they are rusty in soccer. Sadly girls soccer is really not a sport here. When we looked for options for them to play the only place we found was at the University of Pretoria where they would have had college age teammates.
The big talk at the tournament was the quick departure of President Bashir of Sudan who left the African Union Meeting before they could hold him for his charges with the International Criminal Court. He flew out of Waterkloof Air Force Base (which we can see from our street, Charlie and I like to walk down and watch the planes take off). The best comment I heard regarding the matter was "What would South Africa be like today if the world had not kept the pressure on to end apartheid?" This has been quite a story which keeps South Africa in the news along with the FIFA case. One person called into the local radio station and talked about how much fun it was to be in South Africa during the soccer World Cup and they said actually they think if anything South Africa should have paid more!
The girls are working hard on their exams and school work to get to mid term break when our friends the Bodenhofer's arrive from the States, much excitement here!
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