Hector Peterson
1963 - 1976

Hector Peterson was born in 1963. One of the youngest killed in the Soweto uprising of 1976. A newspaper photograph (taken by Sam Nzima) of Peterson's body being carried away from the killing grounds came to symbolise the wider tragedy, indeed the liberation struggle itself. A postmortem revealed that was killed by a short fired directly at him and by a bullet 'ricocheting off the ground' as police claimed.