VOA常速英语:With Sadness, But No Regrets, South Africa Remembers Soweto Uprising

Joy, in the place in the scene, so much tragedy. This square was the scene of one of South Africa’s darkest chapters, the 1976 Soweto Uprising.
欢乐，在画面中的这个地方，但是却也有着悲剧。这个广场是见证南非最黑暗历史篇章之一的一个现场，1976年索维托起义。

Some 20,000 high school students marched to protest the apartheid’s government’s insistence on teaching in the Afrikaans language. Police opened fire on the marching children. Estimates vary on how many children were killed -- some go as high as 700. One of the first victims was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson.
约20000名高中生游行抗议实行种族隔离政策的政府坚持用南非荷兰语授课。警察向游行的孩子们开火。到底多少孩子被杀害，数据估计说法不一，有些说有700名之多。其中首当其冲的一名受害者是时年13岁的赫克托·彼得森。

That fateful day, June 16, is now celebrated as Youth Day. Many of the surviving students are now grandparents, but, the memory has never left them.
6月16日，那个灾难性的一天现在是南非的青年节。许多当年的幸存者现在已是为人祖父母，但是记忆却不曾离开。

“When the shooting started, I was not sure it was a gun. It sounded like a cracker, until I saw a boy was next to me bleeding from the hand. Then it’s when I realized that, actually, these people are shooting, they’re using live ammunition. Students ran into the neighboring houses. Police followed by throwing tear gases around there.”
“当枪击开始时，我都不确定是不是枪声，听起来像是爆竹声，直到我看到我身边一个男孩的手在流血，我才意识到，那些人真的在枪击，他们在用弹药。学生们跑进邻近的房子里，警察接着在房子周围仍催泪弹。”

Those horrors seem distant for today’s children, but they say they are grateful for the sacrifices made by those who came before them. “Let us thank them for what they did for others, because we have freedom. We can do everything in this country.”
这些恐怖的画面对于今天的孩子们来说似乎十分遥远，但是他们说他们对于那些先辈做出的牺牲，心存感激。“让我们谢谢他们为他们做出的贡献，因为我们现在有了自由，我们能够在这个国家做任何事。”

The older generation says the efforts were worthwhile. When she was a student activist, Florence Kganye says, she and her friends were repeatedly jailed and beaten.
老一辈的人说这些努力都是值得的。当弗洛伦斯·卡尼尔还是学生运动者时，她说她和她的朋友们反复地被逮捕和被殴打。

“It was worth it because what we fought for, what the other students that died fought for, at least we do have the freedom now that we were fighting for, yes.”
“这很值得，因为我们所抗争的，其他学生用死来抗争的，至少我们现在拥有我们一直抗争的自由。是这样的。”

Young and old agree that South Africa has yet to live up to the ideals those students originally sought.
年轻人和年长者都认为南非还没有实现那些学生最初追求的理想。

Last year, university students held protests demanding free education. Protesters say the government’s failure to support them is effective economic apartheid. The debate continues.
去年，大学生举行抗议要求学费减免。抗议者说政府不能资助他们实际就是经济上的种族隔离。这一争论还在继续。

The struggle, veterans say, remains the essential role of the youth. They have the rage, the time, the energy, to keep up the fight -- and hopefully, make tomorrow’s South Africa a better place.
老兵们说年轻人的关键作用是抗争，他们愤世嫉俗，他们时间充裕，他们精力旺盛，可以不断争取——也希望，他们让未来的南非成为更好的国家。

Anita Powell VOANEWS Johannesburg.
安尼塔·鲍威尔约翰内斯堡报道。