On the bright morning of June 16, 1976, thousands of students from the African township of Soweto, outside Johannesburg, gathered at their schools to participate in a student-organized protest demonstration that had been carefully planned by the Soweto Students' Representative Council's (SSRC) Action Committee and support from the Black Consciousness Movement and teachers from Soweto .
The immediate cause for the June 16, 1976, march was student opposition to a decree issued by the Bantu Education Department
of the South African apartheid government to start enforcing a
long-forgotten law requiring that secondary education be conducted only
in Afrikaans, rather than in English or any of the native African
languages. This was bitterly resented by both teachers and students.
Many teachers themselves did not speak Afrikaans (an extremely difficult
language to learn) and so could not teach the students. The students
resented being forced to learn the language of their oppressors and saw
it as a direct attempt to cut them off from their original culture. Moreover, lacking fluency in Afrikaans, African teachers and
pupils experienced first-hand the negative impact of the new policy in
the classroom. By 1976, several teachers were ignoring the directive
and were fired, prompting staff resignations. Tensions grew. Students
refused to write papers in Afrikaans and were expelled. The students of
one school after another went on strike. The government response was to
simply shut the down schools and expel the striking students
The protestors in Soweto carried signs that read, 'Down with Afrikaans' and ' Bantu
Education – to Hell with it ' while others sang freedom songs as the unarmed
crowd of schoolchildren marched towards Orlando soccer stadium where a
peaceful rally had been planned. The march swelled to more than 10,000
students.
En route to the stadium, approximately fifty policemen stopped
the students and tried to turn them back. At first, the security forces
tried unsuccessfully to disperse the students with tear gas and warning
shots. Then policemen fired directly into the crowd of demonstrators. Students started screaming and running, as more gunshots were being
fired, and the police let out their dogs on children who responded by
stoning the dogs. The police then began to shoot directly at the
children.
One of the first students to be shot dead was 13 year old Hector Pieterson. Pieterson was picked up by Mbuyisa Makhubo (an
18-year-old schoolboy) who together with Hector's sister, Antoinette
(then 17), ran towards the car of photographer Sam Nzima, who took a
picture of them. The picture (at the top of this post) and Hector became an iconic symbol of the Soweto uprisings. and was seen worldwide.
The police patrolled the streets throughout the
night as the students came under intense attack. Emergency clinics
were swamped with injured and bloody children.The police requested the hospitals to provide a list of all victims with bullet wounds but the doctors refused to create the list, and recorded bullet wounds as abscesses.
The shootings in Soweto sparked a
massive uprising that soon spread to more than 100 urban and rural
areas throughout South Africa. It is estimated that when the police and the army responded to the
demonstrators by firing tear gas and then bullets, between 400 and 700
people, many of them children, were killed with thousands wounded. That was followed by a cycle
of protest and repression that reverberated across the country.
To understand the context within which the uprising occurred, it is
important to note that at the time, South Africa’s government had a
long-standing policy of apartheid ,
which called for racial segregation and sanctioned political and
economic discrimination against nonwhites in the country. Furthermore,
the issue of language was a sensitive one. Black Africans demanded
recognition of their own languages and cultures. While there was always
some opposition to apartheid within the country, the government was
powerful enough to suppress virtually all criticism.
The Soweto uprising also came after a decade of relative calm in the
resistance movement in the wake of massive government repression in the
1960s. Yet during this "silent decade,' a new sense of resistance had
been brewing. In 1969, black students, led by Steve Biko https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/09/bantu-stephen-biko-dec-18-1946sept-12.html (among others),
formed the South African Student''s Organisation (SASO). Stressing black pride, self-reliance, and psychological liberation, the Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s became an influential force in the townships, including
Soweto. The political context of the 1976 uprisings must also take into
account the effects of workers' strikes in Durban in 1973; the
liberation of neighboring Angola and Mozambique in 1975; and increases
in student enrollment in black schools, which led to the emergence of a
new collective youth identity forged by common experiences and
grievances (Bonner).
16 June 1976 was a major turning point in South African history. The
protests by Soweto school children on that day marked the end of
submissiveness on the part of the black population of South Africa and
the beginning of a new militancy in the struggle against apartheid.The firing of teachers in Soweto who refused to implement the Afrikaans
language policy exacerbated the frustration of middle school students,
who then organized small demonstrations and class boycotts as early as
March, April and May.
On the days following 16 June, about 400 white South African students
(in the spirit of solidarity) from the University of the Witwatersrand
marched through the city of Johannesburg in protest of the massacre of
black secondary school students and condemning the police brutality. South
African black trade labourers laid down their tools and joined the
demonstrations. Most of the black youths in townships expressed their
frustrations and anger by burning down schools and any symbols of the
apartheid regime. Many students were arrested, while others fled the
country to join the liberation movements in exile.
Internationally, most
of the anti-apartheid political parties, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), countries and the United Nations strongly condemned the South African police’s actions in the using of maximum force that led to the massacre of the students, and images of the police firing on defenceless students led to international revulsion against apartheid in South Africa, and instigated a world-wide boycott of South Africa produce,against the regime's violence and oppressive system. The violence inflicted on this day at least exposed the ruthless an merciless lengths the reacist apartheid forces were prepared to go to maintain a system of domination and exploitation.
Writing with dignity and suppressed rage shortly after the Uprising
where so many unarmed peaceful people, largely children and youth were shot by the
apartheid state’s police and those they directed, the South African poet Mazizi Kunene (12May 1930 -11 August 2006) was
resolute:
‘We have entered the night to tell our tale
To listen to those who have not spoken
We, who have seen our children die in the morning,
Deserve to be listened to
Nothing really matters except the grief of our children.
Their tears must be revered, their inner silence
Speaks louder than the spoken words; and all being
And all life shouts out in outrage…
There is nothing more we can fear.’
South Africa would never be the same again. From 16 June 1976 onwards,
South Africa's youth took centre stage. They would remain in the
forefront of resistance to apartheid, alongside an increasingly powerful
trade union movement, until the unbanning of political organisations in
South Africa in February 1990. It also established the leading role of the African National Congress (ANC) against the apartheid regime and marked the turning point in the opposition to white rule in South Africa.
June 16 is now commemorated as National Youth Day in South Africa. The public holiday commemorates the hundreds of
students killed during the protests, and aims to raise awareness of the
problems faced by the young community in South Africa.
Let''s never forget those that were killed in the Soweto Uprising. Lets neither forget that the scenes of the current conflict between Palestine and Israel are reminiscent of the 1976 Uprisings where we see insurgent youth in Gaza taking to the streets in a desperate attempt to regain their humanity and their land. Young people are among those leading the protests, demonstrating their frustration against the continued stifling of their hopes and dreams in their occupied land..Much like the Soweto Uprising, Palestinians have used these demonstrations as a way of regaining their agency as citizens and remind us that an apartheid system still sadly cruelly fllourishes in our world. Like the one that was once in place in South Africa, the Apartheid system of Israel must fall too.
