The Hector Pieterson Museum is a large museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 located in Orlando West, Soweto

Soweto

Soweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...

, South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, two blocks away from where Hector Pieterson

Hector Pieterson

Hector Pieterson became the subject of an iconic image of the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa when a news photograph by Sam Nzima of the dying Hector being carried by another student while his sister ran next to them, was published around the world. He was killed at the age of 12 when the...

 was shot and killed. The museum is named in his honour. It became one of the first museums in Soweto when it opened in 16 June 2002. A companion museum nearby is Mandela House

Mandela House

Mandela House is the house in Orlando West, Soweto, South Africa, that former South African president Nelson Mandela lived in from 1946 to 1962...

, the former home of Nelson Mandela and his family, which has been run as a museum since 1997.

The total cost of the Hector Pieterson Museum project was Rand

South African rand

The rand is the currency of South Africa. It takes its name from the Witwatersrand , the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built and where most of South Africa's gold deposits were found. The rand has the symbol "R" and is subdivided into 100 cents, symbol "c"...

 23.2 million, which was covered by a 16 million rand donation by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and 7.2 million rand donation from the Johannesburg City Council.

The museum covers the events leading up to, and during, the anti-Afrikaans

Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...

 Soweto Uprising.

The museum is located at 26°14.090′S 27°54.517′E.