Mandela Marks Soweto Uprising Date

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands —  A crowd of 10,000 people cheered black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela in Amsterdam on Saturday as he told the South African government on the anniversary of the Soweto uprising: “Let bygones be bygones.”

Blacks protesting apartheid-based education in the South African township 14 years ago triggered an uprising in which police shot and killed more than 600 people.

“Today is June the 16th--a day in 1976 when the government decided to mow our children down in Soweto,” Mandela said.

But he added: “Despite all the cruelties committed in the past, we say to this government, ‘Let bygones be bygones, and let us build a new South Africa together.’ ”

Mandela was in the Netherlands on a round-the-world tour in which he is pressing for continued sanctions against South Africa.

Throughout South Africa on Saturday, thousands of blacks staged peaceful rallies commemorating Soweto Day.

About 20,000 people packed a Soweto stadium in an upbeat gathering that featured jazz bands and singer Miriam Makeba, home from 31 years in exile. Fans greeted Makeba, dubbed “Mama Afrika,” with screams of delight as she took the stage beside African National Congress leader Walter Sisulu.

“I have been all over the world. I thought of you everywhere. I sang your song, I sang your life, because it is mine,” she said.

“The youth of Soweto is now a great symbol of resistance and defiance throughout the world,” Sisulu told the crowd.

Soweto, 10 miles outside Johannesburg, is the country’s largest black township with 2.5 million residents.

The 1976 police shootings in Soweto touched off an unprecedented wave of unrest that spread throughout the country and lasted several months.

Many blacks point to the riots as the time when they became active opponents of the white-led government and its apartheid policies of racial segregation.

“Fourteen years ago, we mourned and complained, but today we are counting our victories,” ANC spokesman Popo Molefe told tens of thousands of blacks at a rally outside the southern city of Port Elizabeth.

Most of the Soweto Day events were staged by the ANC or the rival Pan Africanist Congress. It was the first time since the 1976 riots that widespread demonstrations have taken place on Soweto Day without major police intervention.

Also Saturday, in the central town of Welkom, about 250 members of the white supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement marched to protest the detention of two whites.

Members dressed in khaki uniforms gave stiff-armed, Nazi-style salutes and chanted, “Hang Mandela.” They then marched to a nearby police station and handed in a petition protesting the detentions.

The two men are being held in connection with separate bomb attacks in Pretoria and Welkom, but no one has been charged in either case.

The ANC, the country’s largest black opposition group, was legalized in February after being banned for 30 years. Mandela was released Feb. 11, after 27 years in prison.