Nelson Mandela talks about discipline, education on anniversary of Soweto student uprising

South African president Nelson Mandela lectured young people on discipline and responsibility during a recent Soweto Day rally on the anniversary of a student uprising that helped bring an end to apartheid.

Mandela urged the 4,000 people who attended the rally in Orlando Stadium in Soweto to go back to school. "This is no longer a day of protest by an excluded majority," Mandel said 18 years after the 1976 student uprising in which police killed hundreds of Black youths.

Mandela added: "The government is convinced that among the first challenges that we need to address...is to inculcate the culture of learning and teaching in all schools. You might have been on the other side of the dividing line of apartheid. But now is the time to join the majority in building a new and glorius future for our country and all of its people."

He said the government plans legislation to eradicate discrimination and take the first step toward providing 10 years of "free quality education" for all.

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