Yesterday was June 16, Youth Day in South Africa. It marks the 30 year anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, where 172 black youths were killed by apartheid security forces, many of them shot in the back while fleeing. This event gave us the iconic picture of the anti-apartheid struggle - that of the body of the young Hector Pietersen being carried away by a stranger while his sister looked on. Thousands of South Africans pay their respects by retracing Hector's fateful steps on that march each year.
In the strange irony that is South Africa, another incident of apartheid police brutality perhaps is one of the reasons why I became a computer geek. On the 15th October 1985, another infamous shooting happened in the suburb of Athlone where I lived - an event known as the Trojan Horse incident. On that day, security police, disguised as transport workers, shot and killed 3 people, two of them schoolboys. One of them, Shaun Magmoed, was the same age as me, and I remember attending his funeral thinking how easy it could have been me.
After this event, my parents made a decision to withdraw from the schooling system given the dangers, and I spent the next couple of months essentially being home-schooled. My father saved up some money and bought my first computer, a ZX81 (with 4KB of memory!). So, with four months of no school, I spent many of my hours coding on that trusted machine. I remember the heat sink of the computer being perilously placed under the keyboard, and when you coded longer than three hours you burnt your fingers on the "5" key!
I still have that ZX81 to this day, and I both fondly remember the hours spent coding as a 15 year old boy, as well as the pain of wondering if I ever would enter the formal schooling system again. I took the opportunity this Youth Day to revisit that period, spending a few minutes at the Trojan Horse memorial in Thornton Road.
In the silence of this austere memorial, I silently thanked the Universe for sparing me, and for somehow in the madness that was the 1980's struggle giving me a love for computers that I carry with me to this day. I was also mindful of a terrible waste: the fact that three young people are no longer with us - their dreams and hopes wiped out by that terrible part of South Africa's history.
Hamba kahle Shaun, Jonathan and Michael! Your memory and the price you paid for our freedom will always be remembered.
A crazy thing has been happening when I browse the web at our company through iBurst - I've got www.google.com set as my home page. Usually it goes to Google South Africa page, but today for some odd reason it started going to Google Deutschland. Weird!
Since we are majority owned by Dutch investors, this is going to take a lot of explaining if they ever find out...
We also occasionally have the German Consulate show up in the wireless networks accessible from our floor, though I'm sure that this has nothing to do with our Google Deutschland Uber Alles problem.