World

Clinton Honors History In Soweto

March 28, 1998 / 9:55 AM EST / CBS/AP

President Clinton has planted a tree in Soweto, the black township near Johannesburg, to honor the uprising that was the beginning of the end of apartheid.

In a ceremony at the Hector Peterson memorial, the president said South Africa's rebirth as a multiracial democracy would not have been possible without the courage of the young students who began the Soweto uprising in 1976.

Those students, angered at being taught in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority, began a march that ended in gunfire. Peterson was the first of dozens killed.

Mr. Clinton says the killings "shocked the world into a new recognition of the vast evil of apartheid."

Earlier, he visited a township where black-on-black violence erupted as white rule was ending. But students in Thokoza have since maintained a fragile peace. President Clinton paid homage to children who suffered and died under the old, oppressive government.

"This burden is heavy. Come and help us to carry the burden," some three dozen schoolchildren sang in Zulu as the president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived Saturday at the R.P. Mathanzela Primary School south of Johannesburg.

Outside the school's gated compound, a cheering crowd gathered in the muddy road before a ragtag jumble of concrete houses and wooden shacks. "I didn't want to leave the country without having the chance to have kind of an informal conversation with young people who are making the future of this country," Mr. Clinton said in opening a roundtable discussion at the school.

The Clintons next headed to Soweto,

Saturday's events wrap up the only official state visit of Mr. Clinton's 12-day African tour. He leaves Johannesburg Sunday for two days in Botswana; last stop, Senegal.

After Soweto, Mr. Clinton will help dedicate a commercial center in Johannesburg that is named in memory of Ron Brown, Mr. Clinton's late commerce secretary who was an advocate for African trade.

Mr. Clinton's speech there was billed as the economic centerpiece of his trip. He was announcing that the Overseas Private Investment Corp., which underwrites risky loans in developing countries, will set up three three funds targeted on Africa and totaling $650 million. The largest fund would provide $500 million in guarantees to American firms to build roads, airports, ports and highways.

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