S Africa honours Soweto uprising 40 years on

South Africa today marked 40 years since the Soweto uprising, when security forces fired on black students in a massacre that triggered a new era of anti-apartheid resistance.
The 1976 protests, and the apartheid regime's violent response, fuelled a struggle that eventually led to the fall of white-minority rule with Nelson Mandela's election as president in 1994.
The anniversary has been commemorated by a series of events to honour those who took part in the uprising, which began as a protest against a government order that schools could only teach in the Afrikaans language used by whites.
"(The students) were dreaming about good quality education, they were dreaming about a new democracy," Jeff Radebe, a senior government minister, said at the start of the official ceremony at a stadium in Soweto.

"The youth of 2016 are enjoying the fruit of seed that was laid by those youngsters of 1976 who defied the might of the apartheid state."
At the time at least 170 people were killed, with some estimates putting the death toll at several hundred over the following months as the uprising spread from the township of Soweto, south of Johannesburg.

Images of poor, young black students gunned down by white police brought the injustices of apartheid to the world's attention and spurred the global anti-apartheid movement.
President Jacob Zuma was due to make a national address at the stadium, after Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa placed a wreath at the memorial to Hector Pieterson, who was killed aged 13.

The black-and-white photograph of Pieterson's body being carried away by a student in tears became the iconic image of the uprising.
Divisions along racial lines remain strong in South Africa, with most black people enduring worse education, housing and unemployment than white people.
Students have again been protesting in recent months over tuition fees that force some poor black youths out of education.
Racist Internet postings have underlined long-standing frictions worsened by the country's dire economic performance and anger at politicians' failure to meet post-apartheid expectations.
Highlighting the country's unhealed wounds, a reconciliation event in Soweto last Saturday was sparsely attended.

The gathering had been intended to bring together black and white people, but it split some black activists, and white former policemen declined to take part.
Dan Montsitsi, a student leader of the uprising, said the 1976 march in Soweto had been planned for months.
The students, most of whom were in their school uniforms, carried placards reading: "Afrikaans stinks", "To hell with Afrikaans" and "Afrikaans needs to be abolished".
"We were amazed with the number of students that we had been able to put in the streets," he told AFP ahead of the 40th anniversary.
He said the police released a dog into the crowd, which was killed.

"The police were very angry obviously and they decided they would use teargas.
"(Soon after) they started to shoot."
June 16 is a national holiday in South Africa marking Youth Day.