The Southern Times

GENERAL

Lest We Forget: Remember June 16

By Staff Reporter on 15th June 2016

By Thandisizwe Mgudlwa

June 16, 1976 was a turning point in the Freedom Struggle in South Africa, as developments that occurred since that fateful day confirm that much.

Clearly, South Africa was to change forever. The great struggle would now be in the hands of the ‘Mighty Youth’ of South Africa.

The 1980s were characterised by mass students and youth struggles. This was to become undoubtedly the most violent decade in the history of South Africa.

These struggles continued until the death of the apartheid regime in 1994 that paved the way for a democratically elected black government.

Of particular importance during the Freedom Struggle was the contribution made by young people at a time when liberation movements inside South Africa were banned and operated underground.

The students of 1976 decided that they could not participate and submit to destruction of their country and future.

Hence, they took a stand and decided to do something about the brutality of an illegitimate apartheid regime, which by the way had earlier been declared “a crime against humanity” by the United Nations.

Fast-forward to today, as the country celebrates Youth Month in June, it is important to reflect on the road travelled.

The uprising

The Soweto Uprising, also known as June 16, was a series of protests led by high school students in South Africa that began on the morning of June 16, 1976.

Students from numerous Sowetan schools began to protest in the streets of Soweto in response to the introduction of Afrikaans, as the medium of instruction in local schools.

Fundamentally, the protest was headed by the National Students Representative Council (NSRC) with Tsietsi Mashinini leading the charge.

After going into exile, the group became known as the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC).

Although they are still different accounts as to what exactly happened prior, during and after June 16, 1976, the most common story is that an estimated 20 000 students took part in the protests.

The number of people who died is usually given as 176 on June 16, and later with estimates of up to 700 by the end of 1976.

The June 16, 1976, uprising which again, began in Soweto and spread countrywide, on a meaningful scale, changed the socio-political landscape in South Africa.

While the events that triggered the uprising can be traced to policies of the apartheid government that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953, it was when the Afrikaans language, alongside English, was made compulsory as a medium of instruction in schools in 1974 that black students began mobilising themselves.

The rise of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) and the formation of South African Students Organisation (SASO) raised the political consciousness of many students while others joined the wave of anti-apartheid sentiments within the student community.

On June 16, 1976, thousands of students mobilised by the SSRC, which had been collaborating with the structures like  the South African Students Movement’s Action Committee supported by the BCM, marched peacefully to demonstrate and protest against the government’s unjust directives.

The march was meant to culminate in a rally in Orlando Stadium. However, while the students were heading for their destination, they were met by heavily armed police, who fired teargas and later live ammunition on them.

This resulted in a widespread revolt that turned into an uprising against the government.

While the uprising began in Soweto, it soon spread across the country and carried on until the following year.

The aftermath of the events of June 16, 1976, had dire consequences for the apartheid government, as images of the police firing on peacefully demonstrating students led to international revulsion against South Africa with its evilness firmly exposed.

Meanwhile, the weakened and exiled liberation movements received new recruits fleeing political persecution at home. In the process, the struggle against apartheid was energised and revived.

A number of the police officeres, who carried out the shootings during the Soweto Uprisings, later committed suicide as a result of their acts.

Other accounts reveal that other liberations movements like the ANC and PAC also claim their involvement in the activities leading up to June 16.

For example, according to the PAC leadership, many of their activists were arrested for their involvement in June 16, and notably Zephania Mothopeng was incarcerated for his participation on June 16.

It would seem there were many competing forces that were seeking to own and direct June 16 and its legacy.

Youth empowerment

As part of empowering young people the South African government has established numerous programmes for the youth.

Although it can be argued that this falls far short of what is needed, as the millions of the country’s youth still find it hard to be part of the mainstream economy, nevertheless, the country can at least point at the strides made to remedy the situation.

But clearly a long road lies ahead, as many youths find themselves on the streets.

Furthermore, some serious questions need to be asked, like: Where are the activists of June 16, 1976, today?

Why are they so invisible in the every day life of South Africa? And if they are doing great work, what are they doing?

Why are they not seen in the forefront of telling the stories of their generation? Why do they say about the current state of education, youth and the country generally?

The June 16 Foundation, set up after the massacre, was tasked with the identification of the youth killed, the exact number of those killed and injured including those who disappeared.

Almost 40 years later, it seems there has been no clarity. Why?

These are some of the many unanswered questions on June 16, 1976, and beyond.

We must all contribute to getting to the truth. Otherwise, we risk losing more youths to crime and other societal ills.

And if we forget where we came from, we will lose our path to a prosperous future.

June 16, 2016 marks 40 years since the June 16, 1976, uprisings – 61 years since the adoption of the Freedom Charter and  22 years since South Africa attained freedom.

Are we still committed to the ideals of the students of 1976?

June 16, is now a public holiday, Youth Day, in South Africa, in remembrance of the events of 1976.

Are we doing the best we can not to forget the lessons of this great generation?

Lest we forget.

Overcoming Apartheid: Michigan State University

Bantu Education

"In 1953 the government passed the Bantu Education Act, which the people didn't want. We didn't want this bad education for our children. This Bantu Education Act was to make sure that our children only learnt things that would make them good for what the government wanted: to work in the factories and so on; they must not learn properly at school like the white children. Our children were to go to school only three hours a day, two shifts of children every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that more children could get a little bit of learning without government having to spend more money. Hawu! It was a terrible thing that act." 

Baard and Schreiner, My Spirit is Not Banned 

The 1953 Bantu Education Act was one of apartheid's most offensively racist laws. It brought African education under control of the government and extended apartheid to black schools. Previously, most African schools were run by missionaries with some state aid. Nelson Mandela and many other political activists had attended mission schools. But Bantu education ended the relative autonomy these schools had enjoyed up to that point. Instead, government funding of black schools became conditional on acceptance of a racially discriminatory curriculum administered by a new Department of Bantu Education. Most mission schools for Africans chose to close rather than promote apartheid in education.

Centralization of schools under a new government department was not in and of itself opposed by school administrators, parents, and students. What the African community vehemently opposed was the creation of a separate and unequal system of black education rather than a single public schooling system for all South Africans. The white government made it clear that Bantu education was designed to teach African learners to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for a white-run economy and society, regardless of an individual's abilities and aspirations. In what are now infamous words, Minster of Native Affairs, Dr. Hendrik F. Verwoerd, explained the government's new education policy to the South African Parliament:  

There is no space for him [the "Native"] in the European Community above certain forms of labor. For this reason it is of no avail for him to receive training which has its aim in the absorption of the European Community, where he cannot be absorbed. Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his community and misled him by showing him the greener pastures of European Society where he is not allowed to graze. (quoted in Kallaway, 92)  

The ideological framework for Bantu education had its origins in a manifesto crafted in 1939 by Afrikaner nationalists. Based on the racist and paternalistic view that the education of blacks was a special responsibility of a superior white race, this document called for "Christian National Education" and advocated separate schools for each of South Africa's "population groups"-whites, Africans, Indians, and Coloureds. Segregated education disadvantaged all black groups, but was particularly devastating for Africans. In a pamphlet released in 1948, the organization asserted: "... the task of white South Africa with regard to the native is to Christianize him and help him culturally... [N]ative education and teaching must lead to the development of an independent and self-supporting and self-maintaining native community on a Christian National basis" (quoted in Hlatshwayo, 64).

Bantu education served the interests of white supremacy. It denied black people access to the same educational opportunities and resources enjoyed by white South Africans. Bantu education denigrated black people's history, culture, and identity. It promoted myths and racial stereotypes in its curricula and textbooks. Some of these ideas found expression in the notion of the existence of a separate "Bantu society" and "Bantu economy" which were taught to African students in government-run schools. This so-called "Bantu culture" was presented in crude and essentialized fashion. African people and communities were portrayed as traditional, rural, and unchanging. Bantu education treated blacks as perpetual children in need of parental supervision by whites, which greatly limited the student's vision of "her place" in the broader South African society (Hartshorne, 41).


Bantu education schools suffered terribly from government's neglect. Enormous disparities in funding between white and black schools and student-teacher ratios adversely affected the quality of education for black students. The Bantu Education Account of 1955 made matters worse by mandating that African education be funded by the general poll tax collected from Africans rather than from the General Revenue Account used to fund white education. Even after the separate account was abolished in 1972, education of African children still remained grossly under-resourced, receiving one-tenth of the money afforded to whites and struggling with 56:1 student-teacher ratios (Hartshorne, 41). 

Dilapidated school buildings, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate instruction, poor teacher training, and a lack of textbooks plagued African education. Students struggled to learn under such conditions. As former teacher Eddie Daniels observed, even the sports fields at white schools were far superior to those at black schools: "the first thing that strikes me at both [white] schools was these huge stretches of green fields. Hell man! And in black schools you've got nothing, and I look at this it's just vast. You've got huge playing fields, tennis courts… It's painful, painful."

In an interview in 2006, Obed Bapela described his experience in overcrowded Bantu education schools in Alexandra township (in Johannesburg's northern suburbs):
… the school that I went to was an overcrowded school, there were quite many of them in Alexandra that were overcrowded, there were not enough schools to take care of all of us so we used to share classes. There would be a morning class that goes up to 11 o'clock and then we'll go home and then other kids of the same grade will come after 11 o'clock up to 2 o'clock and therefore the teachers will then run two sets of class … in some situations they will even use a tree in the schoolyard… We were around 70 to 80 [pupils in class] when I was in grade 1 and grade 2.  

A racist educational system perpetuated South Africa's social hierarchy in which skin color was very closely correlated to class. But Bantu education also brought a huge increase in the number of pupils attending primary (and later secondary) schools. Black students rose in protest in 1976 when the Department of Bantu Education mandated that higher primary and junior secondary students would have to learn some key subjects in Afrikaans – the language of the oppressor. This decision sparked a youth uprising in Soweto, which then spread nationwide and become a watershed event in the struggle against apartheid.