South Africa marked the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising today, with hundreds of leaders walking in the footsteps of the black student protesters whose deaths at the hands of the police became a turning point in the struggle against apartheid.

President Thabo Mbeki led a symbolic recreation of the march that began, after weeks of growing unease, on June 16, 1976, when thousands of black students and children, - many students at Soweto’s Morris Isaacson School - took to the streets of the township to object to being taught in Afrikaans, the language of white rule in South Africa.

At 9am, today's march paused to remember Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old boy who died when the police, panicked by the scale of the demonstration, opened fire. He was the first of twenty-three unarmed protesters killed that day.

A photograph of Pieterson dying in a friend's arms became the defining image of the uprising, which showed the world the brutality of apartheid and triggered nationwide protests and riots in which more than 500 students died.

Hundreds more were detained and student leaders fled the country to further the guerrilla fight against apartheid from abroad.

"On June 16, that day in 1976, I was on this very same road," said Martin Mhlanga, 51, watching today's ceremony. "There was tear gas, people screaming, running, and police chasing everybody..."

Trofomo Sono, one of what became known as the "Class of 76", said: "I am feeling wonderful this morning. To us it is mission accomplished. I remember it was a cold morning like today. Things were tense then and we as students were gatvol," he said, using the Afrikaans word for 'fed up'.

Singing anti-apartheid songs, this morning's 3 mile (5km) march ended at a memorial for Pieterson where Mr Mbeki and other leaders, including Winnie Mandela, laid flowers and heard a choir sing the protest song Senzeni’na, Zulu for "We are crying."

"I am so happy he did not die for nothing," Isabel Boto, 70, said of her nephew Tsietsi Mashinini, one of the student leaders of 1976 who died in exile in Guinea 14 years later, either of Aids or assassination according to conflicting accounts.

"I have seen his ghost now, enjoying that we can get any place we like and our voice is heard."

Today's commemoration was due to culminate in Soweto's football stadium, where Mr Mbeki is expected to address around 40,000 people, many of whom are too young to remember the uprising. Any tone of celebration was tempered by the ongoing struggle to improve education and HIV treatment in the township.

Although Soweto, built originally as a dormitory settlement for black miners, is fringed by new shopping malls, renovated houses and the construction of a new luxury hotel, many of its 1.5 million inhabitants still do not have running water in their homes.

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